He revolutionized "soft-sell" advertising with the use of suggestion or gentle persuasion rather than what could be called aggressive "hard-sell" pressure often used in sales promotions (The Ad Men and Women, 1994). With campaigns for Volkswagen, Avis, Polaroid, Levy’s rye bread, American Airlines, Columbian Coffee, as well as Ohrbach’s, Bernbach and his agency utilized humor and warmth. The most famous example of Bernbach’s creativity was the Volkswagen ad in which a Beetle was positioned on a wide blank space with the headline: "Think Small." Another famous campaign was an Avis promotion countering no. 1 Hertz: "When you’re Only No. 2, You Try Harder." DDB saturated the media with this slogan, and within two years, the distant second-place car rental firm’s market share increased 28 percent (The Ad Men and women, 1994).

Bernbach preferred photographic images due to their "flexibility, their versatility, their realism, their special effects" (The Ad Men and Women, 1994). His ad elements all worked together. The type Bernbach chose for his ad was not merely for maximum readability. "It was designed to control the eye, and its boldness - or lack of it - was carefully chosen to steer one’s attention to the proper emphasis" (The Ad and Women, 1994). Bernbach’s other innovation was a dark shadow: the necessary "accompaniment to what is known in photography as high-key lighting" (The Ad Men and Women, 1994). This technique arranges a powerful light source to emphasize one side of a subject and lets the opposite side shed into shadow. To see Bernbach's ads, move your mouse onto each logo.

"There might not have been a Doyle Dane Bernbach had it not been for the Ohrbach’s business. At least not in its current form" (Levonson, 1987). Mr. Ohrbach firmly suggested that Bernbach start his own agency with Ohrbach’s as its first client. Ohrbach even accepted to pay for all the work beforehand, which helped Doyle and Dane and Bernbach pay their initial bills.

With Bernbach's magic touch, Ohrbach’s was changed from an unfashionable store in an unfashionable part of town to a "high fashion at low prices" boutique that attracted the attention of such people as the Rockefellers and drew "high fashion" coverage from Life magazine (Levenson, 1987).

"Bernbach always insisted that the best way to get new business was to do a brilliant job for the clients you already had" (Levenson, 1987).

The phone rang and the caller was Whitey Ruben, a man who had just taken over the mainly bankrupt Levy’s Bakery. In less than a year, insolvency stopped and Levy’s advertising could correctly demand, "New York is eating it up." It was the right advertising at the time because it was the truth and people knew it" (Levenson, 1987).

"Volkswagen advertising is unique in the history of automobile advertising, if not all advertising. Its tone, style, wit, irreverence have been imitated, mimicked, swiped, copied, misunderstood, and admired more than any campaign before or since" (Levenson, 1987).

Bernbach's approach to the Volkswagen car centered on what it actually was: "honest, simple, reliable, sensible, and different" (Levenson, 1987). And he wanted the advertising to be that same way too. The pressures to do "mainstream" car advertising were strong enough to be considerable; however, Bernbach’s opposition was greater. "The product. The product. Stay with the product." Here, Bernbach’s simple creative strategy was obtained by advantageous distinctive characteristics of product.

"VW’s 'Think Small' ad challenged our acquisitive tendencies even as the 'ugly' Beetle became the first successful import car and the ad campaign altered advertising for all time" (Advertising Age).

According to David Ogilvy (1985), "Bill Bernbach and his merry men positioned Volkswagen as a protest against the vulgarity of Detroit cars in those days, thereby making the Beetle a cult among those Americans who eschew conspicuous consumption".

As a result, the philosophy of Beetle manufacturing and advertising unified into one. "Volkswagen spoke with one voice throughout the world, and people everywhere recognized that voice" (Levenson, 1987).

Volkswagen would remain one of Doyle Dane’s most venerable clients until 1993 when the account was moved to a boutique agency created by Doyle Dane, which had then been merged with Needham Harper Worldwide to form DDB Needham. Needham spun off a small agency called Berlin Cameron Doyle, with $80 million in annual billings, headed by its former New York President, Andy Berlin, to service the account. But the tiny agency would lose the account within sixteen months to be replaced by Arnold Fortuna Lawner and Cabot, a midsize Boston agency. Its well-received slogan, "Drivers Wanted," would recall the whimsical approach of Doyle Dane (Goldman, 1997).

"People sometimes refer to the Avis advertising as the 'We’re only No. 2' campaign - a serious misunderstanding of how people work and why the Avis campaign worked. 'We’re only No.' and that’s why 'We try harder' is more like it" (Levenson, 1987).

Glatzer (1970) emphasized significant influence of DDB on advertising industry, "It would be hard to deny that Doyle Dane Bernbach is the best advertising agency in the United States. It created the advertising for Volkswagen, Polaroid, Avis Rent A Car, the Jamaica Tourist Office, Ohrbach’s department stores, Colombian Coffee (Juan Valdez), Sony television, and many other famous campaigns. Its standard of work is consistently higher than that of any other agency, large or small, and its work has been the greatest single influence on advertising in this country since World War II".

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