There have been many recognizable ad campaigns over the past century, from Norelco’s television ads with santa sledding down the hill to the red and yellow M&M’s but \u00a0“one campaign did much more than boost sales and build a lifetime of brand loyalty. It’s the 1960s ad campaign for the Volkswagen Beetle. The ad, 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” (Odgen). The \u201cThink Small\u201d campaign was developed in 1959 for advertising the Volkswagen Beatle. Conceived by Helmut Krone and\u00a0Julian Koenig<\/a>, this campaign is what many consider to be one of the best advertising schemes of the 20th<\/sup>\u00a0century. \u201cThink Small\u201d was an exercise in minimalism and thus a very accurate reflection on the product itself.<\/p>\n \u201cFifteen years after\u00a0World War II<\/a>, the United States had become a world and consumer\u00a0superpower<\/a>; and cars began to be built for growing families with\u00a0Baby Boomer<\/a>\u00a0children and \u201cAmericans obsessed with muscle cars\u201d. The Beetle, a \u201ccompact, strange-looking automobile\u201d, was manufactured in a plant built by the\u00a0Nazis<\/a>\u00a0in\u00a0Wolfsburg<\/a>,\u00a0Germany<\/a>, which was perceived to make it more challenging to sell the vehicle\u00a0(being that the car was designed in\u00a0Nazi Germany<\/a>). Automobile advertisements focused on providing as much information as possible to the reader instead of persuading the reader to purchase a product, and the advertisements were typically rooted more in fantasy than in reality.\u201d (Kabourek)\u00a0The \u201cThink Small\u201d ads were different.<\/p>\n The Creative Revolution:<\/strong> This type of aesthetic is just as important today as it has\u00a0ever been. \u201cMore and more these days, the creative world is seeing an emergence of\u00a0artists creating positive spaces and shapes that, in turn, cleverly carve out shapes in negative space intentionally. And the results can be stunning.\u201d (Hughes & Kitney) A fairly recent example of this is with the direction Apple has been going in with some of the newer products they have been advertising. A fairly recent example of this is with the direction Apple has been going in with some of the newer products they have been advertising. As seen in the example above, Apple mimics the older Volkswagen ads with their use of minimal color, minimal text, and the perfect amount of negative space.<\/p>\n After the almost overnight success of the first few printed ads for this campaign, Helmut Krone and\u00a0Julian Koenig<\/a>\u00a0continued pushing out advertisement in the same style as the original.<\/p>\n![\"volkswagen_think_small\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pages.charlotte.edu\/visualrhetoric\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/651\/2014\/04\/volkswagen_think_small.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\nThese advertisements were considered a success in part because they sold a lot of cars, but what really set in stone their success was how they turned the marketing world on its head. Considered by the industry to be groundbreaking, this, along with some other advertising techniques of the time, ushered in a new wave of marketing dubbed the \u201cCreative Revolution.\u201d This new era in marketing schemes attempted to associate the product being advertised with an idea or way of living. Companies were no longer just trying to sell consumers a product, now they were trying to sell a lifestyle. (Mathew) This was quite a change from previous campaigns of the century where marketers attempted to \u201cmotivate\u201d consumers into purchasing their product boasting that said product was a type of status symbol. \u201cBeetle ownership allowed you to show off that you didn’t need to show off\u201d (Garfield)<\/p>\n<\/a>The ads placed a small car inside of what appeared to be a gigantic, solid-colored room. Written in fine print at the bottom of the page, billboard, or screen, Krone and Koenig wrote about the advantages of owning a smaller vehicle in an attempt to lure consumers away from luxury automobiles. By laying out a page primarily with negative space, the readers\u2019 eyes are immediately drawn to the small car. The use of negative space, or \u201cwhite space\u201d, in graphic design is something that has always fascinated me. Defined simply as the \u201cportion of a page left unmarked: margins, gutters, and space between columns, lines of type, graphics, figures, or objects drawn or depicted.\u201d (Wikipedia et al.) Negative space is what allows the subject matter on the page to exist. When used improperly it can cause a design to look unfinished or incomplete, but when used properly, as is the case in the \u201cThink Small\u201d ads, it draws the viewer\u2019s eye to the objects the designer wants to be seen.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n