Remember those great Volkswagen ads?

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Jacket text for Remember those great Volkswagen ads?

In 1959 Volkswagen appointed Doyle Dane Bernbach, the New York advertising agency, to handle their account in the United States. The advertisements they produced changed the face of advertising. Not just in America but across the world.

A fact confirmed by the appearance of the cover ad ‘Lemon’ in Episode 3 of the first series of the hit TV show MAD MEN which also sees Don Draper and Co discussing the campaign’s merits.

Office boys read them aloud by the water cooler. College kids recited them at campus parties. They were the marketing conversation piece of the sixties.

To let the Beetle and its advertising pass on without a permanent record seemed a crying shame. For surely, no car was ever more loved, no advertising more admired. In a way the two became indivisible. The charming honest advertising became part of the charm and honesty of the car.

“Remember those great Volkswagen Ads?” looks briefly at the birth of the car, as well as the campaign. And features over 250 of the award winning press advertisements and TV commercials that DDB produced.

The ads went on to make VW’s Beetle a bestseller and have done a similar job for this book. All three earlier editions sold out and copies became something of a collectors’ item. This new edition includes additional archive material, including photographs of the key players.

This beautifully produced hardback contains 216 pages, almost 50 of them in colour, featuring more than 300 illustrations. It has become essential reading for advertising practioners and car buffs everywhere.

If you’ve ever owned a Beetle, if you’ve ever chuckled at a Volkswagen advertisement, or if you simply appreciate wit and style, you’ll enjoy this book. It’s the tale of an ugly duckling that became an office pin up.

About Alfredo Marcantonio

Alfredo Marcantonio was Advertising Manager of Volkswagen GB during the early seventies. Inspired by DDB’s work on the account, he left to be a copywriter in 1974.

Marc went on to become a successful Creative Director and worked on many of Britain’s most popular advertising campaigns. Including Hamlet Cigars, Heineken, BMW and Carling Black Label.

In 2003 he co-founded the London-based creative consultancy MPH (Marcantonio Plus Hobbs).

John O’Driscoll joined DDB as an art director in 1967 where, together with his writer Dave Brown, he created several of the British Volkswagen ads that appear in this book.

John went on to work at some of London’s top creative advertising agencies before becoming a successful Director at the Paul Weiland Film Company. He is currently represented by Plunge Films.

David Abbott is one of the most respected figures in World advertising. He began his career as a copywriter but came to prominence at DDB, where, after a stint with Bill Bernbach in New York, he became Creative Director of the Agency’s London office.

David went on to found French Gold Abbott and later Abbott Mead Vickers. Now re-named AMV BBDO it is regarded as one of the most creative agencies in the world and currently ranks as Britain’s biggest.

In 2001 he was inducted into the highly prestigious Creative Hall of Fame.

More about Alfredo Marcantonio

Reviews for Remember those great Volkswagen ads?

"...one of the best ever books about advertising...a celebration of the glorious press campaigns by New York agency Doyle Dane Bernbach. Their 1950s and 1960s ads for the original Beetle used irony, self-deprecation, knowing humour and counter-intuition to establish this unlikely car as America's most successful import. All this sophistication and soft-sell in the days when toothpaste was sold by a woman in a tight sweater with starbursts coming off her incisors!"
- Stephen Bayley. The Daily Telegraph

"Bill Bernbach invented modern advertising with the Volkswagen campaign. This book charts that success. No student or practitioner of advertising should be without it."
- Sir John Hegarty. Bartle Bogle Hegarty

"This is a must have book for anyone who loves great ads and admires great campaigns... if you’re a suit on a piece of car business, you’ll find every brief you’ll ever need to write."
- Steve Callan, Creative Brief Magazine

"Something rare; a truly inspiring book about advertising."
- Tim Delaney, Leagas Delaney

"This is the book about the campaign that invented good advertising."
- Dave Trott. CST Advertising

"This impeccably art-directed book should grace the shelves of every library in the ad world."
- Barbara Nokes, Campaign magazine review