Audi’s Green Police. Didn’t They say Hitler?

Januar 30th, 2010 • Ads, Brands

Let’s start an intellectual experiment.

Think about e.g. an ex-spouse in your life and now think about any object in your appartment. Can you associate it with him or her somehow? You probably can. Take the old vase in your living room and you will probably find a connection to your ex who loved flowers so much. Most likely you will be able to link the TV set to her preferences for ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ and so on…But why should you do that? Especially since you will be able to link pretty much anything to pretty much anything after thinking about it for a while. Plus, simply put, while you actually might not want to think about your ex-spouse anymore at all?

Well, that’s what self-proclaimed guardians of Political Correctness do on the web 24/7. They love to think about all kinds of connections because there is not one thing which makes them as happy as making up a good old PR disaster.

One information in advance: I am German and I work for a digital agency with Audi International on the client list (not PR, not Audi USA). This is just accidental and not the rationale behind this article. I am professionally not at all engaged in any Audi project even though I like the cars. I simply react on this article by Danny Brown, entitled “Audi and the Super Bowl Social Media Shit Storm“.  This is the story: In an attempt to spearhead a social media intiative, Audi USA (keep that in mind, it is important) had invented the so-called ‘Green Police’. It comes with a Super-Bowl ad, a Youtube channel and the inevitable twitter account. This is the more or less entertaining ad:

Did you realize it? No? Audi has just committed a major act of Political Incorrectness, according to Danny.

I quote:

The problem is, there’s already been a Green Police enforcement organization, but not one that you’d want to be associated with. This Green Police was part of the Nazi persecution and execution of millions of Jews in the Holocaust of the Second World War.

The implications of Audi’s choice of name for their campaign could be huge, especially since Audi is a German company. The first question is obvious – didn’t anyone at Audi’s PR or advertising arm/agency do any research?

Apart from the fact that it is highly offensive to remind Audi America (!) of its special responsibilities as a German car manufacturer. Apart from the fact that Danny (and others) try to redefine an insignificant creative core idea into a major Nazi PR drama (remember, they are German!!!!) – he/they are incidentally also not very well informed. Danny pretends that Audi’s ‘Green Police’ was more or less accidentally named after one of the key institutions of Nazi Germany. That is not the case. ‘The Green Police’ was the common name of Germany’s regular Police Force from 1936-1945. As pretty much every public institution during this terrible era it was part of the Nazi system. It took part in the ousting and persecution of Jews, Gypsies and many others. But it is incomparable to Gestapo, SD or SS.

My point is – pretty much every public service in Germany at that time played its role in the horrible industrial mass murder of the 1940s. The University of Mannheim (where I studied) expelled Jewish students and professors, as any other University at that time. The German Train Service supported the mass killings ‘logistically’. And German banks made a great profit of it (as many foreign banks as well). In short – if you strive to connect a label, campaign, name to anything which existed in Germany’s public life between 1933 and 1945, you have a Nazi PR disaster.

But please, let’s ask a couple of questions, Danny:

• Would you have been as excited about your ‘Green Police’ finding if this was a KIA campaign? If no, why not?
• How many Toyota initiatives did you check concerning their Political correctness quota? Are you sure, you cannot associate the headline of Toyota’s last campaign to a prison camp in Korea in 1944?
• Are you sure you cannot relate the last Kraft campaign to the  Bravo shot? To My Lai?  To Operation Rolling Thunder?

No you can’t.

And this is why your claims are irrelevant. Audi did not call its initiative ‘The Green SS’. They did not use the headline ‘Arbeit macht Frei‘. And they did not ask for a ‘Blitzkrieg in Car Sales’. They simply used a term which accidentally described the ordinary police force during Hitler’s reign – a term which is not even well known in Germany. Yes, those people were part of the system. No, they were not the primary tool to commit mass murder. And yes, Audi should have checked it (a simple google search would have done the job). But nevertheless it slipped through and made it on TV. But why?

Simply because it’s irrelevant. One of the things about the social web that keep on driving me insane is that anyone with the slightest touch of a negative association to a topic can make a big fuzz about it. From Motrin Moms to the Green Police the web seems to populated by self-proclaimed guardians of what is right and wrong. All too often they are historically as misinformed as the unlucky copywriter or PR guy who initiated or signed-off a campaign (well, it’s 70 years later). But they are loud. And they are biased. Plus, nothing works better to initiate a PR ‘shitstorm’ than a good old Nazi analogy. Reminiscences to the mass killings in Rwanda don’t work that well. Because who can attach the name of Rwanda’s terror police in the 1990′s to the current Best Buy ad? And who cares? Right, nobody.

According to Godwin’s Law the likeliness of an ongoing online discussion to contain a Nazi or Hitler analogy is 1. The cynical outrage as rationale behind these types of ‘shitstorms’ does also only work if you attach well known stereotypes. German car manufacturer, Nazi Germany, here we go. It’s not about common sense. It’s about a story. No matter how farfetched the analogy is, no matter how weak the arguments – there is a very cynical calculus behind these types of claims. A calculus which has a lot to do with personal branding in the social web.

And yes, that is disgusting.

Let’s try something. Let’s attach totalitarian labels to any campaign you can think of. Comment on this article and I bet I will find a connection of the latest Miracle Whip campaign to Khmer Rouge massacres of the 1970s. Or does it only work with German car manufacturers (and their U.S. subsidiaries) and Nazi Germany? I am eager to find out.

Tags: Ads, Audi, Brands, Fail, Germany, Ideas, Philosophy, PR, Social Influence Marketing, Strategy

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