Watching the Wheels Go Round

During the four years I have been at forward thinking inc, I have had the privilege to work with some great client brands across a range of sectors. With my background in brand marketing strategy I have always enjoyed working closely with teams to help them find the best expression of what makes them different, developing a compelling proposition that will distinguish them from others in the market. Without it, I think a brand can be rudderless and it still surprises me how often there is lack of clarity within a company on their value proposition.

One of the most interesting projects of this nature that I have been involved in was working closely with a little known and little understood arm of the BBC based in Caversham.

BBC Monitoring was formed in 1939 to provide the British Government with access to foreign media and propaganda. It provided valuable information during World War II, particularly in places where foreign journalists were banned, a role that continued during the Cold War, the disintegration of the Iron Curtain and collapse of the Soviet Union.  Now in the era of #fakenews they are uniquely placed in their ability to decipher and make sense of the implications of world events through comprehensive monitoring across all media platforms internationally. The Government is still their principal client but they are rapidly increasing their client footprint both with public organisations internationally and commercial clients. Whilst their product is of unassailably great quality they have lacked a focused articulation of what makes them special.

As with all our clients, we have gotten to know them well, listening to their views, understanding what they do and teasing out their aspirations for the future. Marrying this to extensive desk research, client interviews and some highly entertaining workshops with their team we were able to start to hypothesise on a potential proposition. With many of the staff being highly experienced journalists there was no shortage of views, questions and ideas in the room!

As discussions developed, so did the positioning. What they do is broader than just news gathering and translation as they extensively interpret media across all media platforms, much as they did when originally commissioned to sort propaganda from fact before the onset of the Second World War. The positioning needed to capture the breadth of what they did; deeper and richer than just media analysis, it also needed to reflect that they are an invaluable source of information for a wide range of users wanting an unrivalled perspective on news events, especially in the area of geopolitics.

So where did we land with a proposition?

What was finally agreed, Essential Media Insight, also became their tagline across all their communication internally and externally, as it was felt to perfectly capture what they did and most crucially set them apart from some of the new kids on the block.

If I had to choose one of our previous clients that I would have liked to have worked on it would have been Michelin. I think Michelin is one of the great global brands. Sometimes underrated as just being primarily a tyre manufacturer that serendipitously became involved in food, drink and road maps. They are a family company recognised for being tyre innovators, but I think they were also exceptional marketing innovators, distinguished by terrific panache and style. A global reputation that is burnished by its long association with fine dining and the excitement and glamour of motor-racing involvement. This is a French brand with the best reputation across a slew of countries, from China to the US, with aspects to the brand that initially seem to be very randomly linked. Impressive when you consider the competition; Moet Chandon, Dior, Hermes and more.

Michelin brothers started the business in 1889 in Clermont-Ferrand, France at a time when there was something of a restraint on business growth — put simply, not enough French people owned or drove cars. In fact, by 1900, there were fewer than 3,000 cars on the roads of France. Tyres sales were somewhat slow.

The brothers’ approach to selling more tyres was pragmatic and brilliant - create more drivers. Their competitors weren’t Goodyear or Firestone. Their competitor was staying home.

So, they created the Michelin Guide. A free travel guide that featured maps, hotel listings, gasoline vendors (which at the time, were few and far between) and of course restaurants.

By the 1930s, Michelin had nailed down a formula for rating restaurants:

• One Star: “A Very Good Restaurant in its Category”

• Two Stars: “Excellent Cooking, Worth a Detour”

• Three Stars: “Exceptional Cuisine, Worth a Special Journey”

Worth a special journey. Michelin increased their tyre sales by telling people about meals that were so good, they were worth driving to. They created reasons to own a car which appealed to the French public.

Michelin was innovating before innovation was a buzzword. They were “disrupting the industry” when there was barely an industry to disrupt. They had a content strategy that immediately grew the bottom line, visualised by their ubiquitous mascot, Bibendum, first painted in 1898 who has engagingly straddled the various Michelin activities ever since.

I have often pondered what their original positioning was, and I suspect that they probably didn’t have many brand positioning workshops in 1900 to develop it. But they didn’t need to as they were instinctive innovators, big thinkers for whom it would make perfect sense to run a company that would exclusively make tyres for Space Shuttles whilst awarding plaudits to Gordon Ramsay for his oyster and caviar velouté.