Volkswagen's emissions scandal and environmental marketing crisis

¶ … Volkswagen currently faces the most serious public image and marketing crisis of its lifetime. Considering that this is an automobile corporation that began its existence with the warm personal endorsement of Adolf Hitler, the bar was needless to say already extremely high in terms of serious public image problems in Volkswagen's case. A quick review of the facts may be necessary here. Volkswagen Group is a German-based multinational automotive manufacturer: in 2012, Volkswagen was the second-largest manufacturer of automobiles worldwide, just behind Toyota but ahead of General Motors, and it has consistently maintained the highest market share in Europe for over two decades.

However in September 2015, Volkswagen became embroiled in what is arguably the most high-profile automobile manufacturing scandal since the Ford Pinto was declared "unsafe at any speed." In mid-September, the EPA, or Environmental Protective Agency, of the United States accused Volkswagen of having deliberately violated the Clean Air Act. From 2009 to 2015, Volkswagen had -- in select makes of vehicles -- deliberately designed the vehicle's emissions system so that certain environmentally toxic (and regulated) chemicals would only be filtered during the vehicle's mandatory governmental emissions test, but not while driving on the road. In other words, Volkswagen had engaged in a deliberate conspiracy to pollute the air we breathe.

Even though this particular design component affects only a small number of the company's overall vehicles -- the emissions systems in question were only on Diesel-powered vehicles, which the vast majority of American consumer automobiles aren't -- in terms of consumer product recall the numbers are staggering. Volkswagen's bad emissions programming was installed on about half a million vehicles in the United States between 2009 and 2015, and was on about eleven million vehicles worldwide.

From a marketing standpoint, the problem should be self-evident. The younger the consumer demographic is, the more sensitive the consumer is to environmental issues and concerns. The fact that Volkswagen was engaged in something so deliberately subversive of environmentally responsible business practices makes this conceivably a marketing and brand image crisis comparable (ethically if not in terms of actual damage done) to that of Exxon-Mobil after the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. Volkswagen's biggest problem, then, is not merely the idea of a widespread consumer recall and corporate malfeasance scandal -- it is the subject of that recall and malfeasance, which suggests environmental irresponsibility. Considering that the chief audience for Volkswagen's cars in the United States is young people -- where the Volkswagen's signature Beetle design in the 1960s was practically a signifier of that decade's youth counterculture -- the substance of Volkswagen's image problem actually has the potential to impact their sales and marketing in the worst possible way.