;)
Michelin Man
Posted by Editor in Other "Stuff"
When you read the title I would be surprised if you told me the Michelin Man image didn’t immediately come to mind. The same would have held true if it was Superman or the Marlboro Man in the title.
The Michelin Man is such an enduring logo. I recently discovered he has a name, it is Bibendum. The Michelin Man icon was inspired by an 1898 advertising sketch for a Munich brewery. The ad featured a large, mummy-like giant raising a mug of beer and saying “Nuck est Bibendum,” Latin for “now it is time to drink.”
For many years I have purchased Michelin tires for my vehicles. I have come to appreciate them for their quality, performance and value, and yes I also love their logo. All of these items together form the Michelin brand.
What is your brand as a salesperson? Have you thought about it? Perhaps you should. My friend Jeremy Miller recently wrote an article “Leverage yourself for more income and more sales.” In it, he addresses personal branding suggesting it is a must for any professional sales person. Check it out.
Businesses should also be aware of their brand. Again, more than a logo brands are the intangible aspects of a business. Some suggest it is the sum of all the actions of the people in the company that shape the company brand. Are they aligned with the company’s purpose and values? Does the client experience bear this out?
Salesopedia started out a website featuring a sales dictionary that expanded to include sales and marketing terms. The idea was to create a sales glossary that a sales person could turn to as a resource for any unfamiliar terms they might encounter in their daily sales routine.
The name Salesopedia was a take-off of a few other information sites that ended in ‘opedia’, opedia meaning ‘for knowledge’. Perhaps the first opedia that many of the more fortunate amongst us grew up with in the 50’s and 60’s was the 26 volume encyclopedia. They were expensive and often purchased on the “time payments” plan. Many of the older readers will remember the door-to-door encyclopedia salesman, (yes they were all men).
But back to brand. Salesopedia created a logo with a tower emitting radio waves to signify dispersing of sales knowledge. In terms of brand, our people continue to focus on adding quality content from subject mater experts. We do this in a way we hope is visually pleasing and interesting to our visitors. With this in mind our team continues to focus on our readers as we expand the site. We have a lot to live up to with a tag line “The World of Sales from A to Z.”
As Jeremy Miller points out in his article, personal branding is not a one shot deal, you will continue to refine and evolve your brand over time. The same holds true for companies, the Marlboro man, Superman and of course the Michelin man.
Clayton Shold
Salesopedia
;)
;)
;)
;)
;)
Gary thank you for your comments. I invoke my right to disagree with your comment that I “totally botched the story.” I did view the Michelin site, but not your reference, AdAge.com. I had a different source. Where I said I [only] referenced the Michelin site, this might be considered misleading so I’ve removed that statement form my post as well as the reference to the brasserie. Another reference I found suggested a link between the brewery sketch and the brasserie but it is not material to the story. You may find the following of interest.
On September 19, 2005 Fortune Magazine ran an interesting and very detailed story “The Michelin Man: The Inside Story.” The author, Roger Parloff appears to have done extensive research for the article. I have extracted a couple of paragraphs from the article below, which indeed does suggest that Andre Michelin received, at least in part, his inspiration for the Michelin Man from a sketch rejected by a Munich brewery.
During this period Bibendum was in gestation. His first kick in the womb came in 1893 when André argued to the skeptical Paris Society of Civil Engineers that pneumatic tires could “drink up obstacles.” Fetal Bibendum kicked again in 1894, when Édouard motioned to stacks of tires at an auto exposition in Lyon and commented to André, “Add some arms, and you’d say they were men.”
Then, in 1897, while thumbing through a commercial artist’s portfolio, André had a fateful epiphany. It was triggered by a sketch that had been rejected by a Munich brewery, showing a legendary king hoisting a stein and uttering a Latin toast. André told the artist, who went by the pen name O’Galop, to substitute a tire man for the king. In O’Galop’s final version, completed in April 1898, Bibendum is flanked by two tattered, flaccid rivals who couldn’t hold their rusty nails. To contemporaries, the competitors’ caricatured faces were readily recognizable as those of John Boyd Dunlop and the then-chief of Continental Tire.
I wholeheartedly agree with your sentiment, “subtle but accurate differences worth noting” which I too have tried to provide.
Gary you are obviously a very proud 31 year Michelin employee. You can simply call me a Michelin fan. Do take comfort in knowing my readers are better informed today than they were before on this fabulous 109 year old icon. Again I appreciate you taking the time to comment.
I am wondering if you even bothered to visit the Michelin website as you totally botched the story of the creation of Bibendum. After 31 years with the company here is the US and overseas I tend to like the story to be accurate. Here is what AdAge.com has to say about Bibendum. Subtle but accurate differences worth noting.
THE MICHELIN MAN
PRODUCT: Michelin tires
DATE INTRODUCED: 1898
CREATOR: Idea conceived by Edouard Michelin; artist’s rendition created by O’Galop; DDB Needham Worldwide handled later executions
Andre Michelin commissioned the creation of this jolly, rotund figure after his brother, Edouard, observed that a display of stacked tires resembled a human form. The artist’s sketches of a bloated man made of tires was exactly what the brothers had in mind.
One in particular, picturing the character lifting a beer glass and shouting, “Nunc est bibendum! (Now is the time to drink!)” seemed to embody Michelin’s slogan at the time, “Michelin tires swallow up all obstacles.”
The artist reworked the hulking figure, replacing the beer bottle with a goblet of nails and glass that the character rose in a toast to all road hazards.
Today, the Michelin Man is one of the world’s oldest and most recognized trademarks and it represents Michelin in over 150 countries.
Regards,