Thinking Small (71 page)

42.1
. “really burning issues”:
Changing Lanes.

42.2
. “master of equivocation” and wording of British decision: Turner thesis, Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Wolfsburg, 22248.

42.3
. Nordhoff letters to Hirst and Radclyffe:
Ivan Hirst,
95–97.

43.1
. “In Manhattan last week”:
Time.
September 1954.

43.2
. “Say something meaningful”: Lore Parks, vice president and copy
supervisor at DDB in the 1960s said this in a speech she gave on 15 October 1966.

43.3
.
Take Helmut Krone
: In his own words, “I’d like to propose a new idea for our age: until you’ve got a better idea, you copy. I copied Bob Gage for 5 years. I even copied the leading between his lines of type.” From the September 1968 edition of
DDB News.

43.4
. “He had the capacity for infinite pain.”: Challis, 239.

43.5
. “A German Son”: Challis.

43.6
.
About Bauhaus spirit
: The Bauhaus was the defining European movement of the 1920s, alongside the Dutch de Stijl school in Holland (Piet Mondrian). This led him to discover the work of the Turkish and Russian Constructivists of the 1930s, the work of men like Fehmy Agha, who soon became the art director of
Vanity Fair
and
Vogue,
then toward the art
and design of men like Lester Beall and the infamous Alexey Brodovitch. Brodovitch had started his career in Diaghilev’s Ballet Russe and eventually come to the United States to teach a whole new kind of education in design, not to mention transforming the look and feel of
Harper’s Bazaar,
pulling in artists from all over Europe, Russia, and Ukraine, men such as A. M. Cassandre, Irving Penn, Cartier-Bresson, and a man who would later play a role at DDB, Richard
Avedon.

44.1
. “There some 9,000”:
Autocar,
3 February 1950.

44.2
.
Bielefeld market research institute
: from
Changing Lanes,
140.

44.3
. “Only now do I have the feeling”: Edelmann, 100.

45.1
. “What’s wrong with that kid?” Lois.

45.2
. “He’s nasty”: George Lois interview, and all following George Lois quotes from NYC interviews unless otherwise stated.

45.3
.
More about Krone
: In 1957, he had begun work on a then relatively unknown new instant photograph camera company called Polaroid, and alongside Robert Gage, it would be DDB’s ads that made Polaroid into a household name.

45.4
. Julian Koenig’s brother, a talented filmmaker, was blackballed during the McCarthy era on claims that his art took too communist an approach.

45.5
. “splendid way to build a society”: the remaining quotes attributed to Julian are from my interviews with him.

45.6
. “It’s a disaster working with Julian”: Challis, 59.

45.7
. “and it happens just like that”: Bill interview, nurturing talent.

46.1
. “I think it’s very Catholic”: Patti Smith to Michael Silverblatt, KCRW, 5 March 2010.

46.2
.
80 percent were refugees: New York Times,
1955.

46.3
. “That was a blessing for us”: Hartrich, 219.

46.4
. The Swiss registration figures … From 18 April 1956 issue of
Motor
magazine, in the article titled “The Volkswagen DeLuxe Salon: Road Test”

46.5
.
More on Ivan Hirst
: With the dissolving of the Allied High Commission, all the army officers who had been stationed and working there were now out of jobs and expected to go home. This was very hard on many of them, after being here for ten years or more, with no real roots. Hirst found it difficult too, and he was not yet 40 years old. He’d been well taken
care of by the British with a good job in Hamburg and a nice home. He wasn’t sure what to do now, and again he thought about the Volkswagen plant. He wrote to Heinrich, perhaps hoping Nordhoff might offer him a job. Hirst was always welcome to visit, Nordhoff said. Hirst found Nordhoff frustrating, and even as he respected him, his anger toward him would grow throughout his life. They exchanged Christmas cards each year, but not much else. As Nordhoff rose and rose, and as
Wolfsburg began to be thought of as “his city,” as he brought it to life, he also talked less and less of the British and men like Hirst who had helped so much. The press made him the new father of the company, and it was only to Porsche that he ever gave credit; he rarely mentioned Ivan Hirst. Hirst and his wife, Marjorie, ultimately moved back to his parents’ home in Manchester and started over again in the country of their birth. But great men always get their
due. Years later, Volkswagen lovers would seek him out and he’d get the thanks he deserved.

46.6
. “Today, everywhere in Germany”: BBC
On This Day,
May 9.

46.7
.
Der Spiegel
calls Nordhoff the king: Nelson, 133.

46.8
. “social capitalism”: Edelmann, 166.

46.9
. “We got a lot of publicity”:
Small Wonder,
174.

46.10
. ——— “I had a big bill at the Roosevelt Hotel”: Nelson, 174.

46.11
. “No, this is no automobile,” the man said, as Nordhoff would later tell it, “I’ve never seen one like this.” Nelson, 175.

46.12
. “The VW didn’t look anything like anything—animal, vegetable, or automobile”: Brinkley, 587.

47.1
. George’s dialogue here from interview. Hiott, 3 December 2009.

47.2
. “He probably created”: Walter Cronkite on Eisenhower, from documentary
Dwight D. Eisenhower: Commander in Chief.
At 1:15:30.

47.3
. “In this book you’ll discover”: Vance Packard,
The Hidden Persuaders
.

48.1
. “dream job”: These thoughts taken from interview with Carl Hahn in 2010.

48.2
. Carl Hahn: Curiously, it would be Hahn’s idea of “Europeanization” that would later mature into the global reach of what is today the Volkswagen Group.

48.3
. “…  the world is now facing” : Hartrich, 56.

48.4
. “I couldn’t understand what he was saying”: Luftbruecke, documentary.

48.5
. Nordhoff description:
Reader’s Digest,
1954.

48.6
. Nordhoff article: “Comeback in the West”:
Time
magazine, 1954.

48.7
. “It has gained an unmistakable”:
Road & Track,
1956.

48.8
. “the car that has come up fastest”:
Time
magazine; “Renault on the Go,” 6 January 1958.

49.1
. “People presented me”: Carl Hahn interview Hiott. All following CH dialogue unless otherwise noted.

49.2
. Hahn and VW had tried another, bigger agency before DDB, and it hadn’t worked out.

49.3
. “I still don’t, to this day, know”: Krone interview,
DDB News.

49.4
. “I was wondering what was going on in Bernbach’s head because it really had Nazi connotations to it, the car, and I didn’t think it was something we should do” Krone, Challis, 61.

49.5
. “I don’t have to tell
you
why”: George Lois interview, Hiott. All following GL dialogue comes from these interviews.

49.6
.
Helmut Schmitz
is another important name in this story, as he became the German counterpart at DDB, helping to revolutionize German advertising. Schmitz was there in Wolfsburg when Krone and Bill went too, and his relationship with them would last for years and years.

49.7
. “This is an honest car”: Railton, 172.

49.8
. “I definitely remember” Challis, 61.

49.9
. Bob Gage, rather than taking over art direction for the VW, assigned it to Krone. In Gage’s words: “He was right for it.” Gage also admits he thought the car was ugly and Krone “thought it was beautiful.” Challis, 60.

49.10
.
Some saw it as blood money
: At the time of negotiations between Israel and West Germany, a bomb was sent to Adenauer—a man gave it to two children on the street and asked them to deliver it to Adenauer’s office, but they took it to the police instead. It blew up at Munich’s police headquarters, killing one police officer. Adenauer chose not to
make a big deal out of it, and to a large degree the whole event stayed out of the press. David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s prime minister at the time, appreciated Adenauer’s response and it deepened the relationship between the two states.

49.11
. “You know what he just”: from GL interviews and GL’s books.

50.1
. “That brought up certain feelings”: Julian Koenig interviews, Hiott, NYC, 2009. All Julian quotes from author interviews, unless otherwise stated.

50.2
. DDB, because of the unique ethnic mix of the partners (Doyle, Dare, and Bernbach), was often referred to as “two Jews and an Irishman” (Della Femina). Now George, who was Greek and had been picked on by the Irish kids in his neighborhood, was working for two Jews and an Irishman on a German campaign for a car that still had Nazi connotations.

50.3
. “secret, hidden basement”: Version of George Lois’s story as recounted here comes from author interviews with Lois. He has also recounted similar versions of this story in his own books and interviews over the years.

50.4
. “This is just a prelude”:
Time
magazine. “AUTOS: The New Generation” Monday, 5 October 1959.

51.1
. In
The Magic of Thinking Big,
Schwartz actually encourages people to scrutinize their thoughts and overcome self-doubt and worry: In essence, it’s not the material objects or the accumulation of material objects that is the problem here. And Schwartz’s book was not the problem: It was popular because people were so caught up in trying to keep up with the
rat race that they were very unhappy and thus needed books to help them, as Schwartz’s book did, to refocus on
what was meaningful. It seems like a paradox, but thinking big and thinking small can be exactly the same thing. The title caught people’s minds because of the consumer culture, but what they were looking for was a cure to that kind of Bigness and an entry into real Bigness: meaning, connection, confidence, love.

51.2
. “The illustration in this Volkswagen ad”:
Advertising Age,
5 October 1959.

51.3
. ——— “This copy is so … believable” The first ad would appear in the
Journal of Commerce,
which is now apparently owned by
The Economist.

51.4
. “We had conspicuous”: Julian Koenig interview, 2009.

51.5
. “Ten years ago”: Koenig’s first Think Small copy in
Life,
22 February 1960.

51.6
.
How did the VW become known as the Beetle?
The earliest time the car was referred to as a beetle is in a
New York Times
article from June 1938. Hitler, too, apparently said it should “look like a beetle,” and at the time of the car’s creation, it was a popular idea to look to insects for ideas of streamlining. Here, Julian uses the word
too. He’d thought it looked very beetle-like when he saw it in Wolfsburg. It would eventually become the way Americans saw it, though the original VW was not officially named the Beetle for decades.

51.7
. “I suppose that means you want me to make the image small”: Lorin, 15.

51.8
. “That’s the header!”: Story of Schmidt comes from Julian Koenig.

52.1
. “This little car missed the boat”: copy from Lemon ad in
Life,
11 April 1960.

52.2
. “In the beginning”: Della Femina, p. 28.

52.3
.
Bud became Helmut
: pointed out in
Helmut Krone. The book
by Clive Challis.

52.4
. “a writer of short sentences”: Julian Koenig on
This American Life.

52.5
. “modern version of the Model T” because it “helped to open car ownership to people who might not have been able to afford a new car otherwise” Brinkley, 587.

52.6
. “What I try to do with a creative person”: Bill interview, DDB News.

53.1
. “While the levels of logic”: Muir, 3.

53.2
. “If you are Jewish”:
Playboy,
“Snobs Guide to Cars,” July 1964.

53.3
. Quote from Alfred Brendel documentary
Man and Mask.

53.4
. “This was a distinct”: Julian Koenig interview, Hiott.

54.1
. Franz Marc’s “Tower of Blue Horses,” created in 1913 and formerly owned by the Nationalgalerie in Berlin, was seized in 1937 and shown at the Munich “Degenerate Art” exhibition. The Nazis removed it from this exhibition when German officers from WWI, the same war in which Marc had fought in and died on the side of Germany, protested that the
Nazis were defaming a fallen hero. In 1940, Herman Göring confiscated the painting for his private collection. Since the end of WWII, numerous rumors have been told about its possible whereabouts, but it has not been found.

54.2
. Carl Hahn later told me that it was actually DDB that did the brochures for each of these exhibitions: Hahn, alongside Helmut Schmitz, and his partnership with DDB would ultimately bring the Creative Revolution in advertising to Germany too. Years later, on VW’s fiftieth birthday, Carl Hahn was given a book by DDB about the VW ads. Think Small was the first ad in the
book. And in that book, the creative credits read: Art: Helmut Krone. Text: Julian Koenig/Helmut Schmitz. Hahn’s office is actually located inside the Wolfsburg Art Museum building, next door to the main exhibition space.