Marketing Michelin: Advertising and Cultural Identity in Twentieth-Century France (review)

How French was "Bibendum," that odd, portly stack of tires known in English as the Michelin Man? As Stephen Harp demonstrates in his fine study of Michelin marketing in France, this company mascot represented far more than quality rubber. The Michelin Company's involvement in numerous ventures, from tire sales to tourism guides, rendered the firm part of twentieth-century French culture. Michelin's shaping of French identity, primarily during the Third Republic, through direct and indirect advertising both reflected and influenced the dynamics of race, class, and gender. Above all else, Michelin's agenda was evident in its drive to modernize France without subjecting it to an "American onslaught" (pp. 5, 224).

Harp begins his discussion with the evolution of the automobile industries in the late nineteenth century and the appearance of Bibendum, arguably one of the most successful anthropomorphic mascots in advertising history. Through a lucid and witty reading of Michelin's ad campaigns, he argues that the Michelin Man represented the upper-middle-class white Frenchman who enjoyed life, education, and family. Deploying historical and literary references, early campaigns and newspaper columns conveyed to male readers the ideal of a tradition-conscious modernity open to automotive technology. Although it remained at base a tool to increase French tire consumption, the mascot clearly associated the fantasy of early automobile driving with a powerful sense of French patriarchy.

Such advertising would have, at best, spread the company's name among car enthusiasts. The Michelin family's goals were much broader, however, and they pursued indirect advertising that stressed economic and cultural modernization and patriotism. Seemingly obvious was the development of road guides. Harp excels at contextualizing the importance of Michelin travel manuals to early automobile drivers, to battlefield and elite tourism, and, last but not least, to food appreciation. As the travel industry evolved, it became clear that Bibendum no longer represented tires alone. The guides and the maps on which it was stamped, as well as road signs planted all around France, served to fuse travel, gastronomy, and regionalism into a patriotic image of Frenchness.

Reinforcing its portrayal of the company as quintessentially French and modern, Michelin expanded its marketing through patriarch André Michelin's sponsorship of the pronatalist movement and aeronautics. The company also supported rationalization at all levels, from the factory floor to the repair shop. Michelin stressed the need for Taylorist and Fordist methods of production, which it combined with a series of social programs to ensure worker allegiance. One of the first companies to introduce such practices in French business, it also encouraged lowering car prices to prompt stronger sales among all social classes. By offering a valuable synthesis of this process, Harp demonstrates how the company, posing as a defender of patriotic values, hoped to preserve French socioeconomic independence and modernization in the face of American competition.

By casting Michelin's history in the framework of twentieth-century French culture, Harp makes a strong case for using business history as a window onto cultural change. One wishes that he had devoted more space to tire marketing in the postwar years, perhaps by surveying Bibendum's role in bicycle races such as the Tour de France, thus shedding more light on the reception of the Michelin symbol at the mass cultural level. (When the withdrawal of Bibendum from the Tour's advertising parade in the late 1980s—in favor of a space-shuttle model with big tires—met with public skepticism, the mascot soon returned.) Nonetheless, Harp's achievement is notable. He has offered a strong base on which to build further studies on the role of advertising in mass culture while contributing significantly to our understanding of French culture.