While working for Doyle Dane Bernbach, Helmut Krone received arguably the most monumental commission of his lifetime: an assignment to advertise the new Volkswagen Beetle. The American automobile market in the 60s was saturated with big, gaudy, “stylish” cars – and Krone was tasked with selling a small, modest, foreign vehicle that didn’t match at all with the public’s taste at the time.
Krone’s solution to this conundrum was in self-deprecation. At first glance, the ads would seem to be doing the opposite of advertising, but upon reading the copy, the fault would suddenly become endearing. In the ad to the left, for example, the car is called out to be a “lemon” (a defect product). The copy then explains that the car is a lemon due to the clock inside, which runs a few seconds late. This shows the company’s high standards, that they would catch even the most minor imperfections within their products. Other popular advertisements included the slogans “Think small” and “When you’re only no.2, you try harder”. The ads don’t bombard the viewer, but rather provided a topic for conversation (emphasized by the full-stop, to make readers think about what they had just read), and further invite the viewer to dive into the copy for explanation.
This form of advertisement, colloquially referred to as “turning a negative into a positive”, is now a popular advertising strategy commonly used today.
Sources:
https://designobserver.com/feature/helmut-krone-period/4657
https://medium.com/theagency/the-ad-that-changed-advertising-18291a67488c