VW and Johannes Leonardo Pivot From Crisis Mode to a More Humorous Tone

When creative agency Johannes Leonardo took over the creative ad reins for Volkswagen in the U.S. in 2019, the automaker was a brand in crisis. The agency had to adopt a fairly serious tone to deal with the fallout from VW’s emissions scandal, and the efforts worked, shifting the public image of the company to one of forward-thinking engineering in its electric efforts and one of nostalgia as it said goodbye to its iconic Beetle brand.