Volkswagen retires Das Auto and lets the brand name stand alone

A claim retired in favour of the brand name alone

On 7 January 2016 the German design publication Design Tagebuch confirmed that Volkswagen would stop using the claim Das Auto as part of its visual identity and brand communication.¹ The phrase had been introduced in 2007 under the then Volkswagen brand marketing chief Jochen Sengpiehl and had appeared on nearly a decade of brand-led advertising, dealership signage, vehicle press materials and corporate communication.¹ The replacement was not a new claim. Volkswagen decided that the brand name alone would carry the identity going forward, set in the corporate typeface VW Head Bold that the brand had adopted in spring 2015 as part of the 360 Degree Brand Experience programme.^{1, 2} The transition was rolled out progressively, starting with the Allstar special-edition campaign at the end of 2015.¹

The decision came at the start of one of the most difficult years in the brand's post-war history. The United States Department of Justice had filed civil action against Volkswagen on 4 January 2016 over the diesel emissions matter that had become public on 18 September 2015.^{3, 4, 5} The financial cost of the matter was still being assessed at the time of the claim retirement, and the realignment of the Volkswagen brand was being driven by new Volkswagen brand chief Herbert Diess.^{1, 5, 6} The retirement of Das Auto was reported as part of a twelve-point concept developed by Diess to guide the brand through the period.¹

The history of the claim

Das Auto was the second consecutive claim in a sequence that the brand had introduced after the long Drivers Wanted era of Volkswagen of America. The first claim in the sequence, Aus Liebe zum Automobil, had been used in German-language and central European markets from 2003 to 2007.¹ Sengpiehl developed Das Auto as a replacement that would carry the brand internationally rather than only in German-speaking markets. The claim was applied to the entire passenger car range from 2007 onward, and it was used in print, broadcast, outdoor and dealer communications across more than 150 markets. It also became one of the most recognisable two-word claims in the European automotive landscape, partly because the German construction was retained even in English-language and Asian-language territories.

The phrase carried a categorical ambition. The use of the definite article in front of the generic German word for car produced a possessive reading that effectively positioned Volkswagen as the reference standard for the entire automotive category. Design Tagebuch author Achim Schaffrinna noted in the 7 January 2016 commentary that the claim had functioned more as an ownership statement than as a differentiator from the start, and that, in the context of the September 2015 disclosure, the categorical ambition had become difficult to sustain.¹

The Volkswagen rationale

The brand published a short statement to accompany the transition. The Volkswagen statement said that the marque stood for products and services that moved people, on the road and beyond, that the total offer was what earned the trust of millions of customers, and that this trust, expressed in difficult times as much as in good times, was what made Volkswagen the original people's brand around the world.¹ All of this, the statement closed, was expressed in a single word, Volkswagen.¹ The construction was deliberate. The retirement of the claim was not framed as a withdrawal but as a concentration. The brand argued that no additional phrase was required because the brand name itself contained the proposition.

The 360 Degree Brand Experience programme that had been introduced earlier in 2015 had already established the visual and typographic foundation for the change.² VW Head Bold, the corporate typeface, had been designed to carry the brand name as a singular display element without the need for an accompanying claim lockup. The typography programme was therefore prepared for the transition, and the brand only had to remove a layout element rather than redesign the identity system.

The strategic logic of the retirement

Brand claims are normally treated as defensive assets. They support recognition, they shape sonic identity through repeated voiceover, they create category territory in the mind of the consumer, and they are difficult to relinquish once they have entered the public consciousness. The decision to retire Das Auto without replacement was therefore unusual within the European automotive landscape. Design Tagebuch noted that the retirement itself was a message in line with the Watzlawick observation that one cannot not communicate.¹ The brand acknowledged through the absence of a claim that the previous claim had become a liability.

The claim had also begun to read as overreach. The categorical ownership signalled by Das Auto presupposed a position of unquestioned authority within the category. The 2015 disclosure of the type-approval irregularities on diesel engines across the Volkswagen Group product line had made that position untenable.¹ A new claim, introduced into the same context, would have required the brand to advance another category statement at exactly the moment the audience was least willing to accept one. Volkswagen, the brand argued, would instead concentrate on rebuilding trust through product and service, and the absence of a claim would itself signal restraint.^{1, 7}

The transition pattern

The transition was staged. The Allstar special-edition campaign at the end of 2015 carried the new logo lockup without the claim and tested the absence of Das Auto in front of dealer and consumer audiences.¹ The corporate website at volkswagen.de retained the older lockup with the claim through the first months of 2016 while regional roll-out plans were synchronised.¹ Dealership signage was updated according to the existing replacement cycle. Vehicle press materials and product fact sheets moved to the new lockup with the January 2016 model year refresh. The full transition was completed during the second half of 2016. The brand has not re-introduced a claim of equivalent prominence in the years since, and the brand name alone has remained the lead identity asset across all subsequent Volkswagen-led campaigns, including the post-2019 flat-logo refresh and the more recent series of European spots produced through DDB Berlin and BBDO Paris.⁸