Week 1 EOC: Volkswagen Lemon Ad

“One campaign did much more than boost sales and builds a lifetime of brand loyalty. It's the 1960s ad campaign for the Volkswagen Beetle. It, and the work of the ad agency behind it, changed the very nature of advertising, from the way it's created to what you see as a consumer today.” (bizjournal.com)

One of the Volkswagen ads that changed the industry was the “Lemon” advertisement for the Beetle. The advertisement was in black and white and at first glance portrayed the Beetle to be a lemon. For anyone who doesn’t know what a lemon is it is basically a term for a bad car. It caught everyone’s attention and made them want to read the rest of the advertisement. Once they did they realized what the ad was all about. The ad told the audience that “the chrome strip on the glove compartment is blemished and must be replaced.” If Volkswagen called that a lemon then the cars that they manufacture must be well built. The ending line in the ad, “We pluck the lemons; you get the plums”, is what really changed how people saw the advertisement.  Once read, you realize that they were explaining what a lemon for the company is and how they do everything to avoid creating them. Volkswagen had many competitors that were bigger in size and well known. Being manufactured in Germany at a plant built by Nazis, the Beetle didn’t have many Americans on its side. After this advertisement, the VW Beetle won over many Americans and became a huge success in the 1960’s and 70’s. I really liked this advertisement because it caught my attention right away and made me want to read the advertisement to figure out why a company would say such a thing about their own product.