Bernbach’s artistic approach to print advertising was innovative, and he understood that advertising didn’t sell products. The strategy was to keep customers by creating and nurturing them as brand ambassadors, rather than attempting to attract the attention of those who were uninterested in the product.

Bernbach’s artistic approach to print advertising was innovative, and he understood that advertising didn’t sell products. The strategy was to keep customers by creating and nurturing them as brand ambassadors, rather than attempting to attract the attention of those who were uninterested in the product.

He took the simple, straightforward layouts of agency principal David Ogilvy of Ogilvy and Mather and adapted them for Volkswagen. Krone’s repeated use of black-and-white, largely unretouched photographs for Volkswagen, (as opposed to the embellished illustrations used traditionally by competing agencies).

Bernbach’s team of “agency creatives” was headed by Bob Gage, who hired Helmut Krone, as an art director in 1954. Krone owned a Volkswagen before the agency pitched for the account. Krone, Bernbach and the first copywriter on the account, Julian Koenig, were impressed with the “honesty” of the car. Krone was an intellectual among art directors – seeking ways to lay out an ad campaign to stand-in for the product itself.

Bernbach’s artistic approach to print advertising was innovative, and he understood that advertising didn’t sell products. The strategy was to keep customers by creating and nurturing them as brand ambassadors, rather than attempting to attract the attention of those who were uninterested in the product.