“Remember those great Volkswagen ads?”

John O'Driscoll was one of the great British Mad Men of the 70's and 80's, a serial award-winner as an art director at BBDO, CDP and Lowe Howard- Spink. He then went off to direct commercials for 30 years and is still at it. In 2013, rather than pontificate about how 'things were better in my day', John got himself taken on as an intern in a digital agency to prove, if only to himself, that you can actually teach an old dog new tricks.

My fellow authors of "Remember those great Volkswagen ads", the late David Abbott, Alfredo 'Marc' Marcantonio and I, have a past.

During my agency career I worked twice for David. Once in the 60s when he was the Managing and Creative Director at DDB and, later, at AMV, which was the last agency I worked at before I took the plunge to become a commercials film director.

I first came across Marc when we both attended an IPA lecture in the 60s. I was a junior art director learning my craft at DDB and he was working in the VW marketing department, based in Purley Surrey.

Our paths crossed again at DDB when I was one of the creative people working on the account and he was our client.

In 1975, at CDP, where I was now a joint group head, we became work colleagues when Marc joined as a copywriter. He had made the conversion from client to writer and had started working at Marsteller. Prior to our time together at CDP, he had worked for David

Abbott at French Gold Abbott. (FGA). Marc's transition to writer was an instant success because some weeks after joining CDP he was up for an award for an ad he had done at FGA. It was there, at the awards do, that my involvement with "Remember those great Volkswagen ads" began.

The occasion was the annual Creative Circle awards ceremony being held at a lunchtime venue somewhere in the city.

It was not a particularly memorable occasion apart from the fact it was hosted by legendary adman Ronnie Kirkwood and that Marc and I were to have a conversation that would change both our lives.

The other moment of note was the behaviour of another legend, albeit in his lunchtime, the art director of the famed Benson & Hedges campaign, Alan Waldie. Alan had discovered a piano behind a curtain in the function room on which he kept repeatedly playing the opening bars of Jerry Lee Lewis's 'Great balls of fire', slamming down the keyboard lid and walking away in mock high dudgeon.

In the aftermath of the lunch and during Waldie's impromptu performances, Marc and I sat down to reminisce about the days when he was a client and I was an art director on the VW account.

The Americans were better

We both agreed, that despite the fact some nice ads had been done by the London DDB office, it was the American work, especially the early ads, that was and would still be considered to be the best. Marc then told me about an idea he had had to put together a book of all the great American Volkswagen ads. For me, it was a 'Eureka' moment and I immediately volunteered to become the book's designer.

Whether it was the drink consumed or his politeness at the time, Marc agreed. Back at CDP, he did not mention the book again for some time and I began to think he might have changed his mind about wanting my assistance on the project. Not so. What he had been doing in the interim was making calls and writing letters seeking clearance and permissions from both VW and DDB for to use any ads that would appear in the book. That is one part of Marc's background as a 'suit' that still serves him well to this day.

Marc invited David Abbot to become a fellow author on the project. Though David would not be that involved in the curation of the book, the fact he was on board would open doors to us that might otherwise have remained firmly shut. How true that came to be.

In the UK, we began to gather copies of the American work thanks to fellow aficionados of the campaign but we had always imagined that the main source of the ads for the book would exist in the DDB basement.

A visit to New York was arranged to coincide with a trip David Abbott had to make on behalf of FGA. David suggested it would be a good idea for us to meet and get approval for the project from Bill Bernbach. Yes, that Bill Bernbach.

Marc and I had to finance the trip ourselves, so one mid- week morning, while David was settling down to a glass
of champagne on Concorde, Marc and I settled into our economy seats on an Air India flight to New York and drank cheap white wine from plastic bottles with our breakfast.

Prior to the visit we had assumed that it would be a piece of cake getting all the ads we wanted for the book. Surely all those brilliant pieces of history would be stored safely in the DDB basement, wouldn't they?

Wrong.

Empty envelopes on empty shelves

When we turned up at DDB's reception, we were greeted by a very nice man called Roy Dina. We should have guessed from Roy's slightly gloomy demeanour that maybe the trip might turn out to be a waste of time.When he took us both down to that imaginary basement, (the 12th floor, as it happened,) where all the proofs and pulls of those great Volkswagen ads were supposed to have been stored, we discovered that there were almost none.

The large manila envelopes on the shelf marked 'VW' revealed no traces of a 'Lemon', no sign of a 'Think small', no sign of an 'After we paint the paint we paint the paint' and not a hint of 'It was the only thing to do after the

mule died'. There was nothing. That is with the exception of a few dealer ads. What happened?

Sadly, a fire some years previously had destroyed most of the proofs of the ads.
The fact that it looked as if we were going to have to return home almost empty handed was more than compensated

for by the fact that David had arranged for us to meet the greatest man in the history of advertising, Mr Bill Bernbach.

I have little memory of what Mr Bernbach said that afternoon as I was distracted, firstly by being in his presence and, secondly, by his hands. I couldn't take my eyes off them. They were tiny. Almost child-like. My eyes were glued to them as he waved them about, punctuating the pearls of wisdom I never managed to register.

What I do remember is that because he had seen Marc's synopsis, he was very gracious and generous about our intentions with the book.

We did ask David if he could arrange for us to meet the man who was probably the most influential art director of all time and the creator of the Volkswagen 'look', Helmut Krone.

But Helmut declined our request to meet, not because he was too busy but because he just didn't want to. It would appear that the Volkswagen campaign did not feature that highly on his personal list of achievements.

While we were in the process of putting the book together, major career changes happened to both Marc and I. With our respective partners, John Kelley and David Horry, we both left CDP to become part of the breakaway agency that became Lowe Howard-Spink. This move put a temporary pause to our literary efforts.

Because curating the book took some time, its title and its look evolved gradually. There was no great "That's it!" moment when the title was thought up.

I am very happy to take the credit for the title. During a conversation with Marc, I mentioned that I had noticed that whenever people started talking about the classic ads, before they quoted the headline they almost always said, "Do you remember that great Volkswagen ad...." So with a little bit of editing, "Remember those great Volkswagen ads?" became the title of the book.

Though they both claimed to be happy with our title, it didn't stop Messrs. Abbott and Marcantonio, from trying to better it. Sorry to say in the end it was a case of Art Director: 1. Copywriters: 0. Result.

The art director vindicated

The design of the book was a simple decision. I thought it should reflect the feel of the old Volkswagen ads in both design and look by using the Futura typeface.

At the time the loose sleeve design went against the grain for book covers because we made it look like an ad. The title, "Remember those great Volkswagen ads?", was placed under a squared-up photograph of the 'Think small' ad in a copy of the New Yorker magazine. Underneath were three columns of copy written by Marc.

Every publisher, even the lovely people at Merril, have wanted to change the design to make it look more like a conventional book cover. But we have resisted and the book has sold out every time it's been re-published. As the saying goes, 'If it ain't broken etc'.

The problem we had of not having enough material for the book was solved more by luck than effort.

In the early days at Lowe's, Henri Holmgren, a visiting creative from Sweden, came to see Marc with his portfolio. In amongst Henri's work was a book he had put together for one of his clients, a printer. It was a book about Volkswagen advertising! With the help of other advertising geeks and fans of the campaign in Stockholm he had managed to
fill a book with all the ads that we had yet to source.

Since his book had never been intended for publication, he had not needed to seek the permissions which Marc had so diligently sought from both DDB and Volkswagen. Now Henri, who is sadly no longer with us, was a great guy and immediately suggested that he could organise getting together again all the ads that had appeared in his book so that we could have them in ours. His gesture was not only very magnanimous but came at a crucial moment in the book's progress towards being printed.

Our search for a publisher was a one-stop quest. Edward Booth-Clibborn was Chairman of D&AD at that time. He not only ran the organisation but he also published the awards annual every year. Once again, this was where having David Abbott on board was of great importance. He suggested to Edward that 'Remember those great Volkswagen ads?' was a good idea and that Edward should publish it.

Edward being Edward, complied.

Eventually when we had collected all the ads we needed, a dummy was put together so Edward could take it to book fairs to gauge a reaction. Response must have been good as it wasn't long before we were putting together the book for real.

These were the days before anything digital. Macs, Quark and InDesign were all in the future. Every page had to be laid out individually by yours truly. I spent what seemed a lifetime under the hood of a Grant projector, positioning the images from the original proofs onto tracing paper for the printer use as a guide.

For those who don't know what a Grant projector is, go to the link below. It's a monster. http://www.campaignlive.co.uk/news/1178471/

The photograph on the front cover of 'Lemon' in the New Yorker was taken by photographer Richard Mummery. To our shame, I don't think we paid him for the favour. When I bumped into him in a pub few years ago, he reminded me that we'd never even given him a copy of the book.

Bad form.

Launch of book was at ICA on 20th September 1982. It was a grand affair, in as much as it was attended by nearly all the great and good in advertising at that time. It would have been an even greater occasion if Bill Bernbach had been able to come the launch. His son John, at that time Chairman of the DDB London office, had organised for his father to come as a surprise. However, Mr. Bernbach didn't make it due to ill health. Sadly, he dies just two weeks later on October 2nd.

Glowing reviews

The reviews were excellent and the book did not take long to sell out. As the designer, I was rather taken with the remarks made by Barbara Nokes.

"Bill Bernbach invented modern advertising with the Volkswagen campaign. This book charts that success. No student or practitioner of advertising should be without." JOHN HEGARTY

"Something rare; a truly inspiring book about advertising." TIM DELANEY

"This impeccably art-directed book should grace the shelves of every library in the ad world." BARBARA NOKES

Thanks to VW UK and to the Arnold Agency in Boston, U.S.A., three further editions went into print. The second edition came out in 1993, reprinted to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Beetle going on sale in the UK and a third edition happened in 2000. This was in part to celebrate the brand new Beetle, which was launched in 1999. Because the new work was terrific, it merited being published alongside the old ads. Like the new Beetle, the new book was a success and sold out.

In 2008, good old VW UK again wanted a reprint of the book for merchandising purposes. Fortuitously, the 'Mad Men' series was on TV when our 4th edition appeared.

An opening scene in one of the early episodes did us a lot of favours, when Don Draper was shown reading a magazine on his way into work with the 'Lemon' ad within its pages. Arriving at the office, he found a number of executives all talking about the ad. The upshot of their conversation was that they agreed the ad was not very good.

"I don't know what I hate most, the ad or the car," says Draper before musing that, "Love it or hate it, the fact is we have been talking about it for the last 15 minutes."

And it had been in Playboy magazine.

To capitalise on this bit of product placement, the fourth edition had a sticker on the front that read,' 'The book that made the Mad Men mad." Even though it was published as recently as 2008, there has been a massive sea-change in the advertising business since the last edition. The advent of digital has brought about a new breed of creative person, who, unlike their predecessors of 30 years ago, have never even heard of the so-called 'great Volkswagen ads' let alone seen one. We thought it was time to change that.

Starting all over again

Publishing a fifth edition has been every bit as challenging as publishing the first.

The previous republished editions were printed in letterpress using the original negatives and printing plates. In 2014, this was a problem since printing has now become a largely digital affair because of economics. It meant we had to digitise all the material.

Another problem. We didn't have any ads. The work we had managed to assemble had been destroyed some years previously when Marc's basement flooded.

We had to start from scratch all over again. Our salvation was good old Ebay. It seems there are folk out there (enthusiasts, I hope, rather than nutters) who had collected 60s copies of Life magazine, The New Yorker, Saturday Evening Post and Playboy.

They had torn out all the ads and had kept them. Not only did we find all the old ads which we had featured in the previous editions, but we found a further 150 or so that we had never seen before.

Marc also had in his possession a box of 35mm slides created by Simon 'Si' Lam, creative director of DDB Los Angeles, of all the great VW posters. For some reason the New York office hadn't cracked the poster media plan. Si did. God bless him.

All this new material meant a bigger and better "Remember those great Volkswagen ads?', now with 500 ads including posters.

With a borrowed A3 scanner I set about scanning all the new work. It took forever. In fact it took longer than that as I found myself reading the copy of nearly every one of the ads.

Though nothing was wrong with the 30 year-old photograph on the sleeve of the book, it was decided we needed a new one to reflect the look of the time when the ads were in print. It was photographed by Max Forsyth. Now being almost competent in the use of inDesign I was able to put together the book from scratch. I kept to the same grid as the previous editions but with some tweaks here and there. As always, keeping a watchful eye on my progress was one Alfredo Marcantonio.

Much as I would like to take full credit for the final artwork, I can't. That has to go to Dave Fitzgerald and retoucher Jock Kennedy at Zone.

It's not only the extra ads and the posters that make the new 360-page book a departure from the previous four editions. There is a new potted history about how the two most famous ads, 'Think small' and 'Lemon', came to fruition.

'Think small' had two authors, Julian Koenig and Bob Levenson, since it was originally a trade ad and ran twice with different copy. Its history makes for an interesting read.

With its negative headline, 'Lemon' had fallen foul of the client. The account director at DDB at the time, Ed Russell, offered to pay for the media space himself to learn if the public would be similarly dismissive.

In fact, research showed that 'Lemon' was one of the most effective Volkswagen ads ever to run.

There is another new feature in the 5th edition. The ads are placed in the order in which they appeared. Marc, who is not only a clever dick but also a nerd, can tell you the year of every Volkswagen ever made. Sad bugger.

So the first ads in the book are the ones that launched the campaign. You may find those early ads a bit of a surprise.

David Abbott R.I.P.

On a sad note, David Abbott passed away before the 5th edition was published. David was a guiding light to both Marc and I in the development of our careers. He enabled me to climb the ranks from a paste-up artist in the studio at DDB to become a senior art director on the Volkswagen account.

Some fifteen years later, he invited me to join him at Abbott Mead Vickers as a group head and a member of the board. To Marc, David was not only a client, a boss, and a good friend but the mentor who encouraged him to become a copywriter before hiring him.

David looked out for us.

This article is not only a tribute to him but also to the energy and driving force of Alfredo Marcantonio. The success and longevity of "Remember those great Volkswagen ads?" is entirely down to him and I have been a happy and willing servant in assisting him on his mission. A nice journey.

—John O'Driscoll, Film Director

"Remember those great Volkswagen ads?" can be bought at Amazon or from www.merrellpublishers.com/?9781858946344