I’m sure most f you would have seen or heard about this ad before, the VW “Think small” ad. It was unusual for it’s time sparking the creative revolution in advertising and projected the Nazi import car into a popular iconic cult car. Advertising legend William Bernbach and his agency DDB was behind it and other revolutionary ads like it.
It was evident early on in Bernbach’s career that he had a philosophical approach to advertising. Bernbach believed a successful advertising campaign caught the consumers eye, was simple and to the point, and made the product as well as the ad memorable.
Bernbach’s influence and achievement in the advertising world is clearly seen in his early days at Doyle, Dane and Bernbach (DDB). Campaigns produced for Ohrbach’s department store show Bernbach’s new successful approach to advertising, making the budget-priced store a household name. This new approach was intriguing, witty and held its viewpoint to what the client was all about, high fashion at a low price. The advertisements contained no prices or sales but played on Bernbach’s idea to use a photographic image for its flexibility and effects in advertising. This is one example of Bernbach’s Ohrbach’s ad campaigns, implying the cat knows that Joan’s secret to her being able to afford her stylishness is because she shopped at Ohrbach’s, this is explained in the paragraphs below the photograph. This particular ad only ran once, however, had such a large impact on the budget-priced department store it became, according to advertising historian Stephen Fox (1984), “as familiar to New York shoppers as Macy, which spend thirty times more than Ohrbach’s in its advertising budget.” As Bernbach says, “properly practiced creativity can make one ad do the work of 10”
It was during these years, at DDB, that Bernbach made his greatest influence on the advertising world, spreading his philosophy. The success of the Ohrbach’s campaign influenced many other clients to approach DDB to have the same methods applied to their advertisements. They produced notable campaigns for companies such as Levy’s Bakery, Polaroid, Avis and predominately Volkswagen. Volkswagen became a significant client, staying with DDB for 40 years. Bernbach’s approach with the numerous Volkswagen campaigns became well known and changed the way of advertising of the future. As author Bob Levenson (1987) writes, Bernbach’s Volkswagen ads have been “imitated, mimicked, swiped, copied, misunderstood, and admired more than any other campaign before or since.” Bernbach’s viewpoint of advertising was new and different to the standard. He transformed the look, language and experience of American advertisements leading to what became known as the Creative Revolution.
Bernbach’s ways of thinking and influence marked the beginning of the creative revolution of the 1960’s and 1970’s. The creative revolution primarily concerned the importance of creativity, honesty and importance of the product in advertising. Advertising was seen as an art and not a science. Market research, testing, statistics and rules could not compensate for creativity, as Bernbach puts it “logic and overanalyse can immobilise and sterilise an idea.” While the industry contained large agencies who focused on scientific research and directed to the mind, Bernbach and his contemporaries’ approach was personal and art driven with a creative and truthful focus. Employees where treated as colleagues rather than workers, working freely, independently and encouraged to, as Bernbach advises, “trust your own instincts and listen to the ideas percolating up from your unconscious.” For the first time art directors and copywriters worked together to produce an ad, which strengthened the outcome and power of word and image, complimenting each other. Bernbach looked for creative and talented people over formulas, which gave art directors, and creative persons a more important role, leading to the use of art and image to express a persuasive idea. The product was the main concern. Bernbach would say, “The product, the product. Stay with the product." Keeping it simple and honest. Truth in advertising was important to Bernbach and the creative revolution. He believed advertisements should express a feeling of honesty in a straightforward way using simple everyday terms that supported the product. In Bernbach’s words, “The most important element in success in ad writing is the product itself…Advertising doesn't create a product advantage. It can only convey it… you can’t invent an advantage that doesn’t exist. And if you do, and it’s just a gimmick, it’s going to fall apart anyway. So we never kid ourselves about the magic of advertising. The magic is in the product" (Higgins, 1986)
Product:
As Bernbach believed the success of an ad campaign predominantly centered on the quality of the product, Bernbach only chose products he knew could match the ad. As he has said, “I think a great ad campaign will make a bad product fail faster. It will get more people to know it’s bad.” The first thing when advertising, says Bernbach, is to “find something important to say about your product, search very, very hard for a point of difference in your product as against competition. If it doesn’t exist, work with the client to make it work.” This was different to other agencies of the time who thought their job was done after finding something to say, however, Bernbach’s work started here. Bernbach felt you should know the product inside out before even starting work and that “your cleverness, your provocativeness and imagination and inventiveness must stem from knowledge of the product.” But he also believed that you need to be disciplined enough to know when it is a good idea that has reached its purpose and to stop. It must be simple, straightforward and to the point. As he has said, “Everything you write, everything on the page, every word, every graphic symbol, every shadow, should further the message you’re trying to convey.” His devoted focus on the product is what gave his work success. For example as Levenson wrote, “he saw the VW car for what it was, honest, simple, reliable, sensible, different. And he wanted the ad to be that way too.”
Original and fresh
Bernbach’s ad campaigns are still influential and are talked about today. His success stems from his love of philosophy and literature. Bernbach’s number one philosophy in advertising was, in his words, “to be original and fresh”. Journalist Christy Marshall summed it up. “His creative philosophy was basic: find the simple story in the product and present it in an articulate, intelligent, persuasive way" (Marshall, 1982). Bernbach based this on having to stand out from all the other news events and violence in the world. People need to be stopped and need to listen before they can be persuaded, as he says, “you can have all the right things in an ad, and if nobody is made to stop and listen to you, then you’ve wasted it”. An ad needs to be memorable, creative and persuasive so it is acted upon. Bernbach was continually looking for a unique, bright and imaginative way to say something because, as he says, “as soon as you say it in a way that has been said before, you reduce your impact.”
He principally used humor, honesty and simplicity in his work to produce original, intelligent and artistic campaigns. He believed in discipline, knowledge and understanding to accomplish those goals. “It was DDB”, Bernbach believed, “that brought the full meaning of disciplined artistry into advertising.”
Personal:
Bernbach introduced a personal focus in advertising. His interest in philosophy and human motivation made him realised that emotions influenced people to act. He used this to his advantage in his work to grab a reader’s attention. He saw a challenge in making the reader see, hear and feel through honesty and art to make the boring facts into a memorable ad.
Honesty
At a time when people were skeptical about the exaggerated claims of advertisements, beginning to distrust advertisers, bored with the repetition and wanted the straightforward truth in advertising, Bernbach came along and fed them what they were after, honesty and simple, everyday language. He saw readers as intelligent, literate people. As advertising director, Jerry Della Femina wrote (1966), for “the first time the advertiser talked to the consumer as though he was a grown up instead of a baby. [The VW ads were] handled in such a way that somebody was talking to the consumer in a language which the consumer was dying to hear”. Advertisers started to become more respected and felt more honorable about themselves and their profession.
New/influence:
Bernbach’s “anti-advertising”, as some saw it during the 1950’s, had a major impact on the advertising world putting him as Advertising Age’s number one most influential advertising people of the 20th century and inspiring many authors, critics and historians to write on his ways and philosophies. He has been called “the single most influential creative force in advertising history” and “an inspiring father figure to some of advertising’s most brilliant talents.” (Adage) As writer, Laura Clark Geist has said about the VW ‘think small’ campaign, “That simple print ad by Doyle, Dane, Bernbach of New York sent shock waves throughout the bland, cookie-cutter world of 1950s advertising. The impact was startling, ushering in a creative revolution that changed the way everything from cars to toothpaste was marketed.” Bernbach and his agency’s standard of work has been said, by author Robert Glatzer, to be “consistently higher than that of any other agency, large or small, and its work has been the greatest single influence on advertising in this country since World War II." Bernbach pioneered a new style of American advertising that became the dominant mode, but at the time was revolutionary: low-key, ironic, endearing, rather than harsh and self-assertive.
You can see why Bernbach had such an impression when you look at what was being produced by the industries formulas of the time. The method of advertising hadn’t changed in 25 years and the industry was happy turning out mediocrity. Art director George Lois says, “The stuff they were doing was awful. You were taught six basic layouts. [DDB] was the only creative agency in the world”. Jerry Della Femina wrote, “The establishment doesn't know what makes people think; they don't know what makes people go any more." This attitude all changed with the Volkswagen campaigns.
VW
The VW campaigns pulled together all of Bernbach’s philosophies of a successful ad campaign and proved he was right. The VW “Beetle became the first successful import car and the ad campaign altered advertising for all time” Bernbach challenged all existing advertising standards of the 1950’s with the VW ads. While other agencies used photographic tricks to elongate cars, Bernbach photographically shortened the VW. The ads used simple photography, minimalist layout, clever large headings, honesty and featured the product only. He used humor, wit, a pun or joke. Helmut Schmitz of VW said he felt that “people would take us more seriously if we didn’t take ourselves so seriously. We wanted to involve the reader in our ads, not lecture to him”. (Blackmore) This was unseen in advertisements of the time, as mocking the product was unaccepted. Instead of buzzwords and retouched photos, Bernbach used plain honest talk, simplicity, black and white pictures and basic, clear type. The honest approach is what won the readers over. The modest, uncluttered VW ads contrasted the overstated, showy look of other car advertisements of the time. For example Chevrolet’s advertisements promising to be the best with exaggerated claims using headlines such as:
“Never have you seen station wagons as wonderful as the new Chevrolet’s”
“New luxury, new fabrics in new two-toned interiors”
“Chevrolet’s 3 new engines put new fun under your foot and a great big grin on your face!”
The series of ads DDB produced under Bernbach were unique and took the VW beetle’s image from the ugly, cheap Nazi car into a fashionable, well known, cult car. Attention grabbing headlines were produced to capture readers’ attention and gain their trust but were by no means the whole story and went on to explain in the copy underneath. The important thing was getting the attention for people to read the headlines, for example:
“Slow, ugly, noisy and expensive”
“A car so ugly you have to love it”
They called attention to themselves as an advertisements with “Just because we sell cars doesn’t make selling at the top of our agenda.”
And mocked lack of physical change in the cars appearance, for example in this advertisement which implies the car hasn’t changed it’s appearance in 10 years explaining that they “make it work better not look different.”
As the public were doubting advertising of the time, this new “credibility” and honesty advertising brought a new way of marketing a product. The advertiser would admit to something bad or make fun of the product to gain credence. DDB’s 1959 VW campaigns have been accepted to be the turning point in advertising and mark the creative revolution. They played on the ugliness of the car, a first in advertising, calling it a beetle. Their “Lemon” ad is an example of how they mocked the car saying that once in a while they produce a car that is a lemon, however as they test all cars before they are sold it is unlikely you will ever get a dud ending with “We pluck the lemons, you get the plums”. Jerry Della Femina described the ad as the “first time an advertiser said that he was capable, on rare occasions, of turning out an inferior product”. This honesty is what gave the ad its success. This particular ad is seen as one of the ads to mark the creative revolution.
The other ad to take credit for this change, and probably the most well-known and influential VW ad, if not ad of all time, the VW ‘Think Small’ ad campaign. Advertising Age has placed it as the number one advertising campaign up with Nike’s “Just do it” and varies Coca Cola ads. It challenged conventions. It’s honestly tells it like it is, going on to explain the benefits of driving a VW beetle against a big car. Volkswagen still uses this form of advertising in their campaigns, promoting the unchanging appearance of their cars. This contemporary ad celebrates its 60 years of indifference.
Another well-known example of Bernbach’s philosophy and influence in advertising is AVIS. The main concept drew on AVIS falling to 2nd behind Hertz as the number one rental company with the slogan “We’re number two, we try harder”. Marketing the fact they were not number one was new, however it worked well. They promoted the fact they need to try harder to stay in the game, they can’t afford to be sloppy and that their line at the counter will be shorter.
These ads have influenced the modern, stark, clean look of advertisements since. Other agencies soon followed Bernbach in his approach. It was called the DDB look and was sort after by many companies wanting the same success. For example, Listerine who took a brave step in admitting to the horrible taste of the product with “I hate it, but I love it”. The copy explains the benefits of using the product. As the companies were honest about the imperfect aspects of their product, the public was more likely to believe other facts they gave, which is what made the honest approach a success. Advertisers learnt that to promise too much was to be left with nothing in the cynical age of advertising.
Rules
The bottom line for Bernbach was for “the idea to convey memorably the advantage of the product, and because it’s memorable it must be fresh and original. Now if breaking every rule in the world is going to achieve that, I want those rules broken.” One of Bernbach’s main concerns with the existing ways of the advertising industry of the time was their focus on research. While the industry was formulating solutions and scientific rules to produce effective advertising, Bernbach declared that rules were to be completely ignored. He turned this around to give creativity more respect in advertising as no formula could replace the talent of creativity.
He concentrated on innovation and intuition over rules and science. As he said “I consider research the major culprit in the advertising picture. It has done more to perpetuate creative mediocrity than any other factor… I warn you against believing that advertising is a science” Agencies of the time were more concerned with presenting the rules and the facts instead of trying to turn these boring facts into a provocative attention grabbing statement. Approaching advertising in this calculated way prevented uniqueness in the message and produced boring, repetitious, symbolist works that didn’t grab reader’s attention. In Bernbach’s words, “research inevitably leads to conformity… one of the disadvantages of doing everything mathematically, by research and by mandate, is that after a while, everybody does it in the same way. Because you go out and find the same things… and then you’ve lost your impact completely.”
Bernbach believes as he went into the industry not knowing a lot about advertising, he saw it from a different point of view and could be more extraordinary in his approach. He wasn’t a slave to the rules like everyone else and therefore didn’t produce the same as everyone and could stand out from the rest, proving that to be fresh and original, ignoring the rules makes for success. He believed that advertising could be startling, as well as charming, interesting, persuasive, and inventive. Advertising executive, David Ogilvy says, "He worshipped at the altar of originality, and was never tired of denouncing research as the enemy of creativity. This may have irritated some of his clients, but it made him the hero of the creative fraternity"
Agency-clients relationships:
Bernbach’s theoretical approach to agency-client relationships and structure of an agency was different to what was previously expected. He changed the conventions as he wanted full creative control over an ad concept and would choose his clients according to their willingness to step back. The constrictions on authority he allowed from his clients led to an open and free attitude that influenced a readiness to break the rules and conventions of the standard commercial speech. This distinct attitude changed advertising and characterised his agency, as Bernbach believes “in the long run the client forgets how he told you to do something. He only remembers whether it worked or not.” Bernbach’s new approach to agency-client relationship, according to American columnist Randall Rothenberg, “changed the rules. Agencies were now no longer punished but rewarded for arguing with clients, for breaking the guidelines of art direction, for clowning around in the copy, for using ethnic locations and academic reference… Seemingly overnight, a great wave of originality engulfed the advertising profession, transforming agencies and agency-client relationships and, in turn, the impressions made on millions of Americans”
Bernbach combined the art directors and copywriters and ignored the previous structural workplace. The integration of image and text led to a more creative outcome and efficient use of the advertising medium. An advertiser had to be creative and talented, according to Bernbach this meant "one who does not follow but leads; one who gets his ads looked at; one who doesn’t create at the expense of selling; one who establishes a personality for the client’s product; one who stands up to the client when convictions demanded it; and one who has inventiveness but is disciplined."
References:
Bierut, M., American Institute of Graphic Arts, Drenttel, W. and Heller, S., Looking Closer: Critical Writings on Graphic Design, 2002,
William Bernbach address to the Fourteenth International Design Conference, Aspen (1964)
Blackburn, K., The Battle for Consumer Power: Post-War Women and Advertising, 1997, homepage, viewed September 2008, < http://www.api-network.com/main/index.php>
Great, comprehensive look at Bernbach and honesty in advertising and its influence in America, Britain and Australia.
Brown, S., Marketing: The Retro Revolution, 2001, SAGE
Creative revolution and Bernbach’s VW campaigns.
Clark Geist, L., Humor is hallmark of VW ads.(Volkswagen AG advertising for Beetle), Automotive News, October 2005
Influence of VW ads.
Crain Communications, Top 100 People of the Advertising Century, Advertising Age, 1999, homepage, viewed September 2008, <www.adage.com >
Top 100 advertising campaigns and people of the 20th century.
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Bernbach’s philosophies and the creative revolution.
Frank, T.,The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism, 1997, Chicago
Creative revolution and DDB’s influence
Glatzer, R., The New Advertising: The Great Campaigns From Avis to Volkswagen., 1970, The Citadel Press: New York.
Higgins, D., The Art of Writing Advertising, Conversations with Masters of the Craft, 1986, USA
Interview with Bernbach on his approach to advertising.
Karl, S,. A Conversation with Bill Bernbach, DDB News, July issue 1969, viewed September 2008,
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Biographical and information on Bernbach’s campaigns.
Kinsley, M.,William Bernbach Eulogy 1911-1982 . Harper’s magazine, January 1983.
Lois, G., George, Be Careful, New York, 1972.
Levenson, B., Bill Bernbach's Book: A History of the Advertising that Changed the History of Advertising, 1987
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Articles on Bernbach.
Marcantonio, A., O'Driscoll, J., Abbott, D., Remember those great Volkswagen ads?, Dakini, 2003
Comprehensive look at Bernbach’s VW ad campaigns in the 60’s and 70’s
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Odgen, M., Top Ad Campaign of Century? VW Beetle, of Course, Smart Marketing, Portland Business Journal, Friday, November 12, 1999, viewed Sept 2008
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Article on Bernbach and his VW campaigns influence.
Rielly, E., The 1960s, 2003, Greenwood Publishing Group
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