How Bernbach Plans to “Put the ‘Volk’ Back in Volkswagen”

The automotive industry has gone offroad. Gone is the smooth, fast autobahn of steady growth among a stable carpool of known competitors. Now brands are navigating bumpy terrain, with the rise of Chinese EVs and the rising cost of living in many markets squeezing potential car buyers, while soaring raw materials and fuel prices make motors more expensive to build and run and fast-moving markets.

Enter Bernbach, Omnicom’s new agency dedicated to Volkswagen and named after the legendary DDB co-founder who turned a quirky German motor into a worldwide giant. They’re pulling together creative, media, strategy, transformation and precision marketing to build a bespoke marketing machine. As VW faces these turbulent market challenges, Bernbach has come in to help rev its engines.

In the driving seat are CEO Damir Maric, a former Mercedes-Benz marketing veteran of 23 years and CCO Frank Hahn, most recently chief creative officer at BBDO Germany.
Like the original VW Beetle, the heart of Bernbach’s leadership is warm, quirky and very human. Very rarely do you witness CEO-CCO partnerships where the mutual respect and praise is quite so enthusiastic and sincere. CCO Frank is effusive about Damir’s creative background (his first job was as an art director and before he was swept into the work of marketing, he would hang out with graffiti artists and musicians) and his ability to bridge business strategy and creativity with ease.

Meanwhile Damir is in awe of Frank’s globe-trotting career, which has taken him from Amsterdam to Tokyo, Shanghai, Los Angeles and back to Berlin, where he’s been based for the past nine years. Damir describes this worldliness as "pivotal" to Bernbach’s mission.

Damir and Frank both left pretty big jobs to run Bernbach and for both, the allure of this new opportunity could be summed up in one word: potential.

“I was intrigued by the Bernbach brand itself and I think Omnicom has a really strong setup in general, but also I kind of had an idea about what the next stage for this brand could be,” explains Damir. “And regardless of my job, I always ask myself not what this brand was or what this task was, but what it could possibly become. So, that was basically my motivation. I was just curious enough to do that.”

For Frank, as a German, the connection with VW goes way back. His first car was a Käfer (that’s German for Beetle), his second was a Golf. “Being able to work on the brand you grew up with sounded like an exciting opportunity. And being able to form and build an agency with the name Bernbach is extremely appealing and challenging.“

Indeed that ‘undisputed legacy’ of Bill Bernbach is a valuable motivator, creates a high bar to clear, so certainly puts the pressure on. The Bernbach quote “In advertising not to be different is virtually suicidal” rattles round Frank’s brain, but he’s keen to find a way to translate those creative values into the modern marketing world.

"This is just as true today as it was then. We're still defining our own motto because we're building a new Bernbach. It’s not that we want to copy everything that was done then, but the values and the vision for this brand is just the same,” he says.

For now, Bernbach has offices in 10 major markets, from the UK to Australia and Brazil. The headquarters in Germany has around 70 people. Damir says that when he came on board, one of the key priorities was to ensure that the transition for the client was as smooth as possible. VW had been with the now-shuttered Omnicom agency DDB since 1962, so he’s keenly aware of the weight of responsibility he carries and says he’s "humbled" by that heritage.

But Damir wants to make sure that they’re carrying the right thing forward from that legacy. “I feel that every day in terms of respect for the work that has been done before, but at the same time, you don't want to dwell in nostalgia,” says Damir. In a world that’s over-saturated with content, Bill’s knack for “clarity and simplicity” is “so Bernbach, and so VW. That's the thing that we want to establish here as well.”

The other thing they’re keen to establish from ground up is a connection between HQ and the international markets. Lucas Kern, global market lead at Bernbach has been assiduously building those relationships since Bernbach opened its doors and Frank is proactively folding all of the various international teams into the creative process. The benefits flow in both directions. Not only bringing a fresh perspective to the work, the teams chipping in may also find insights and approaches to bring back to their own market.

“I think that local insight translated to global relevance is basically the task. And if we're all about emotion and connection, then I think that's pretty much universal,” says Damir.

A recent French campaign sought to resonate with parents

It’s not just the global teams that are connecting. Part of the remit for Bernbach is also to bring together capabilities from across the Omnicom universe. Creative, media, strategy, transformation, precision marketing are all together in Bernbach and all represented within the leadership team too, so it goes all the way to the top. It’s yet another call-back to Bill Bernbach’s influence on the industry. Just as he invented the modern copywriter-art director team, Damir and Frank suggest that this new agency forged in Bill’s name will build on that legacy by creating new kinds of teams.

VW is the main partner of the German Football Association. This World Cup spot explored the day after the big game.

Creatively, the big enemy is another Bill Bernbach classic, the “swamp of sameness” that he railed against back in the middle of the 20th century. While the automotive sector has a rich history of distinctive and original advertising, it’s also true that the pressure to present pixel-perfect, aspirational marketing has led to an overly-CG’d unreality and repetitive visual cliches. “All the car ads out there in communication, they look almost interchangeable… the driving shots are the same, we have the same pool of photographers, we use the same channels and we just have to use or create the same assets,” reflects Frank who turns to the wit and simplicity of VW’s heritage. “We talk a lot about humour and wit in terms of communication for this brand, because that's what that brand is about, being real, authentic.”

Part of the challenge, suggests Damir, is that cars have become so much more complex, packed with software and fancy features. “I think the total industry navigated itself into a direction of overcomplicating everything,” he says, who admits that he himself has fallen into this trap of feeling the need to highlight every fancy gewgaw. “I think that you try to narrow that down to one insight that people really care about. Then you pull yourself out of that dilemma… That observation is very VW.”

The other trap that can lead to this curse of “sameness” is injudicious use of artificial intelligence. Damir says that AI must not be used simply for the sake of it, but if it’s supported by the idea and has a genuine purpose. Ultimately, says Damir, there’s a “tension between urgency and patience”, the need to be faster in reacting to the market. Sometimes, though, you need to slow down and ask if a tactical AI ad will really do what you need it to.

The pair are keenly aware that they need to transcend that "swamp of sameness" if they’re to help the client and agency succeed. Frank knows the work needs to sell more cars and get the brand into people’s brains. He says he’s “not an awards guy at all”, but he says getting the work to the point where the agency can pick up a Grand Prix at Cannes is certainly a goal. Damir knows that the work has the potential to become a powerful calling card for talent. “For me, the best KPI would be if really good people in the industry say, ‘I want to work at Bernbach’.”

Bernbach's UK team celebrated 50 years of the GTi this month

Thankfully, VW has a deep cultural legacy and decades of human stories and emotional connection to draw from. That’s beautifully demonstrated in the new Golf GTi spot from Bernbach’s UK team that explores the warm memories and relationship that has built up with the iconic model over the decades. And this is what gives VW an edge among the current wave of new competitors. Though, warns Frank, the team has a limited window in which to maximise this advantage.

While the road ahead for the automotive industry is bumpy and uncertain, Bernbach’s strategy relies on stripping away the noise, embracing simplicity, and ensuring the human heart of the "people's car" leads the drive into the future.