Way before “restaurants near me” and Google reviews, Michelin created their stars system for restaurants to sell more tires. Listen to a tale of very successful content marketing.

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Dave Young:
Stephen, last week we talked about DoorDash. And this week, on the notes, I see we’re going to talk about Michelin. Is this another food-related podcast? Are we talking about restaurants with Michelin stars, or are we talking about tires?

Stephen Semple:
You took away my punchline.

Dave Young:
Oh, no.

Stephen Semple:
Because I was going to ask, have you ever heard of the Michelin ranking for restaurants, and have you ever wondered if it was tied to the car company? Ding, ding, ding.

Dave Young:
Ding, ding.

Stephen Semple:
Dave kind of gets a gold star, but at the same time, kind of screwed-

Dave Young:
Oh, my first Michelin star.

Stephen Semple:
Your first Michelin star kind screwed up my opening. So for the people listening wondering whether we rehearse these openings, you now know we don’t.

Dave Young:
No, of course we don’t.

Stephen Semple:
But yes, we are going to talk about Michelin.

So first, a little bit about Michelin. Michelin’s an old company. Michelin was founded on May 28th, 1898.

Dave Young:
Holy cow.

Stephen Semple:
Yeah.

Dave Young:
1898, okay.

Stephen Semple:
1898, in Clermont-Ferrand, France, which is basically in the Alps. And it was founded by two brothers, Édouard and Andre Michelin.

Dave Young:
Okay.

Stephen Semple:
And today it is the largest tire manufacturer in the world. And as a bit of an interesting sidebar, the Michelin Man is one of the oldest trademarks in the world. That was trademarked back in 1894.

Dave Young:
Oh, wow.

Stephen Semple:
Yeah.

Dave Young:
Before the company?

Stephen Semple:
No, no, the company was 18, 18, oh, yes, yes. Sorry. Yes. Before they actually officially formed the company, they had been selling tires.

Dave Young:
They had the Michelin Man.

Stephen Semple:
Yeah.

Dave Young:
Okay.

Stephen Semple:
And the idea came when the brothers noticed a stock of tires that looked like a man, and they said, “Let’s create the Michelin Man.

Dave Young:
And back then, there were a lot of white tires; natural rubber was white.

Stephen Semple:
Yeah.

Dave Young:
So yeah.

Stephen Semple:
Which is the reason why-

Dave Young:
I can see how that happened.

Stephen Semple:
And a lot tires were white walls and things along that lines. But you know you’re doing well when you become part of pop culture. And one of my favorite things is I love the episode of when the Michelin Man was murdered by Chris Griffin in the Family Guy on behalf of Mr. Firestone. I just think that that’s, you know you’re big when that happens when you’re on the Family Guy, you know you’re big. And maybe in the future, we’ll do a whole thing on the evolution of the Michelin Man as a trademark and how it all came together.

But back to the Michelin restaurants. So it started in 1900. In 1900, Michelin was by far the largest tire maker in France, but they had a problem. There were only 3000 cars in all of France. So when you’re number one and the market is small, how do you grow your business?

Dave Young:
You’re going to have to get people to buy more cars, and you’re going to have to get people to want to go places.

Stephen Semple:
Bingo on the second one. It’s hard to get people to buy cars. So they thought, “If we can get people to go places, tires will wear out faster, and also it might create demand for cars.” But the whole idea was to get people to go places.

Dave Young:
This is so aligned with the old story of you don’t want to sell somebody a drill; what they need is a hole. Right?

Stephen Semple:
Right.

Dave Young:
Yeah. Okay. I’m sorry. I interrupted you, Stephen.

Stephen Semple:
Yeah, no.

Dave Young:
I’m excited about this.

Stephen Semple:
So what they did was they created this star system for restaurants. One star means it’s a good restaurant in its category. Two stars mean it’s worth a detour. Three stars mean it’s exceptional, and it’s worth a trip all on its own.

Dave Young:
It’s a destination.

Stephen Semple:
It’s a destination. And if we think back to the 1900s, there were not many maps. People did not travel places and didn’t know where to go. So Michelin created this guide that went, “Hey, if you were looking for a place to go, look up a three-star restaurant and drive there. If you’re going somewhere, here’s a detour you can do. If you’re just looking for something in your neighborhood, here’s what is.” So originally, it was three stars, and that’s where the three stars came from. One good restaurant in this category. Two stars, excellent, worth a detour. Three stars, exceptional, worth a special trip.

Dave Young:
I love this because they knew their audience, and they knew that people needed a reason to go somewhere.

Stephen Semple:
Right. Right. And as people get driving, they’re wearing out their tires.

Dave Young:
Yeah.

Stephen Semple:
And they’re going to sell more tires. And this is a strategy you can only use when you’re number one in the market because what they did is they grew the size of the market. Now, if you’re number three, you’re going to stay at number three, which means you’re giving business to everybody else. But when you’re the market leader, you can do a strategy like this. You can grow that market. And this proved so popular that a few years later in 1904, they published one for Belgium. So they started making tires there. And between 1907 and 1911, they greatly expanded the countries. And up until 1922, it was given away for free. And it was just really the only thing you saw, and it was promotions for Michelin.

One of the brothers went into a tire shop one day, and he saw his magazine being used to prop up a workbench, and he suddenly realized a man only respects what he pays for. So they started to charge 750 Francs, a little over two bucks, for the publication. Now at that time, what they also did is they pulled the ads, and they added new categories. They added hotels. And they actually started to employ a team of people to do the review. So in many ways, it started becoming a business of its own, the Michelin book. And in the early days, the Michelin man was on the cover. And I’ve got a great example in the show notes on the website of one with the Michelin Man smoking a big stogie.

Stephen Semple:
Different times, right?

Dave Young:
Different times, yeah.

Stephen Semple:
He was still fat then, too, fat with a big stogie. But of course, the publication was suspended during World War II because it had all sorts of maps in it.

Dave Young:
Oh, gosh, yeah.

Stephen Semple:
Right? So it was suspended in World War II, and then following the war, there were many food shortages throughout Europe. And so it was reduced to a two-star ranking because at that point, Michelin did not actually believe that it was possible to have a three-star restaurant. The guide took these rankings very, very seriously. And the part that I also found interesting, it wasn’t until 2005. So you think about 90 years later that it finally came to the United States, took a long time for it-

Dave Young:
Oh, I didn’t realize that.

Stephen Semple:
Yeah. It took a very, very long time to get to the US. And today you can advertise in the guide, and as I said, it’s very much become a business of its own. And, they very much hide who the reviewers are and take this whole Michelin star ranking very, very seriously. But this all started as a business to sell tires.

Dave Young:
And it’s still the same company?

Stephen Semple:
Still the same company.

Dave Young:
Still the same company. I mean, that’s great.

Stephen Semple:
Yeah. And they’ve returned to putting the Michelin Man actually on the cover. He’s back on the cover, I mean.

Dave Young:
Just the idea that you can get people, business owners in an entirely unrelated category, to covet the validation of your tire manufacturing company is just an amazing story in and of itself. And I think they created, even with that aspirational notion of restaurant owners, they’ve always been an aspirational brand in their category. I can remember when I was a kid that my dad had Cadillac. I mean, in a small town in North America, you had a Cadillac, man, you’re doing all right. But you know what he really liked about it? Had Michelin tires on it.

Stephen Semple:
Right.

Dave Young:
Michelins.

Stephen Semple:
Right.

Dave Young:
Right? And I remember him talking about that.

Stephen Semple:
Oh, yes.

Dave Young:
That was a big deal to him.

Stephen Semple:
So much riding on your tires. I remember that whole campaign. But the lesson here is publications can be a really effective marketing tool, but only if you’re producing something that is valuable enough that a customer would be willing to pay for it, even if you’re giving it away for free. So when I’ve been working with customers for creating publications, I’ve always started off, “Well, let’s put a price on this. Would somebody actually be willing to spend 15 bucks for this,” or whatever the price is? And produce content that would make it so that somebody would be willing to pay for that, even if you don’t charge them, but that’s the test. So the publication can’t be all about tires, tires, tires, here’s the compound, here’s the tread, here’s what’s wonderful about it. No, it was about something different. It was about, “Here’s a place you can travel to.”

Dave Young:
And by the way, if you need tires, we got some of those.

Stephen Semple:
And if you need tires, we got some of those. I did marketing for a company in the medical space. We did consulting with the pharmaceutical businesses. And one of the big challenges in the pharmaceutical space is the ongoing changes of the rules, especially in what’s called the quality and compliance space, which is where we did the consulting. So we created this little booklet that basically summarized the government of Canada’s rule changes. And in a way in which it made it easy for somebody to look up the rule changes, and people were willing to buy that book. There was a period of time when they sold them, and then they started giving them away for free. But that publication was not about our services. That publication was to help people with the government of Canada stuff.

Stephen Semple:
But, the corollary to that is what they think about us. “Well, geez, if you created this booklet, you must know the rules really well.”

Dave Young:
Right.

Stephen Semple:
Right? And it created awareness and put it in people’s hands, and they wanted the publication. And that publication had a couple of ads inserted into it about what it is that we did, kind of like what we’re doing in the podcast here. Right?

Dave Young:
Yeah.

Stephen Semple:
Couple of little ads in there on it.

Dave Young:
Yeah. Wow, that’s a great move. It’s a brilliant content marketing example that’s worked well for 100 years.

Stephen Semple:
Right. And people want to walk around going, “The internet. We’ve invented content marketing.” It’s like, “No, it ain’t new. It ain’t new.”

Dave Young:
Not at all.

Stephen Semple:
It ain’t new.

Dave Young:
Not at all. All right. Well, I’m happy to know the Michelin story now, Stephen. Thank you.

Stephen Semple:
All right. Thanks David.

Dave Young:
Thanks for listening to the podcast. Please share us. Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and leave us a big, fat, juicy, five star rating and review at Apple Podcast. And if you’d like to schedule your own 90 minute empire building session, you can do it at empirebuildingprogram.com.

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