kottke.org posts about volkswagen
This is an ad for Volkswagen’s I.D. Buzz, a concept car that is slated to enter production in 2022 as the long-awaited new version of the VW Microbus:
This ad references a couple of different things. First, VW is being very aggressive in pushing their electric vehicles in the wake of their 2015 emissions scandal, in which the company intentionally programmed their diesel cars to run clean in test mode in order to meet US emissions standards. The second reference is to their iconic ad from the 60s:
Whether or not the company will be successful in rehabilitating their reputation is one thing, but that ad is super clever.
VW has a history of referencing bad news about their brand in their advertising: How VW Turned Beastie Boys-Inspired Theft of Car Parts into a Clever 80s Ad.
In the music video for (You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!) and in promotional material surrounding the release of the band’s debut album Licensed to Ill, the Beastie Boys’ Mike D wore a chain with a VW emblem around his neck.
In the US and around the world, fans of the band started stealing VW emblems from the fronts of cars on the street and in dealer lots. In the UK, facing down some potential bad publicity, Volkswagen cleverly turned this into a marketing opportunity with this magazine ad:
Using the iconic layout of the groundbreaking “Think Small” and “Lemon” ads and calling their logo a “designer label”, VW offered fans of Beasties a free emblem just for writing into the company and requesting one. Brilliant ad. (via @imperica)
Artist Damián Ortega, who started off as a political cartoonist, makes a wide variety of art, but my favorites are his hanging and “exploded” art installations.
One of his most celebrated works titled “Cosmic Thing” (2002), shows a disassembled Volkswagen Beetle, suspended from wires in mid-air in the manner of a mechanic’s instruction manual. The result is a fragmented object that offers a new perspective of the car first developed in Nazi Germany which was later produced en masse in Mexico. Through his work, Damián Ortega discusses specific economic, aesthetic and cultural situations and how regional culture affects commodity consumption. He began his career as a political cartoonist and his art has the intellectual rigour and sense of playfulness, causing an association with his previous occupation. Ortega’s works highlight the hidden poetry of everyday objects as well as their social and political complexity.
The advertising that Volkswagen ran in American magazines and newspapers in the 1960s was legendary, perhaps the greatest ad campaign ever. This is a great little documentary about how the ads came about — pitching “a Nazi car in a Jewish town”.
I had only ever seen a few of these ads…what an amazing campaign. For this one, they didn’t even bother showing you the car, an assurance to the buyer that you knew what you were getting.
I mentioned the Porsche/VW financial incident briefly in October, but this is an excellent layman’s explanation of what happened.
Porsche’s move took three years of careful maneuvering. It was darkly brilliant, a wealth transfer ingeniously conceived like few we’ve ever seen. Betting the right way, Porsche roiled the financial markets and took the hedge funds for a fortune.
(via capn design)
Update: Not so fast there, Porsche. Bloomberg says that the company may not have the money necessary to exercise those options and realize $24.3 billion in profits.
Update (10/2014): In a stunning reversal, VW ended up buying Porsche instead of the other way around. Here’s the whole story.
Volkswagen was briefly the world’s largest company in terms of market cap today.
Volkswagen briefly became the world’s largest company by market capitalisation on Tuesday as panic-buying by hedge funds desperate to cover losses caused its value to shoot up by up to €150bn.
Porsche revealed that it owned 74% of VW instead of the previously assumed 35%…which caused panicked buying by hedge funds. (via mr)
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