Up until the early twentieth century, the primary job of an advertiser was to buy and sell space in a newspaper on behalf of a client.
Post Second World War, the role of the advertiser changed significantly.
He believed in concept based advertising, in which an idea became the crucial ingredient of an ad.
He wrote: “The danger lies in the temptation to buy routinised men who have a formula for advertising. The danger lies in the natural tendency to go after tried-and-true talent that will not make us stand out in competition but rather make us look like all the others.” He concluded with “Let us blaze new trails. Let us prove to the world that good taste, good art and good writing can be good selling”.
He became obsessed with the idea of a small, inexpensive vehicle for the people. Much of this obsession came about due to his admiration for Henry Ford, inventor of the Model T in America.
But with the funding and backing of the Nazis, Porsche finally began work on his People’s Car.
Locked away in a French prison for war crimes, Porsche himself had no further part in the running of the factory. He eventually returned in 1949 and saw his dream of a small car finally being realised.
To tackle this incoming threat Volkswagen sent a man named Carl Hahn to America. His job was to do something that Volkwagen hadn’t really done before — advertise.
This included setting the heading and body text in a sans-serif typeface, Futura.
A full stop was placed at the end of the headline, forcing the reader to stop and think about what they had just read.
But by putting the Volkswagen logo where the reader didn’t expect it meant this did not feel like a normal ad.
Everything about the ad screams honesty and simplicity.
The entire ad was printed in black and white, mainly because Volkswagen didn’t have enough money to print it in colour.
Krone hated the ad he’d put together. In fact, he hated it so much he deliberately left the country when it was first published.
The logo almost isn’t needed, the layout had become so familiar at this stage.
DDB still manages the Volkswagen account.
As part of a cultural shift, the Think Small ad and the ones that followed marked a true shift in the advertising landscape.