Guess What Volkswagen Called the Beetle First?!

Today we're going to talk about branding and we're starting with a trivia question about one of the most famous product names in history. The name Beetle is iconic, but for the first 20 plus years of its life, what did Volkswagen officially called the car? Was it A the Volkswagen bug, B the Volkswagen Type 1, C the KDF wagon, or D the Volkswagen economy saloon? If you answered B, the Volkswagen Type 1, you [music] are correct. While KDF Vagen was its intended name under the Nazi regime, the car that the world actually bought and loved had no official name at all. It was simply the type one. The names Beetle or Bug were informal nicknames given by the public that the company actually resisted for decades. This is the story of how the world named the car and how Volkswagen finally gave in. When the Volkswagen factory in Wolsburg finally began mass civilian production after World War II, the company wasn't worried about marketing slogans or catchy model names. They were worried about survival. Under the leadership of the British army, the company was producing exactly one product, a sedan. In the rigid engineering focused minds of the German management, the car didn't need a name because it had no competition within the company. It was simply the Volkswagen. Internally, it was designated the type 1. When the car was exported to foreign markets, it was sold strictly by its engine displacement. If you walked into a dealership in the 1950s or early60s, [music] you didn't buy a Beetle. You bought a Volkswagen 1100, a 1200, or later a 1300, depending on the size of the engine in cubic cm. To the executives in Wolfsburg, giving a serious piece of machinery a cute animal nickname was undignified. While the engineers called it the type one, the public saw something else. The car's shape was radically different from anything else on the road. It was round, bulbous, and had prominent fenders that looked like [music] wings or legs. It looked biological. The very first recorded use of the nickname actually predates [music] the car's mass production. In July 1938, a correspondent for the New York Times visited the construction site of the factory in Germany. Describing the vision of the future, the reporter wrote that the roads would soon be filled with thousands and thousands of shiny little beetles. The name stuck because it was [music] perfect. It wasn't just a description of the shape. It captured the character of the car. It scuttled along the road with a noisy air cooled chatter. It was small, [music] numerous, and seemingly indestructible. In Germany, the public began calling it the cafir. In France, it became the coxinel or ladybug. In English-speaking countries, it became the beetle or the bug. The world had collectively decided what this car was, [music] regardless of what was printed in the owner's manual. For nearly two decades, Volkswagen fought against this organic branding. Heinrich Nordhof, the man credited with building Volkswagen into a global powerhouse, was a traditionalist. He believed in the product's engineering merit, not in gimmicks. Throughout the 1950s and much of the 60s, official factory literature and advertising referred to the car exclusively as the Volkswagen sedan. Even as the nickname became the dominant way customers referred to the car, the company held the line. They wanted to project an image of German precision and reliability. They feared that embracing a cute nickname would undermine the car's reputation as a serious, durable machine. The tide began to turn in the roughly 1960s, specifically in the United States. Volkswagen had hired the Doyle Dayne Bernbach advertising agency to handle their American marketing. DDB revolutionized advertising by moving away from the serious feature-heavy ads of the time and embracing humor, honesty, and self-deprecation. The creative team at DDB saw the value in the car's quirky personality. The agency began to subtly incorporate the public's language into the ads. They played up the car's shape and its difference from the massive Detroit land yachts of the era. But the official change didn't happen overnight. It wasn't until the late 1960s, specifically for the 1968 model year in the United States, that Volkswagen finally surrendered to the inevitable. For the first time, brochures and marketing materials officially referred to the car as the Volkswagen Beetle. This was a massive shift. It was an admission that the customers owned the brand identity more than the manufacturer did. Volkswagen realized that the affection people felt for the bug was a powerful sales tool, not a liability. Once the floodgates opened, the car's identity became a reflection of the culture it was sold in. Because the official name had been absent for so long, local populations had filled the void with their own terms of endearment. In Mexico, the car became the Vo. [music] In Brazil, it was the Fusa. In Indonesia, it was the kodok, which means frog. In Bolivia, it was the pa or turtle. Every culture looked at that same shape and saw a friendly creature from their own environment. This phenomenon is unique in automotive history. No other car has inspired such a diverse and affectionate range of names across so many languages. It really speaks to the emotional connection drivers had with the car. It wasn't just a machine, it was a character. The story of the Beatles name is a lesson in humility for big corporations. Volkswagen spent [music] 20 years trying to tell the world that they were selling a type 1 sedan or a 1200, but the world ignored them. By the time Volkswagen finally printed the word Beetle on a brochure in 1968, they were just confirming what everyone already knew. The car had transcended its engineering designation. It had become a living part of the culture. It was the car with no name that ended up with more names than any other vehicle in history. [music]