It’s ironic that the man who said ‘the most powerful element in advertising is the truth’, was the same man who put Volkswagen on the road to success some sixty years ago.

Probably a good thing then, that Bill Bernbach, joint-creator of Volkswagen’s earliest and most memorable advertising, isn’t around to witness the car crash that the brand has recently become.

It's not by AMV, BBH, or any other immortally-abbreviated advertising agency. It's by a garage.  Yes, a garage.

I once went on a fact-finding visit to Rolls Royce, in preparation for a pitch. We weren’t the eventual winners, though even at the time, I had a sneaking feeling Rolls Royce wouldn’t get too much out of it, either. Whatever marketing activity the exercise resulted in, RR’s sales department never knew much about it.