Bill Bernbach Lecture 'Advertising'

Bill Bernbach (1911-1982)


Bill Bernbach was renowned as a advertising executive. He designed many campaigns for Volkswagen cars his mos famous one was 'Think Small'. He was also remembered for being one of the founding members of DDB which stands for Doyle Dane Bernbach around 1950-60s. Bernbach and DDB advertising helped separate Volkswagen from their competitors and help make their products timeless and world renowned. 


Bill Bernbach creative team approach when designing the campaigns had humor, i.e Lemon etc (which was at that time 'Lemon' was an insult). He also took risks and broke the rules. for example the think small campaign, which was simple, clean cut and sophisticating. Bill Bernbach intelligent approach toward the audience was new at that lime compared with other advertising agencies. 


He also worked with Paul Rand which at the time was usual because art director and copy writer kept to themselves and it was wrong to be seen with them let alone work with them, however Bill Bernbach changed that and the advertising industry.  


Examples of his work:

My personal favorite advertisement that DDB designed was the 'pick the right day to test drive a VW and you'll have the road to yourself' because it lets the audience think and search  for the product. He executed this perfectly due to of his creative strategy which was everything in the image is pointed toward the product i.e. the title leads the eye to the car which is faded. I can tell that he was inspired from Leonardo Da Vinci 'The last supper' painting because Bernbach uses perspective in the painting.