The “Think Small” advertising campaign launched by Volkswagen in the 1960s is considered a milestone in the history of advertising.

***If you don’t know it, you need to fix it now. Start here.***

Small spoiler: the genius of this campaign lies in the bold choice to change the trend of the time, which saw the car as a symbol of high social status and power.

The Volkswagen Beetle, a car recognizable among a thousand for its compact and distinctive design, on the other hand, departed completely from this traditional conception by finding a place in the minds of consumers as “the alternative” with which to identify.

At a time when the size of cars was directly proportional to social prestige, Volkswagen came up with a minimalist and anti-conventional style. The image of a small Volkswagen Beetle dominated the advertising space, accompanied by the slogan as “Think Small” which literally translated means “think small.”

Think small, the successful creative and original campaign

The claim “Think small” is direct, getting straight to the point so much so that it will stick in the public’s mind for months (and even decades). The Beetle became the icon of a movement that defied convention and embraced individuality.

Buying a Beetle meant buying an experience, and not just of a product.

Selling an experience has to do with a value selling system. We’ll give you an example.

When you decide to buy an Apple product, for example, how do you feel? We are sure that with a state-of-the-art cell phone, it increases your sense of belonging to a “community” that shares the same mood, feelings and moods (even unknowingly). The key is to get into the minds of your target audience and stay there as long as possible.

How can we apply the campaign to our business?

In an increasingly crowded market in which companies struggle to emerge and in which we produce more content than we can actually consume, “thinking small” becomes almost an “attention” lifeboat.

That “Think small” is meant to be an invitation to take small but meaningful steps to realize and affirm Brand identity.

Just as Bill, the creator of the campaign, did, Brands must be able to break the mold, to have the courage to reverse paradigms without thinking about consensus, but rather to reinforce the value system that is the parameter by which people choose to buy your product or service and not someone else’s.

Being revolutionary today means starting with the realization that in order to transform the market in which we operate, we must transform ourselves. One step at a time, applying the 1% factor that allows you to build powerful new habits from small things, without doing the triple flip.

That’s right, because sometimes going a few meters down a little-trodden road can bring new and exciting surprises.

Then again, Think small was made for that segment of the market that no one had thought of yet.