I like to refer to this one as “the shot heard ‘round the advertising world”. If you ever dig into the history of great advertising, this one is in virtually any serious analysis of the most influential advertising in history. In fact, more often than not, it’s cited as perhaps THE single most important piece of advertising ever created.
The year is 1959. With World War II barely in America’s rear view mirror, things are booming. The recovery from the recession of 1958 is in full swing, and with the new interstate system and the baby boom, Americans are driving farther than ever before, and needing bigger cars to transport their expanding families.
Plus, innovations in the automotive sector have led to The Muscle Car. In short, America is car crazy and the bigger, the better. The automobile has become an indicator of how successful you were. If you’re driving a big car, or a fancy car, or a fast car, you’re obviously in the fast lane to success.
Then, the world hears from Germany once again.
Imagine the surprise of an entire nation when they first see THIS:
There are a million things that set this ad apart. Although it’s interesting, if you compare this ad side-by-side with some of the legendary work that had been done as recently as a year earlier by David Ogilvy for Rolls-Royce, you see that the basic framework for the ad itself appears to have a ton in common: Big space for the image in the top half, headline, copy underneath.
But that’s where the similarities end.
Everything else in this ad is different. For starters, the image. BIG empty space with a tiny little car in the top corner. In fact, there would even be an ad later in this series that talked about how the car is so small that it will make your house look bigger. In that one, the image of the car is even smaller.
At a time when bigger was better, this ad gave consumers permission to see simplicity as sophistication. It challenged the notion that more equals success, and instead celebrated minimalism in a world that was used to excess.
The tone is different. It’s done in a tongue-in-cheek style that was uncommon at the time. It was also refreshingly honest.
This ad also came along at a time when agencies were in a new romance with full-color printing. The most impactful ads used glorious, vibrant colors. This one’s in black and white.
If you really want to get into the nitty-gritty of it, look at the typography. At a time where basically every ad was using a serif font, the “Think Small” ad for Volkswagen used a sans serif font. And the paragraphs aren’t justified to match the column width, they look kind of raggedy and familiar, the same way they would if you had typed them out yourself.
The ad was different in almost as many ways as the car was different.
But as you’ll hear me say in this series a lot, just like my students hear me say in our Enhancement Marketing course, an ad campaign is useless and self-serving if it doesn’t result in an increase in sales. So what was the impact of this ad? Consider this: There were about 5.9 million cars sold in America in 1959. Half a million of them… or just under ten percent of the entire automobile market… were Volkswagen Beetles.
Imagine writing an ad that took you from zero percent market share, to just under ten percent. Of one of the biggest economic sectors in the world.
All of that… is what makes this ad great.
Next week, a TV commercial from 2020 that worked brilliantly, despite making its viewers squirm with discomfort..
