Humor In Advertising A Thing of the Past Essays - Volkswagen Group

Ever since I was a young boy I have been a fan of the Volkswagen. I?m talking about the VW?s from the 1960?s and the early 1970?s. Those are the VW?s that come to my mind when Volkswagen is mentioned. Stirring up childhood memories, like my uncle driving up to the top of a steep hill in South Eugene, Oregon, at night when it is pitch black outside. Uncle Rick is in the driver?s seat of his 1965 Black VW Bug, the color blending in with darkness of a hot summer night. The windows are rolled down. The Bug is poised at the top of the hill ready to go. I am about 6 years old and I grab a hold of the handle that sticks out from the metal dashboard above the glove box. Sitting on the edge of my seat, Rick turns and looks at me ?ready he asks, I give him a nod and yell ?ready!? in anticipation of what is coming next. Rick turns the head lights off, revs up the little engine that?s chirping from the back of the car and plants the gas pedal to the floor! Down the hill we go with ever increasin g speed, faster and faster, I scream in sheer joy, ?yeah!? The wind blowing in from the hot summer night, we come upon a street crossing with a thud, driving threw it, we are airborne, for a little bit any way, until we meet up with the road below us, laughing so hard that tears are running down our faces, mine at least. Good times remembered in that Volkswagen. The great thing about Volkswagen magazine advertisements in the 60?s and 70?s is that they used humor and sarcasm to sell their cars and they did not rely on scantily clad young women to get the attention of the audience they were trying to reach. If you have ever watched the Showtime cable tv series ?Weeds? and I?m sure there are a few of you, during the opening credits and theme song, you are taken to an upper middle class suburban city. All the houses look the same. There?s the same car pulling out of the driveway in front of every house at the same time every morning, the husbands commuting to the jobs in the city. All the housewives are all dressed in the same outfits as the go about the daily suburban routine etc?. etc?. I think you get the picture. In a Volkswagen ad that appears to be from the mid 1960?s, we are looking at a scene from Suburbia, U.S.A., a neighborhood that could have been anywhere in the United States at the time. We find houses on both sides of the street that are almost identical, one after another. The sidewalks, driveways, trees, shrubs, even the telephone poles seem to be spaced evenly on down the street. It looks like many average suburban neighborhoods across the country at that time. Enter the VW Bus or station wagon as it was called back then. Parked in front of every house is an identical VW Bus. Each bus is the same year, with the same two tone paint job, the same number of windows, even the same retractable roof. Every VW Bus is facing the same way going down the street and facing the opposite way coming up the street. As if to say this is a normal scene in mainstream America. Below this picture is the following, ?If the world looked like this, and you wanted to buy a car that sticks out a little, you probably wouldn?t buy a Volkswagen Station Wagon. But in case you haven?t noticed, the world doesn?t look like this. So if you?ve wanted to buy a car that sticks out a little, you know just what to do.? I believe that what this ad is trying to say to us is that buying a VW Bus (Station Wagon) is that not only will your car ?stick out? in a crowd, but you as a person will to. You won?t just be normal anymore. You, along with a select few will dare to be different. ?Old Volkswagen Station Wagons never die.? That is the line that

Learning by Doing

Learning by Doing With practice and the right process, executive can develop a core competence in strategic thinking.This article presents a methodology executives can employ to conceive and implement creative and coherent strategies. Managers can use the methodology repeatedly to reassess the organization's direction, thereby cultivating both their competence in strategic thinking and their understanding of how strategic decisions connect to the market are most importantThe challenge of Redefining and Implementing StrategyThe author gave us an example about Butterfield Fabrics operation.There are three stages.1. Stage One: Identify the Driving forces in Your Company's Competitive Environment. In this stage, author tell us how the management team making the strategies.2. Stage Two: Formulate Strategy That Addresses the Driving Forces. Strategy formulation involves three steps. First, you need to brainstorm ideas for what needs to be done and devise initiatives for each driving force. Second, you have to plot those initiatives on a matrix to get a sense of how they fit together.English: Strategic planning barnstar received toda...Third, you must create maps that make explicit how each functional group in the organization will contribute to achieving the strategy.3. Stage Three: Create a Plan for the Protests to Implement the Strategy. The final stage in the driving-forces method of strategy marking is to develop a plan that defines specifically how money and manpower must be spent over time to implement the strategy.Competence in StrategyGood management teams are deeply competent when it comes to preparing annual operating plans and delivering the numbers called for in those plans. Why? Because, they confront these tasks over and over again. Managers develop ways of thinking and working that mar them very effective in meeting those recurring challenges.A company's executives can actively cultivate a deep competence in strategic planning by engaging in such planning over again.