VW Hopes ‘Max’ Advertising Builds on Sales Momentum
April 17, 2008

By Dale Buss

For Volkswagen Group of America executives, life is about as good as it can be right now -- given that U.S. car sales are at their lowest level in a decade, their dealers are starved for product, and the parent company still hasn’t figured out how to offset the growing currency-exchange disadvantage of producing in euros the vehicles that they sell in the United States.

Their good cheer results from the fact that VW has bucked the trend and posted a first-quarter increase in U.S. sales, including a 13% gain in March, and that a record five new and re-launched models will be streaming into dealerships as the year unfolds.

And one more thing: “Max” is now on the prowl. The personification of a black 1964 Beetle is the “mascot” of an ambitious new advertising and marketing campaign for Volkswagen called Das Auto, German for “the car.” The campaign “will build on Volkswagen’s unique place in pop culture through its message of ‘It’s What the People Want,’” Volkswagen Group said in a statement.

“We’ll use ‘Max’ to garner attention in interesting and quirky ways, not unlike the brand personality itself, and use him to talk with well known personalities from a variety of corners of American popular culture,” Brian Thomas, general manager of VW marketing, told AutoObserver.

Talk About Quirky

Max began appearing in small teaser ads in major U.S. daily newspapers over the last couple of weeks, opining about other things that American consumers “want,” ranging from getting a tan to having their “sports heroes be steroids-free.” Thomas explained that VW was “seeding this character” with the ads. “There was no overt branding other than what was implied.”

Fittingly enough, Max’s TV-advertising debut came during the second semi-final game of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship tournament in early April on CBS. Max “chatted” with Bobby Knight, the collegiate-basketball coaching legend who also has been an ESPN commentator on the sport since he left his job coaching Texas A&M at mid-season.

Knight’s expanded presence on TV lately “has worked out kind of nice” for VW marketing, Thomas said, and Knight’s comment in the spot about his departure from coaching “makes [the ad] even more interesting.” Otherwise Knight comments about the high resale values of Volkswagen vehicles.

Among other celebrities who will “converse” with Max about VW’s intuition for what consumers want are supermodel Heidi Klum, pop and TV personality David Hasselhoff, Star Trek’s Leonard Nimoy, NASA astronaut Richard Searfoss and music-sharing innovator Shawn Fanning.

In any event, Max now is the “vehicle” for VW to remind American consumers of the extreme cultural relevance that it has enjoyed, off and on, since the first Beetle. “Volkswagen has always occupied a unique and positive place in both American car culture and American popular culture,” Tim Ellis, the group’s vice president of marketing, said in a statement. “Max personifies Volkswagen’s past, present and vision for the future. Through him, we will reconnect with American consumers and let them know how Volkswagen understands and responds to what the people want.”

No Slam Dunk

But Max’s effectiveness is far from a foregone conclusion. While it may be  true that VW has earned a permanent place in America’s collective cultural consciousness, it seems to become front-of-mind only when it introduces a product that captures the nation’s imagination. The original Beetle and the new Beetle, introduced several years ago, are about the only vehicles that ever have accomplished that for Volkswagen in the United States.

To be sure, VW has fielded lots of clever advertising and marketing all along, One of its recent campaigns – featuring twenty-somethings reassuring the populace that all is well because there are “three V-Dubs [available] for under $18,000!” – is an exemplar of that. And still, VW’s sales have continued sliding over time.

VW executives profess a profound consciousness of these facts. And that’s why they’re not relying only on the Max campaign to continue to build their sales momentum in the U.S. The five 2008 launches – ranging from the new Jetta Sportwagen to the August return of the TDI diesel to VW’s lineup – is far more important, they realize.

“Once we’ve seeded the campaign after a month or so,” Thomas explained, “then Max will serve as the connective tissue between our campaign and all of the subsequent launches that will happen over the next year or so. And he’ll continue to play an appropriate and subtle role in our overall efforts.”

Photos by Volkswagen
Former college basketball coach Bobby Knight tosses a chair at Max in one of Volkswagen's celebrity-starring Das Auto commercials.

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