Adventures in Marketing: Volkswagen Airs Its Dirty Laundry

Corporate missteps requiring an apology — an increasingly common phenomenon in our current outraged era — usually follow a well-worn path. The CEO will issue a statement to the media and public apologizing for dastardly malfeasance and skullduggery (or offending a Twitter user), following it up with a statement posted to the company’s webpage and social media accounts. There will be appeals for forgiveness, perhaps tearful ones, at tense shareholder meetings — especially if the company is Japanese.

Following that, a burst of newfound goodwill appears to repair a tarnished brand.

But what if serious misdeeds, even those resulting in arrests and billions of dollars in fines, could be used to market a new product? Volkswagen went there.

In a new commercial, the German automaker takes its not-so-clean diesel scandal and makes it the centerpiece, rather than the thing we must not speak of.

Titled “Hello Light,” the spot opens with the opening of a distant door, which sends a narrow shaft of light into a cavernous, darkened interior space. A lone man enters the room as we listen to sound bites from VW diesel scandal media reports. Sitting down, dejected, he picks up a pencil and begins scribbling.

Simon & Garfunkel’s The Sound of Silence begins playing.

Our protagonist, a stand-in for the company itself, soon finds himself inspired, immersed in a new quest. He toils late into the night at his desk, pencil flying across the sheet of paper. Soon, seeks out an old Microbus blueprint. The computer screen glows as our designer refines his vision into a three-dimensional concept, one he shares with coworkers. Then, in a darkened factory, we see a shower of sparks — the designer’s vision is being made a reality. The shadowy skeleton of an unfinished vehicle body is seen, and we recognize the bus-like shape.

As the song swells, from the inky blackness shines an LED-ringed headlamp, VW logo glistening nearby, before the company’s I.D. Buzz microbus concept rolls out of the gloom, headed straight for the viewer.

“In the darkness, we found the light,” a message reads, before VW welcomes us to “a new era of electric driving.”

It’s a bold move for a company that suffered over $30 billion in penalties, lost its VW and Audi CEOs, and was forced to recall or buy back millions of vehicles on both sides of the Atlantic after rigged engines spewed illegal levels of smog-causing pollution for years.

Imagine if Ford acknowledged the infamous Pinto Memo in an ad for the new 1981 Escort, or if GM played up the rusty, overheating Vega when introducing the new Cavalier. Imagine if a somersaulting Corvair was the main attraction in a commercial for the new Vega.

VW wants to put the diesel scandal in its past. It’s had a come-to-Jesus moment, the ad tells viewers, and here are the results of that epiphany — the clean, green MEB-platform vehicles due to pour forth from Europe (and eventually Tennessee) in the coming years.

Apparently, VW is the George Wallace of brands.

Cynical? Inspired? You make the call.

[Images: Volkswagen/ YouTube]