THE TYRE WARS (Part 2)

This is (part two) of a story about the battle for your wheels, changing behaviour and how to innovate.

(Click Here To Read Part One First…)

Michelin were winning The Tyre Wars.

They were winning because of three innovations.

Innovations that, by 1962, had changed the behaviour of millions around the world.

The detachable tyre made the product functional.

The Michelin Guide made the product useful.

And the Michelin Star-System made the product desirable.

So Pirelli, the Italian tyre manufacturer, had a problem.

The Michelin logo was everywhere.

And the guides were recommending the places where people enjoyed some of the best nights of their life — with friends, with lovers and with food.

Why choose Pirelli?

But that’s not how Derek Forsyth, Pirelli’s UK advertising and publicity man, saw it.

He knew there are two routes to success.

You can out-spend your competition.

Or you can out-think your competition.

By spending all that time and money to produce those guides, Michelin were also helping Pirelli.

Not only were Pirelli’s existing customers driving more because of the Michelin guides.

But, because people were using their tyres more, Pirelli had more opportunities to poach Michelin’s customers.

Because people don’t buy tyres direct.

They buy through a dealer.

And most people don’t know the first thing about their car.

But they pretend they do.

So when it’s time to change the tyres, one of two things happens.

Either they look around and pick the first brand that comes to mind.

Or they rely on the dealer’s recommendation.

And, since the chance of getting ripped off is high, most people find a dealer they trust and stick with them.

Even if that means a long journey — normally back to where they grew up.

Yes, price is a factor.

But, with tyres, a high price acts as a signal of the product’s quality.

Why risk buying cheap tyres if it may mean a blowout on the motorway at 92mph?

So if the dealer says, “Pirelli are much better than Michelin, should I fit those for you?”

Who would disagree?

Other tyre companies realised this too.

And they sent gifts to dealers to charm them.

Like ashtrays.

Or key-rings.

Things the dealers would be reminded of regularly.

Things they may even put in the waiting area where the customer would see them.

Derek had to out-think them too.

He needed to start by doing what Michelin had achieved with the star-system: make the product desirable.

Then go one step further.

And make the product desirable in the dealership — the point of decision.

Well, he decided, the French had done it the French way.

With cuisine.

So, why not do it the Italian way?

With glamour.

After all, most dealers don’t care about fancy restaurants.

They care about sex.

So he came up with the idea for a calendar.

Not something crude, something artistic and playful.

Something that reflected the swinging Sixties culture.

In his words:

“Most trade calendars at the time were pretty lewd and were kept in a back room — you’d stick them up inside the door of your overall locker and sort of gloat over them with your mates.”

“I thought we could do something more tasteful; something the dealers could put up on the wall for the customers to see.”

Of course, like the Michelin guides, the Pirelli calendar would be released annually.

That meant the calendar could be an event in itself and each launch would attract news attention.

But, more importantly, a calendar gets seen every day.

Unlike a guide that gathers dust.

So either the customer would enter the dealership, see the glamorous calendar and think, “I want those glamorous tyres to spice up my unglamorous car.”

Or the dealers would recommend Pirelli because they had been looking at the logo (and the women) for months.

The calendar flopped.

It was too contrived and obviously just a bland advert for Pirelli.

Both the dealer and the customer could see through it.

Then, in 1964, Pirelli hired Robert Freeman, The Beatles photographer, to shoot the calendar in Majorca.

It was provocative, edgy, sexy but still glamorous.

It was an instant success.

Dealers put it front of house, directly behind the counter.

Exactly where Derek intended.

The dealers loved it.

The customer loved it.

And Pirelli’s sales soared.

Now, 51 years on, the Pirelli calendar generates countless millions in free publicity for the company.

(A strategy not dissimilar to the Advertising Platform Technique Howard Gossage pioneered.)

Some of the world’s most glamorous women have posed for it — Naomi Campbell, Gisele Bundchen, Penelope Cruz, Kate Moss, Cindy Crawford and dozens more.

Often for a fraction of their normal fee because of the prestige associated with the calendar.

And they’ve been shot by Annie Leibovitz, Mario Testino, Bruce Weber, Nick Knight, Terry Richardson and other leading photographers around the the world.

All because one man worked out how to out-think the competition.

If, as the Silicon Valley entrepreneur Stewart Butterfield has said, “The best — maybe the only? — real, direct measure of “innovation” is change in human behaviour”, then The Tyre Wars is the story of three men that worked out how to do just that.

First the Michelin brothers achieved this by making their detachable tyre useful and desirable with the guides and the star-system.

So people drove more and used their tyres more.

Then Derek Forsyth realised you don’t have to change everyone’s behaviour.

You can achieve dramatic results by focusing on changing the right people’s behaviour at the right time.

That’s how Pirelli fought back.

Thomas Cornwall is the Director of Behave, London’s creative behavioural practice.