#161 VW’s 2020 Racist Blunder
“Wo gehobelt wird, da fliegen Späne” is an old German proverb that would roughly translate into the English “You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs”. Granted, coordinating and controlling activities across geographical and cultural distances in multinational companies that have tens or hundreds of thousands of employees globally, is not an easy task. A myriad of tasks has to completed and decisions are to be made every day. However, the blunder that German automotive giant Volkswagen (VW) committed in May 2020, can’t easily be forgotten, and certainly not forgiven. Volkswagen launched a promo video for its new edition of their popular Golf model that – rightfully so – sparked a public outcry over its racist content. Enhanced by fast-paced music and sound effects that resemble a video game, the ad shows an oversized, pale-skinned hand pushing and flicking a black man away from a shiny yellow, new Golf parked on a street. Some viewers have even recognized the hand as signaling a “white power” symbol. A café that is shown in the background is named “Petit Colon”, which could be interpreted as a reference to colonialism. And if things couldn’t be worse, as the words “Der Neue Golf” (“The new Golf”) fly across the screen, the first letters that appear form the word “Neger”, German for “negro”. Founded on orders by Adolf Hitler to build the “people’s car” and having employed forced laborers during the Third Reich, Volkswagen’s epic failure in oversight and sensitivity is particularly cruel and painful. While Volkswagen was quick to admit that the video was racist and insulting, and swiftly removed the video from its official Instagram account, the damage was already done. Twitter had picked it up, and media around the world such as Germany’s Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Die Zeit, Die Welt, the UK’s Guardian, and the US’s Washington Post – all highly respected media outlets – reported on it. The company’s efforts to portray the racist tones as unintentional, didn’t seem credible to many. The production of a promo video for a multinational company requires significant effort and layers of approval that make it unlikely that this was all just a minor mistake. Particularly in markets that are highly sensitive to racism and inequities, Volkswagen’s brand will have suffered.
June 29, 2020 @ 9:29 pm
As soon as I heard about the severe scandal of Volkswagen’s promotion video this year, I went on YouTube to watch this commercial on my own. I totally agree with you that the concern made a mistake that will never fall into oblivion. Despite the fact that racism is a thing that is treated differently from country to country (as we can see the behaviour of police officers towards dark-skinned people in the U.S. at the moment), companies definitely have to avoid any kind of racism behaviour or statements in their daily business. As you mentioned in your blog, the concern will suffer prevailing in cultures with a high sensitivity towards racism (e.g. United Kingdom, Latin America).
June 29, 2020 @ 10:50 pm
Astonishment and consternation at the same time. These were probably the first thoughts that went through my mind after reading this blog and watching the video. That all these small details are just coincidence, I hardly dare to doubt. The marketing department of VW had to know about all these small racist details in the TV spot. Racism concerns us all. It’s not just a question of whether this VW advertisement was just a faux pas or a lot of little blunders that accumulated on the way to this reprehensible commercial. It is about taking preventive and consistent action against this type of subliminal advertising and nipping any similar advertisements in the bud. No one has the right to place himself above others. Equal rights, equal opportunities and acceptance should also have reached these large corporations like VW, which should actually be a role model. Discrimination has no place in today’s society and VW should also consider this and take itself to court, because this kind of advertising to attract attention – at the lowest possible price, still seems to be an effective way to get attention. Such advertisements should definitely be penalized, so that something like this never happens again in the future.
June 30, 2020 @ 9:05 pm
And once again VW, you could think that the Wolfsburger company has had enough of scandals in the last years, I recall the diesel scandal… But this is not so, they successfully maneuver themselves into another scandal. Interestingly enough, the topics always fit exactly to the ones that move the world.
People are going out on the streets to protest because the world is on fire and we humans are using more resources than we have and one of the biggest car brands is coming around the corner with an environmental scandal. In the midst of the Black Live Matters riots, VW advertises the new Golf with a racist ad.
I don’t believe that this happened out of carelessness. You could almost believe that the company has changed its strategy and has taken an example from many celebrities who think that publicity is publicity no matter what kind.
July 4, 2020 @ 1:20 am
In my opinion, brands should be very careful in choosing the messages they broadcast, especially when it comes to critical social issues.
In the history of every society there are special painful wounds, contradictory, tragic moments that remain unresolved.There shouldn’t be any links to them in commercials because it raises the memory of generations and causes a wave of indignation in this society.
However, in other countries where people are not sensitive to this topic, this advertising could be perceived calmly.
I am sure that lack of understanding and such a reckless advertising campaign have brought a lot of damage to the image of VW.
July 23, 2020 @ 4:46 pm
First thing first, I’m totally confused about what this promo video that Volkswagen wanted the audiences to perceive. As a Taiwanese, I might not understand the humor or implication behind this ad, but I still felt uncomfortable after watching this commercial. It’s like a straight-forward insult to a black community. I understand that companies often adopt different approaches to promote their goods and services in different regions and countries. And sometimes these commercial would cause a huge backfire that damage brand image. I got one example which is quite similar to this one. There is a toothpaste brand named Darlie (Darkie before renamed) which is black people toothpaste in Chinese, and partially owned by Colgate-Palmolive Co. since 1980. Even worse, the brand logo is a white comedian who dressed his face in black. Until now, Colgate finally consider to rebranding it due to the BLM protest. But the damage was already done. Therefore, I believe that global companies not only need to do a thorough research to prevent these kinds of deadly mistakes while promoting in specific regions, but also have to develop a universal strategy that could match the society’s overall standard, especially in “the internet era”.
January 31, 2021 @ 10:17 pm
All internal control bodies must have failed, when the world’s largest carmaker’s communications department posted this new commercial on the Golf 8 on Instagram. The video appears to be racist; at least it is not clear to me which (other) message Volkswagen wanted to convey. Not surprisingly Volkswagen’s add triggered sharp criticism in the media around the world. We live in a connected world; nowadays, news spread like wildfire on social media. This incident further damaged the company’s reputation, which was already tarnished by the recent diesel emissions scandal.
After this marketing disaster, Volkswagen announced that it would set up a new board of diversity experts to review marketing campaigns for sensitive issues. This is a step in the right direction, but should have been taken long before. Volkswagen is, however, not the only company to have made such a faux pas. Every large company should have an ethics council to thoroughly review and sign off on marketing campaigns and press releases. Companies need to be culturally, politically and ethically sensitive in all markets in which they operate, since consumers care about a company’s values. Ethical behavior, diversity and inclusion should therefore be part of a company’s (global) business strategy.
February 18, 2021 @ 1:23 pm
This is a good example for what can happen with a good product could happen if not all factors are well addressed in the internationalization process. In my opinion VW’s products and services are in general well prepared for internationalization, they show a good product readiness, are adapted to the targeted markets (even it cannot be seen on the first view) and so on. I’m pretty sure that VW apply a very structured approach for internationalization. However, in this case they failed to integrate also the marketing into the process. There’s a lot of room for maneuver in advertising, of course, so this spot can also be understood to mean that the new golf will take you exactly where you want to go. Nevertheless, it is unreasonable for a white hand to chaff a colored person. The spot would look completely different if this hand was not here and the car pushed a person (of whatever skin color) into the restaurant. The appearance of the word “Neger” should also have been noticed and prevented, even if it was possibly really just a mishap. I believe that VW learned from this and will hopefully not make such mistakes in the future.
June 19, 2021 @ 9:34 am
After watching this promotional video of Volkswagen, I am still not sure what other message they wanted to communicate. This video was a mistake of VW and shouldn’t have been published. The company has to be more careful about its promotion, especially after the diesel scandal, which damaged VW’s reputation a lot. The marketing team of VW should have been suspicious while creating this video because this was maybe not produced by only one person in one day. In my opinion, lots of people in the marketing department had worked on it and someone should have noticed something. I hope VW sees this mistake as an opportunity to learn something for the future.
July 5, 2021 @ 7:29 pm
I was pretty shocked about this ad. How can a whole marketing team approve this and think it’s okay to post? Who thought that it would be a good idea to let the letters in the end appear in that particular order? Even if you watch the ad for the first time, without any notice about what to look for in the end, you can clearly spot the n-word. VW portraying it as unintentional therefore doesn’t work for me. I personally cannot even think about what other meaning/message they wanted to portray. What should the message of this ad be?
The company should be a lot more careful about potential scandals and especially hidden racist messages in their ads because of their past scandals and their connection to Hitler. Something like this simply cannot happen. Especially since the BLM movement also started around the time when this ad got published.
December 2, 2021 @ 7:11 pm
It is amazing that marketers thought that this would be a good idea for a promotional video. It is unclear what message they were trying to communicate. There are so many images in this ad that make it unable to be accidental. From the petite colon signaling colonialism to the n-word being visible, the entire ad is inappropriate. Any way you think about it, it just seems tone deaf. Using a black man and a white hand moving them away from the car just comes off racist implying that he would mess up the car by being near it. It is not clear to me what other message Volkswagen was trying to communicate after watching the video. Brands need to be careful when commenting on social issues. At the time that this video was released, America was going through a tough time. There were many protests going on for BLM. It may come across different in Germany, but to Americans and many other countries where the rights of black people still are lacking, this comes across very negatively. It makes it seem as though Volkswagen sees black lives as a joke. Volkswagen need to become more culturally aware and sensitive to the markets in which it does business. Cultural awareness, ethics, and understanding politics of a country should be included in the companies global business strategies going forward.
January 22, 2022 @ 6:27 pm
I think we can agree that the racist aspects of this commercial/ promo video were not a coincidence. Most companies would have put their promo video through focus groups in order to get an idea of how the video will be perceived by the public. I cannot imagine that VW did this because there were multiple red flags that clearly would have been caught. Additionally, a company with as dark of history as VW should have a team of people whose job is to specifically screen marketing campaigns for racism and antisemitism. If VW really did intentionally add these racist aspects to their promo video then I cannot imagine why. The video clearly did not go over well and hurt their brand reputation, one that has already been tarnished over the years.
February 4, 2022 @ 8:04 am
As soon as I finished reading this blog, I immediately went on YouTube to check out the video. Upon viewing the video, I can see why the video had so much backlash right away and why it was labeled racist. From a marketing perspective I’m not sure who they are trying to target with this ad. It has no purpose ad the humor that it is supposed to have doesn’t make it any better especially with all the racism that is shown. I’m curious to see why this was caught. I assume creating commercials like this is created collaboratively and multiple people would have seen it. This is why I think this was done on purpose. Upper Management who approved this ad must also be racist if they never saw anything bad with it. The ad has no other purpose than to be racist. If it were a Caucasian male and the letters of the didn’t show up this would still be an awful ad that was a waste of money. This is hard to see because an Iconic image of Golf should’ve been better taken care of as it is one of the more popular cars in their lineup. Admitting doesn’t help fix what they did. I am curious to see if anyone got fire and how many people got fire. This could be great opportunity for VW to bring in a new and more inclusive team with fresher ideas that will also have more checks and balances on what ads get released to the public.
March 12, 2022 @ 1:47 pm
Incredible and disastrous! I still cannot understand how one of the biggest OEM’s produces such a fail. Considering that usually in large corporations such productions are outsourced, the marketing responsible releasing such a suggestive spot after having seen this for the first time need to be questioned. In combination with German history and the general sensitivity on racism this must have never been happening. Still, it shows that in our globalized business environment, certain strategies fail. Especially global marketing is a topic that needs to be carefully conducted as different views, opinions and also expressions in various markets. But the automotive industry created several blunders in its history. No matter if it was Ford, Fiat, Volvo or the VW case, it clearly shows that with increasing pace and digitalization, the thin line for appropriateness when reaching out to your customers – or in the broader context – the society needs to be well planned and wisely executed. The increasing outsourcing tendencies in all industries is another risk factor that needs to be considered. Let’s hope it takes some time for the next outrage.
March 26, 2022 @ 8:29 pm
I still remember when the story came into news and the video is clearly shocking. As others on this blog, I cannot think that it really happened unintendedly, as there are too many control bodies involved and approval steps required in such large corporations. So the big question that stays is, what was their goal? Unfortunately, scandalous advertisment are not totally new, as some companies still believe, that even negative talk about their company is still free advertisment. But while I understand that this might work out for some tabu topics, I cannot imagine it also works for such an awful violation of civility, and eventually even law.
I tried to find out when exactly the video was published, and if there is any visible reaction on the stock market. While I could not pinpoint the exact date, the VW stock clearly rose during that time around mid of May 2020, until beginning of June, so there was no immediate visible impact.
And I think this leads to the conclusion, of why such incidents still happen: There are no real consequences, neither direct nor indirect financial impact as it seems. I also could not find anything that fines are to be paid for showing clearly racist behaviour.
April 28, 2022 @ 7:48 pm
When I was reading the above blog post, literally the first thing that came to my mind was “how can that happen?”. I was wondering whether somebody released such a promo video knowing of its racist content or if it was a (very daft) misjudgment of different cultures and humors? Pondering about different scenarios I narrowed it down to two possible scenarios:
• Someone intended to create a racist promo video and got through with it
• Someone intended to create a funny promo video and badly misjudged the difference between racism and humor
In any case I believe that there should be processes and guidelines in place, to prevent the production and release of such a video. A misdirected sense of humor of a few should not stay unchallenged by a marketing/PR team. Furthermore, any team that signs off the release of such a video should be divers enough to identify inappropriate content. Even if the video was created in malicious intent, the same processes and diversity guidelines should detect and prevent such things from happening. In short, I believe that from an organizational/strategic point of view, Volkswagen might not have had the right processes in place to prevent the release.
July 4, 2022 @ 9:21 pm
This is a prove that actions speak louder than words. In my opinion, this is again a failed attempt to use a funny trend as supposedly good advertising idea in order to score among people. Indeed, due to the way this video was filmed, this failed miserably. Is that a coincidence? I hope so. But as a matter of fact, I understand that there is talk of intention in this case. But how can something like this happen at a giant company like VW? You really have to take such a video planning seriously and consider all possible reactions in advance. Racism has no place in this world, neither in real life nor online.
July 4, 2022 @ 9:24 pm
This is a proof that actions speak louder than words. In my opinion, this is again a failed attempt to use a funny trend as supposedly good advertising idea in order to score among people. Indeed, due to the way this video was filmed, this failed miserably. Is that a coincidence? I hope so. But as a matter of fact, I understand that there is talk of intention in this case. But how can something like this happen at a giant company like VW? You really have to take such a video planning seriously and consider all possible reactions in advance. Racism has no place in this world, neither in real life nor online.