Prime Time
Volkswagen’s new ad agency starts with a shot
in the arm
Photos by Ray Lego
Iconic, memorable, stark, humble, irreverent, playful, snarky, heartfelt.
Over the years, there’s been a raft of buoyant adjectives to characterize Volkswagen’s advertising. The Volkswagen brand made its mark on America in the early 1960s with the counterculture idea of “Think Small,” and in the halcyon days of the 1990s with “Drivers wanted.®”
Undeniably, advertising has played an instrumental role in creating Volkswagen’s universal cultural appeal. “Volkswagen has an incredibly strong brand,” says Tim Ellis, Vice President of Marketing, Volkswagen of America, Inc. “As we look to grow our brand in the United States and continue our strategy to sell 800,000 cars per year in the U.S. by 2018, we also maintain a commitment to staying true to our core DNA. It’s a challenge you can’t solve with an ad—it takes a lot of hard work, strategic thinking and great creative.”
Volkswagen is working with advertising agency Deutsch LA to take on this challenge. The company was named Volkswagen of America’s advertising agency of record last October. We sat down with some of the senior leadership at Deutsch to get insights on their creative approach and how they’ll work with Volkswagen as the company takes its brand to a new level.
From Deutsch:
- Mike Sheldon, CEO
- Eric Hirshberg, CEO, Chief Creative Officer
- Jeffrey Blish, Partner, Chief Strategic Officer
Das Auto readers might want to know a little about your backgrounds.
Eric: I grew up in Detroit, and my dad was a “rockstar” car designer, so I grew up around cars and passion for the design of cars.
Mike: Yeah, we both grew up in Detroit...I moved out here (West Coast) out of college in my twenties, so we’ve both got a lot of gasoline running through our veins. I’ve raced motorcycles since I was a little kid. Then I decided I have had more bones in my body that had been broken than unbroken, so I took up flying...and now I’m a golf addict. So I’ve gone from adrenalin junkie to frustration junkie.
Jeffrey: I’m from the Midwest as well...plus my dad sold Packard® cars back in the 1950s, and my first car was a 1969 Beetle...I loved that Bug. And I also had a 1984 GTI for a while—it was a great little car...so yeah, I definitely have my own VW stories.
Volkswagen has a long history of memorable advertising, dating back to Doyle Dane Bernbach’s 1959 “Think Small” ad. What shift can owners expect to see in Volkswagen advertising?
Eric: The iconic creative work of Volkswagen’s agencies goes all the way back to the creative revolution of the 1960s and Bill Bernbach. We not only have our own standards to live up to, but also this creative legacy at Volkswagen as well.
You know, as we looked at Volkswagen...it’s a universally appealing brand that has been, over the past decade, almost exclusively marketed to the young. We think there’s a subtle, yet powerful difference between being young and being youthful. And we think Volkswagen is more a mindset than an age. You take that spirit and take it to a wider age group and it scales up beautifully—it’s a very inclusive mindset.
How will you apply your creative approach to help Volkswagen communicate where it’s taking the brand?
Eric: Deutsch’s longstanding creative approach has been “Human spoken here.” All of our campaigns are built on a foundation of human insight—connecting people with brands on a human level. Nowhere in my mind is there a better fit than with Volkswagen. It’s the most human car company there’s ever been. It’s the basis for their appeal, more than technology, more than creature comforts...and all those things are there and we need to talk about them...but first and foremost...
it’s humanity.
Mike: “Human spoken here” is why we love our favorite movies, music and TV shows...it’s when I can look at an ad and say: “You know what, you got me—you really understand me.”
Jeffrey: Human is creating work that’s based on some kind of human insight...we believe that’s the way to build rapport between the customer and the brand.
So, we’re assuming this insight was key to your pitch for the Volkswagen account, too?
Eric: I think we understood that while VW wants to grow and be more of a mainstream brand, for them we answered the question, “How do you go big without selling your soul?” How do you appeal to a larger audience and have it still feel like Volkswagen? And that was really our whole approach.
Mike: Absolutely. That and the fact that what drives us is, we take it very personally. When we won the business, Stefan Jacoby (President and CEO, Volkswagen Group of America) asked me: “Are you and Eric going to stay personally involved in the account? I really want you to be a part of this.” It wasn’t just about money or the prestige...this is about promising to do a great job and brilliant work for another human being.
And it won the account...now what?
Eric: Volkswagen has really aggressive sales goals...so to make the kind of impact on the market they want to, they need to go a little more mass. We’re going to have to reach out to a wider audience.
Jeffrey: There’s just a tremendous amount of love for the brand...positive feelings toward VW. It’s a brand that has touched a lot of people in this country. But their knowledge of VW tends to be sort of nostalgic as opposed to current—of the wide range of models and technologies like TDI® clean diesel. We’re going to help change that.
Which leads us to Punch Dub...
Eric: From the start, we knew we needed to find a way to raise awareness of the full lineup of Volkswagen products. Punch Dub gets people involved playing this game that creates this new cultural behavior that helps do our marketing for us...the more people throw punches, the more we’ll be reaching our marketing target.
Mike: It was one of the first spots we showed Tim Ellis in the original pitch. By the end of the day, we felt it really could be a big deal—that this could really disrupt the perceptions of VW in this market.
But “Punch Dub?”
Eric: I know. It’s called “Punch Buggy” on the West Coast. In the Midwest, it seems to be called “Punch Bug.” Depending on where you live, you get people that are really passionate about what the game is called (laughs). But it’s a universal, human phenomenon.
...Like the Volkswagen brand. That’s Das Auto.
Eric: You put two people together who’ve never met before, but have owned Volkswagen models, and they’ll have a lot of cultural touchstones in common—they’ll likely have in common TV shows, music and a similar outlook on life—it’s more of a mindset, and that’s what we’re trying to bring to the table.
Mike: ...and really give people an understanding of how superbly built these cars are—and how they sweat over every single millimeter of every item on that vehicle—it’s a story that’s yet to be told. It’s really a premium product at an affordable price.
Jeffrey: With “That’s Das Auto,” we wanted to turn it into what it really represents, which is VW’s commitment to quality and excellence in engineering—that they deliver on what the world needs today. “That’s Das Auto” focuses on all the great and unique features that really make a Volkswagen vehicle THE car (Das Auto). It’s about how Volkswagen is making cars that are relevant for customers today.
Is there anything you’d like to relay to Volkswagen owners?
Eric: Volkswagen owners are Volkswagen’s single biggest asset. They don’t just drive Volkswagen, they live Volkswagen...there’s a feeling of being a part of something greater—a lifestyle, a philosophy that’s greater than with any other kind of car. I think it comes from that shared set of values that owners feel. You sharing your passion for the brand is the best advertising we could ever hope for, and our advertising is really just trying to supercharge what already exists.
Jeffrey: Volkswagen owners are passionate for the brand, and they’re kind of pulling for Volkswagen—they’d like to see the company be successful and achieve these goals—and they’re excited to see others experience that special kind of quality that VW has to offer.
Mike: I’d tell them that with the strong leadership at Volkswagen and the kind of passionate Volkswagen owners we have out there, I’d bet anything on their future (slugs Eric in the arm).
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What will you be helping Volkswagen achieve in its marketing efforts?
Jeffrey: It’s about Volkswagen growing to the size and prominence it really should have in this market without losing what makes Volkswagen so special in the first place—that thing that makes VW owners proud—that they don’t want to drive a car that’s right for everyone, they want to drive the car that’s right for them.
Eric: We here in North America think of VW as this niche brand, where in every other part of the world, it’s this massive brand. And it opened our eyes to the scale on which this brand operates, and the potential it has here—the product is there, the technology is there AND the love for the brand is there, what we need to do is build the awareness for the brand and take this show on the road and try to reach more people.
Mike: As you look at what Volkswagen has to offer, the lineup of vehicles—it has tremendous awareness with the New Beetle and Jetta, but awareness drops off after that. And yet, all of the vehicles Volkswagen offers are arguably “best in class.” So our job is to get the word out and to really celebrate the full line of vehicles so everybody can understand how great these cars are.
Please share your impressions of the team you work with at Volkswagen.
Eric: Anyone reading this article would assume we would say complimentary things about VW, but it’s true—we really connected with the leadership of Volkswagen—and the reason is that they understand the asset that the brand represents. You can do a lot of short-term things that can get immediate sales for your brand, but in doing some of them, you wake up three years from now and don’t have the beloved brand you started with. But this group understands the appeal of the brand in this country, and they desperately want to retain that appeal while growing it simultaneously. If we grew the sales, but in the process didn’t retain the brand, it wouldn’t be seen as a victory—we’ve got to do both.
Mike: The Volkswagen leadership team is made up of really strong businesspeople...I’d bet anything on their future.
Beyond Volkswagen, what other accounts does Deutsch have?
Jeffrey: California Cheese is one of our most beloved clients and campaigns, and HTC® phones is one of our newer clients we’re excited about as well. And with DirecTV®, we’ve taken what’s traditionally been more or less a “pipe” of TV content and turned it into an entertainment brand.
Mike: ...Sony® PlayStation®, Dr. Pepper®, Snapple®...we’re already doing cool work, but we also know the car business, so our formula is a nice combination of “hot creative shop meets the agency that knows cars.”
Eric: There’s no brand Mike and I would rather work with in the automotive business than Volkswagen.
Mike: Every agency dreams of winning a car account...and among car accounts, Volkswagen is the greatest...it’s probably the most attractive account in advertising, period—and I don’t think I’m overstating that.