Getty Images
Nostalgia is our sentimental longing for happier times. In the current corona climate our purchases may increase a desire to resurrect wonderfully wistful and pleasant times.
Food brands that were suffering from lack of freshness, too much sugar, too much processing, too much salt and too much fat are now on shopping lists. Ingredients for baking from scratch are difficult to find on supermarket shelves. Canned goods are flying into shopping carts causing an actual shortage of cans. Frozen vegetables and meals are being grabbed from freezer cases.
According to The Wall Street Journal, desire for local milk, eggs and dairy products has revitalized the “milkman” as dairy farms and dairy processors are now delivering milk to doorsteps in some suburban communities.
Nostalgia sells. McCormick, Sun-Maid Raisins and KFC all see nostalgia as a way to sell product. Old is new again. Nostalgia is news.
A bottle of dried oregano is about $4. A traditional family meal of fried chicken is about $20. What about a brand that can cost upwards of $18,895 to $40,000 or more? Is nostalgia a selling point?
VW is counting on the nostalgia people feel about its 1960s and 1970s vehicles to sell cars in America. VW is counting on its hippie heritage to help continue its comeback from its brand-destroying crisis of phony emissions technology. Can nostalgia for VW Microbuses and VW Beetles sell modern VWs to young generations when those who might actually feel nostalgic are now over 70?
According to Automotive News, VW’s U.S. marketplace challenge is this: “Can VW Get Its Groovy Back? 50 years have passed since U.S. market share peaked. Now the brand is looking to revive its youth.” Can VW Minivans and VW Beetles be sales motivating memorabilia rather than the surviving paraphernalia of psychedelia?
The VW Beetle, along with its sibling the VW Minivan (Microbus), reflected the iconic irreverent, youthful spirit that VW wishes to recapture for selling today’s vehicles. Introduced into the U.S. in 1955, the VW Beetle’s best years were between 1960 and 1965. The car was still popular in the 1970s but Toyota and Datsun (later Nissan) both had small, high quality vehicles in the U.S. And, BMW entered the U.S. with the BMW 2002 and BMW 2004, vehicles that made inroads at college campuses in the 1970s.
Fostering and furthering the VW Beetle’s success was a communications campaign that not only captured the brand’s offbeat essence in print but also changed the advertising industry. Doyle Dane Bernbach (DDB, advertising agency) created a landmark campaign with two iconic advertisements, “Think Small” and “Lemon.” These ads reinforced the VW Beetle’s quirky, strange allure and unusual design, which was in stark contrast to vehicles churned out in Detroit. At the time, American-made vehicles were long, heavy and endowed with evocative fins. The VW Beetle was round, had 32 miles to the gallon, could squeeze into the shortest parking space, had the engine in the back and had a really small insurance bill.
DDB’s first print ad (1959) for “Think Small” had a teeny VW Beetle in the top left hand corner of the page with ad copy that was read more than most editorial pieces according to Starch, a print research service. With sublime cheekiness, no slogan and the tiniest of logos, “Think Small” came to be one of the most outstanding, groundbreaking ads of all time.
“Think Small” was followed by “Lemon” that had the line “We pluck the lemons. You get the plums.” It humorously took on America’s Big Three automotive firms that sometimes sold vehicles that were, well, lemons.
There is no question that the VW Beetle and the VW Minivan (version one was sold until 1967) captured the zeitgeist of the 1960s and early 1970s as the antidote to 1950s American industrialization and standardization.
The issue for today is whether that particular and peculiar set of nostalgic feelings, which primarily reside among 1) aged Baby Boomers, 2) avid readers of John Bassett McCleary’s Hippie Dictionary: A Cultural Encyclopedia of the 1960s and 1970s (a painted Minibus is on the cover) and 3) aficionados of the two Love Bug and four Herbie movies, will reignite a passion for VW vehicles. Two things are in VW’s favor.
First, there are signs that car ownership may blossom again among younger generations. Due to coronavirus, VW is counting on many Americans to eschew ride sharing along with public transportation and return to driving one’s own vehicle: a seemingly safer, more hygienic option. The internal sense at VW is that the brand is well positioned to capture car ownership in the months and year to come.
In fact, a recent global study by Capgemini Research Institute supports VW’s belief. The data indicate that across 11 countries, 44% and 46% of the 11,281 respondents indicated that they would use public transport less often in “2020” and “in the future” respectively, while 40% and 43% indicated they would use fewer ride-sharing services in “2020” and “in the future” respectively. Two of the reasons for increased desire for driving one’s own car are control over hygiene and reducing chances of infection.
As an aside, it stretches the imagination to think associating your brand with your 1960s roots will assuage, even obliquely, people’s current concerns about hygiene considering what actually went on in those VW minivans. Remember the mud frolicking during Woodstock? Talk about disregard for being hygienically clean and social distancing….
Second, VW believes it has turned the corner on the bad vibes generated by its global diesel emissions scandal, citing internal data showing increased trustworthiness of the VW brand. Now that VW paid a €9 million fine to German regulators clearing its CEO, Herbert Diess, and its Chairman, Hans Dieter Pötsch, from charges of “market manipulation” the brand sees the scandal in its rearview mirror.
The diesel vehicles were incredibly popular around the world. In fact, according to Automotive News, VW’s highest post-1960s sales were associated with the VW diesel vehicles. Drivers believed the cars were a cost efficient and environmentally friendly way to motor. Owners were shocked to learn that VW had lied to them.
This sort of behavior would have been unacceptable to 1960s youth culture, which was anti-corporate to say the least. Cheating on and lying about an ecological issue such as emissions would have been anathema. Car companies were under special scrutiny with the 1965 publication of Unsafe At Speed, Ralph Nader’s book about the resistance of American car manufacturers to designing in safety features including lack of environmental features. But, then again, none of the potential new buyers were around on the first Earth Day.
The same Capgemini study indicates that the 29% of individuals between the ages of 25 and 35 are potential car buyers. This means that they were born between 1985 and 1995. The 1960s are ancient history to this group: the chapters of which are in the middle of the American history textbook.
So, in a world turned topsy-turvy, where we have ditched the gluten free Rice Chex for the extra large bag of Oreos, will nostalgia for a VW Beetle or a VW Microbus entice you to buy a Jetta, Passat, Tiguan, Atlas, Golf or a new Beetle? VW’s Herbert Diess thinks so.
In 2018, Mr. Diess told Automotive News, “Most people think positively about the brand because they have their history with Volkswagen. We have been talking about your family, and so many families, that owned a Beetle or they had a [Micro]bus. Volkswagen is still present.”
Sure, your grandparents may have had a fun time in the Minibus but are their shared tales of tie-dye and getting high enough to warrant choosing a VW over a Corolla or Altima or Kia? And, for most of the grandparents or great grandparents nostalgia goes hand-in-hand with neuralgia these days. VW must be very careful not to become the grandparents’ vehicles – that killed GM’s Oldsmobile.
Can nostalgia be VW’s relevant differentiator?
Scott Keogh is CEO of Volkswagen of America. He recently said that what makes VW such a good fit for America is that the brand is great value, offers advanced luxury car technologies and has a German-enthusiast driving style. Of course, this could describe the other German vehicles sold in the U.S. VW must be hoping that nostalgia will generate needed relevance to differentiate VWs from BMW, Audi, Mercedes and Daimler’s Smart Car.
To differentiate its cars from its German competitors, VW must figure out how to make its 1960s cultural values set relevant for today’s customers, this younger 25-35-year-old group in particular. Those values that made VW stand out 50+ years ago must be re-articulated in contemporary ways that connect with current car buyers, not with those holding on to misty memories of hazy hours spent driving during the Summer of Love or frolicking at Golden Gate Park love-ins.
VW’s relevant differentiation should not be about a decade, it should be about VW’s character. VW’s youthful spirit is what needs to be expressed – a youthful spirit that knows no age or era. BMW, Audi and Mercedes do not project a youthful spirit.
VW’s challenge is to avoid getting stuck in yesterday, but to use its past youthful spirit as a foundation for present and future success. In other words, the power of VW’s brand challenge is not about preserving the past; it is about preserving the spirit of the past and making it relevant for the present and the future.
Old can be new but only when it acts as a relevant, foundational present tense source of confidence, authenticity and trustworthiness. VW’s powerful, compelling brand essence needs both remembrance and relevance. Nostalgia is nothing if it is not relevant.
