The term lemon in the Volkswagen ad refers to any vehicle
that doesn’t meet the Volkswagen inspection standards. The ad agency was
created by William Bernbach, Ned Doyle, and Maxwell Dane. They formed Doyle
Dane Bernbach, a Manhattan advertising agency that created the lemon ad and
many more successful Volkswagen ads. The ad itself was created by Julian
Koenig. “In the early 1900s, a
pool hall hustle was called a lemon game and around the same time in Britain
the term ‘to hand someone a lemon’ was slang for "to pass off a
sub-standard article as a good one." (Letourneau, Justin.
"What Does That Really Mean?" : Lemon. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Jan.
2016.) It’s like biting into a lemon and you get that real sour taste, you feel
about the same way after realizing you’ve gotten a real sour deal.
The ad, since being
released, now ranks as the best advertising campaign of the twentieth century
by Ad Age. The campaign kept simplicity in mind which went against the
traditional association of luxury with vehicles. The Beetle was manufactured in
a plant built by Nazis in Germany. This gave the impression that the vehicle
would be much harder to sell. Vehicle ads were focused primarily on providing
as much information as possible. Being that the vehicle was made by Nazi’s,
people wouldn’t be a fan of the vehicle.
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