The Wolfsburg car maker VW spends millions on advertising.
But the marketing professionals always fail.
Now the group has made a faux pas in the USA.
Munich - At the Wolfsburg-based car manufacturer Volkswagen, they value diversity and equal opportunities for everyone.
It is said on the company's website in the most beautiful PR parlance, “for tolerance, openness and solidarity” with one another.
"Xenophobia, hatred, exclusion and persecution have no place in our joint company."
But when it comes to its own advertising, the largest European carmaker lags behind its own claims.
Only last May the Wolfsburg-based company caused a mega-disaster with a mini-video for the Golf 8 * launch.
In the clip, which first ran on the Twitter channel of VW * sales director Jürgen Stackmann, a huge, white hand flicks a black man through the picture in front of a bar called Petit Colon.
The post was also commented on: "Now if that's not Magic, what is?" - "If that's not magic, what then?"
VW: Promotional video causes horror - "Racist"
The tasteless video caused sheer horror on the web.
The petit colon clip was "racist", users complained a thousand times.
At VW, they wanted to put an end to the approaching protest storm through a simple deletion.
But it went completely wrong.
Hardly two weeks later, the video reappeared, this time on Instagram and the criticism swelled to a worldwide shit storm.
VW: New advertising faux pas in the USA
Now the group has made the next faux pas.
In the USA, the Wolfsburg-based company is promoting its new Stromer ID.3 on the controversial US portal Breitbart.
The right website has repeatedly attracted attention through the spread of conspiracy ideologues, public opinion and false reports.
In 2016, for example, the portal sowed doubts about climate change with manipulated data.
Trump had brought the long-standing and controversial Breitbart editor-in-chief Steve Bannon during his tenure as an advisor to the White House and pardoned him shortly before the end of his presidency.
The Swiss media planner Michael Maurantonio initially reported on the VW advertising on the Hass portal.
The German media expert Thomas Koch had taken up the hint.
VW advertise on Breitbart and thus finance right-wing radicalism.
"Shame on you," wrote Koch on Twitter and asked the company for a statement at the beginning of the week.
According to Koch, nothing has happened to this day.
VW: Group distances itself from advertising
Compared to Merkur.de, the group distanced itself from advertising on Breitbart.
One regrets the playout.
“It is extremely important to us that no advertisements are placed in extremist, discriminatory or human dignity publications,” assured a company spokeswoman on Thursday afternoon.
Volkswagen keeps a list of publications on which advertisements are not allowed to be displayed.
Breitbart is also on this list.
It is currently being clarified how this playout could come about against the “clear guidelines”, it said.
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