Design: Mascot Madness: VW Pulls a Rabbit Out of Its Past August 20, 2006
The Rabbit is back. Numbers and letters are cold, efficient serious and grown-up; these name tricks are for kids.
THE school buses that my daughter rode to kindergarten were cleverly marked for the preliterate. Each bus?s windshield bore the image of an animal ? red dog, blue fish, green rabbit ? so each child at the bus stop would take the right route. These were automotive mascots at their most basic, symbolism easy enough for a child.
Early on, automakers seized on symbolism to distinguish their vehicles, borrowing names from noble explorers, tribal chieftains or heraldic animals. But the days of the Stutz Bearcat and Hupp Skylark have passed; nowadays names tend to be generated by computers or consultants ? when there are names at all, and not just cold, efficient numbers and letters.
So it came as a shock when Volkswagen announced in April that it was bringing back the Rabbit. Journalists at the New York auto show thought the press release might be a late April?s Fool joke; it came from Kerri Martin, VW?s director of brand innovation, who had earlier worked at Mini, a company famous for its April 1 pranks.
VW?s customers, she declared, prefer names like Beetle, Fox and Thing because ?they like a connection to their cars.? But there is another reason for the rabbit redux: attracting younger customers. Numbers and letters are serious and grown-up; these name tricks are for kids.
The rabbit logo, worn from 1974 to 1984 by a car known outside North America as the Golf, returns mostly unchanged. Its contours are soft, even for a rabbit; the bunny seems practically boneless.
To those who recall the old Rabbit, the revival can seem ironic, like the Playboy bunny logo on fashions for teenage girls. Volkswagen even ran an ad for the Rabbit on Playboy?s back cover. A topless model, seen from behind, wears a tattoo of the VW mascot. The rabbit also shows up with the Playboy bunny on street posters in Los Angeles, along with a Chihuahua. (Taco Bell meets Hugh Hefner?)
There are local variations of these posters. In Miami, they show the rabbit with a mosquito and an alligator; in Boston with a clam and a lobster; and in New York with a pigeon and a rat ? a bit of urban wit.
?The Rabbit is back,? is the slogan, although VW executives have said they think their target customers will be unaware of the original. Does this group also believe that ?Miami Vice? and ?Starsky and Hutch? are fresh, brilliant works of auteur cinema?
A rabbit, as in ?running like a scared …,? is hardly a totem of speed, power or control. But this bunny is the cutesy alter-ego of one of the strangest mascots ever invented: ?the Fast,? created for VW by the Crispin Porter & Bogusky advertising agency. Barely recognizable as un lapin, the intense creature is the centerpiece of ads for the GTI, a sporty version of the Golf/Rabbit. ?Get in touch with your Fast,? is the slogan, implying that everyone has a mischievous, speedy id inside.
The Fast is to the Rabbit as Big Daddy Roth?s Rat Fink is to Mickey Mouse. Another of the Fast?s spiritual forebears was the gremlin on the gasoline cap of American Motors? legendarily ugly 1970?s compact of the same name. That gremlin resembled nothing so much as a demented elf.
Volkswagen handed out 10-inch plastic renditions of the Fast character. Even before the ads began to appear or the toys to be distributed, the company declared that the Fast dolls were selling on eBay for hundreds of dollars. The statement was dutifully repeated in the business press. But VW fans in forums and blogs expressed suspicion at how slickly written the eBay ads were and how promptly they appeared. Was this grass-roots viral marketing, or was it astroturfing, to use the new term for generating artificial impressions of enthusiasm?
The rabbit is not the only mascot making a return. Dodge is bringing back its 1970?s Super Bee character on a special edition of the Charger. The huge yellow bee recalls the days of muscle-car mascot madness in the late 1960?s and early 70?s, when designing-by-decal produced models like the Plymouth Road Runner, the Plymouth Duster and the Dodge Demon.
Bearing the Looney Tunes cartoon character, the 1968 Road Runner was based on the Plymouth Satellite. The Road Runner appeared on fender decals and on the steering wheel hub which, when pushed, sounded a beep-beep tone.
While the Road Runner was licensed from Warner Brothers, Chrysler eventually figured it could invent its own characters. The air cleaners of some Road Runners were decorated with the words ?Coyote Duster,? and the Duster image ? a swirling tornado (or dust devil) made its way onto a Plymouth of the same name. The Dodge Demon?s mascot was a red devil toting a pitchfork.
Sometimes the Mopar mascotology became confused: there was a Duster Twister model, for instance. The Superbird, with its vast rear wing, had the Road Runner holding a racing helmet.
- Posted in : Uncategorized, VW
- Author : arnold
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