Siddharth Bharath says, “The Michelin Guide is probably one of the best examples of content marketing. Back in 1890, Andre and Edouard, the brothers who started Michelin Tires, needed a way to increase demand for tires. Back then, there were only 2,200 cars in all of France, their home base.

The brothers wanted car owners to drive more so that they would need to buy more tires. To do this, the Michelins decided to incentivize driving by publishing a guide to the best restaurants, hotels, mechanics, and other points of interest across the country. The first batch saw 35,000 copies printed and given away for free to motorists.

Today, more than 100 years later, Michelin Tires is still going strong and its guide makes celebrity chefs like Gordon Ramsay cry if it doesn’t award their restaurants a coveted Michelin star.

It must have cost a fortune to travel across the country, collect all that information in a book, and print thousands of copies, only to give it away. How did they know the investment would pay off? They didn’t. The greatest work of content marketing was really a gamble that happened to pay off big-time“.

How to Test Short-Form Content Before Making Long-Form Investment

Content Marketing Institute

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