The Michelin Guide showed the way

Say content marketing, and most thoughts go straight to company blogs, social media marketing or web content. But there’s lot to learn from an early and extremely successful example of content marketing, the Michelin guide. MARKET asked Carl Stenson, Head of Communications at Michelin Nordic, to fill us in on how you build content on something exciting outside the actual product to market it – completely without talking about the less exciting product. Which in this case is something as unsexy as car tyres.

Who hasn’t heard of the Michelin guide? Every year gourmet restaurants all over Europe – and the rest of the world – do their very best to receive one, two or three of the desirable Michelin stars. What everybody doesn’t know is that the Michelin guide is one of the first examples of successful content marketing. Let’s hear Carl Stenson, Head of Communications at Michelin Nordic, how it all started.

What were Michelin’s ideas and thoughts behind the Michelin guide to begin with?

The Michelin guide was first published in 1900 in France, so you have to see it in a social context. There were almost no automobiles in