Volkswagen forced to apologize for racist advert
Volkswagen, shortened to VW, is a German motor vehicle manufacturer headquartered in Wolfsburg, Lower Saxony, Germany. Founded in 1937 under the Nazi regime by the German Labor Front, known for their iconic Beetle, it is the flagship brand of the Volkswagen Group, the largest carmaker by worldwide sales in 2016 and 2017. Volkswagen, which also makes vehicles under the Audi, Skoda, Seat, and Porsche brands, is the world’s largest carmaker, delivering nearly 11 million vehicles in 2019. The group’s biggest market is in China, which delivers 40% of its sales and profits. The German term Volk translates to “people,” thus Volkswagen translates to “people’s car.”
Even though Volkswagen has been successfully marketing and selling its cars, the car company has already seen its reputation tarnished over the years. The carmaker has occasionally come under fire for insensitive marketing or remarks. In 2013, a Super Bowl ad was criticized as racially insensitive for featuring a white man speaking in a lilting Jamaican accent. In 2015, admitted to the cheating diesel emissions tests, and In 2019, the company’s chief executive apologized for using a phrase that echoed a Nazi-era slogan. The same year, Britain’s advertising watchdog banned a Volkswagen television ad under harmful gender stereotypes.
In 2020, Volkswagen was blamed for a “lack of sensitivity and procedural errors” for its failure to prevent the creation and publication of a racist video.
In the brief video, a dark-skinned man has pushed off a city street and onto a sidewalk by a giant white hand. Then another giant hand takes him by the head and pushes him toward a doorway before he is summarily flicked inside a cafe called “Petit Colon”, a name with colonial overtones. In the background, jaunty music plays, along with sound effects resembling a computer game. German television noted that the hand could be interpreted as making a “white power” gesture, while letters that appear on the screen afterward briefly spell out a racist slur in German. The 10-second ad by Volkswagen, to promote its new Golf 8 on Facebook and Instagram, set off a controversy as observers pointed to its racist symbolism. Volkswagen made a formal apology and updated its marketing protocols after backlash from a racist ad for its new Golf model. Moreover, they also created a council to investigate and ensure its marketing teams make better decisions in the future, but no one was fired.
Volkswagen’s latest failure illustrates that even in this era, brands are still not getting diversity and inclusion right in their marketing. Moreover, Volkswagen could have avoided this by learning and responding accordingly to their past mistakes, and the best way to prevent and respond is to approach it with empathy and understanding because it often signals a disconnect between content and audiences. Creating with this connection in mind should be a strategic principle and something that continues when a backlash occurs — guiding brands to understand why respond and improve.
