Raise
your Glasses
Great marketing is invisible. Not the results
– of course, a business wants visibility
to connect with its customers – but the
activity itself shouldn't be noticed. We're so
tuned-in to brands and communications and media
that most of the time it's the campaign that gets
remarked upon, even if the product stays on the
shelf. But once in a while someone pulls a stroke
that is so bold, so embracing, that we don't know
it's happened, and just accept its premise as
the norm.
At some time over the Holiday Season millions
of us will crack open a bottle of champagne to
celebrate something. It may be a Bucks Fizz on
Christmas morning or to bring in the New Year
a week later. A bottle of bubbly - as much a part
of the warp and weft of life as carving the turkey
or singing Auld Lang Syne.
Well, sorry to disappoint you – but it
wasn't always this way. Indeed, the fact that
we think it so is testament to the genius (and
I choose the word carefully) of Eugene Mercier,
founder of the champagne house that still bears
his name, and father of modern marketing promotion.
Mercier wrote the rulebook.
Think Deep, Think Big
Before Mercier started his business in 1858, champagne
was, in today's terms, a niche product, the preserve
of the gentry and available in only the most select
venues. But Eugene had other ideas; he wanted
to reach as many people as possible because he
saw an opportunity to build a mass market. All
he needed was the capacity to deliver, and to
give his customers a reason to buy.
He solved the first problem by creating the world's
largest champagne cellars– 18km of tunnels
carved into the chalk 33m beneath Epernay, the
champagne region to the east of Paris. Such was
the scale of the endeavour, he even built a 800m
long rail link to the Paris-Strasbourg line to
transport millions of cubic metres of chalk from
the site.
When the work was finished, he used the service
to transport visitors to the site, to see the
results of six years labour. Mercier created one
of Europe's first commercial visitor attractions.
But while receiving the great and the good at
his cellars may have cemented his relationship
with his existing customers, it wasn't going to
reach the masses. For that, Mercier had another,
even grander design.
In that first year of trading, he commissioned
Monsieur Jolibois, one of the finest coopers in
the wine trade, to make him a cask. There were
two extraordinary things about the project:
Dimensions: it was 6.2m long, 5.5m high, and
had a capacity of 215,000 bottles. (You can still
see it today, at L'Espace Mercier. It's like a
section of an Apollo rocket).
Duration (quarterly-driven executives and investors
had better be sitting down): from commission to
completion, the cask took 23 years. It was unveiled
in July 1881.
And the question of everyone's lips was 'Why?'
Digging enough storage space for 18 million bottles
of champagne was one thing, but taking 23 years
to make a barrel that was big enough to house
a family of four seemed, well, slightly mad.
The answer came 8 years later.
Roll out the Barrel
Mercier was playing a long game. While the cask
proved to be an attraction at his headquarters,
he had a much wider public in mind: the 1889 Paris
Exhibition, a sort of World's Fair and Expo rolled
into one.
There was, however, the slight problem of getting
it there. When it was full, the cask weighed over
29 tons. It was enormous. Ever the one to turn
a problem into an opportunity, Mercier morphed
the transport challenge into an event.
At the end of April 1889, a team of 24 oxen (with
a support party of 18 horses) pulled a specially
built cart with specially built wheels from Epernay
to Paris. En route, they destroyed several houses,
had to strengthen several bridges, and even removed
part of the fortifications around the capital
city.
Mercier was on the front page of every newspaper,
every day, for over a week.
On the 7th May, the cask made its triumphant
entrance into Paris. Hundreds of thousands turned
out to cheer it on its way. During the show, its
popularity was equalled by only one other exhibit
- a tower built by an engineer called Eiffel.
For the next 20 years, Mercier continued to build
his mass market, and create the association between
his brand and the celebration of achievement.
He was giving his customers a reason to buy.
- He paid for (aka sponsored) the century's
largest hot air balloon which, during its lifetime,
gave 20,000 people a flight over Paris while
drinking his champagne.
- He commissioned the first-ever publicity film,
called 'From Grape to Glass', which was made
by the Lumière Brothers. (In February's
5 Minute Memo we talked about a promo film
for Volvo, directed by Stephen Frears - again,
Mercier wrote the rules).
- In 1905, at the Liège Exhibition, Mercier
built an arch of 15,000 bottles, representing
the daily sales of the product. Nothing succeeds
like success.
- Mercier sponsored Blériot in his first
powered flights. The company was the first to
advertise at the Tour de France, and to send
out branded vehicles along the route, so creating
today’s 'Caravane du Tour'.
Do you have the Bottle?
Mercier's marketing nous wasn't limited to grand
gestures. Sometimes it's seeing the small things
that make a difference. Like noticing that people
watch the bottle almost the whole time a waiter
pours a glass of champagne. This led the company
to run its name horizontally along the length
of a bottle, and so reinforce its brand at every
opportunity.
The business results of such inspired thinking
and commitment to the big picture still stand
today. In a world where there are over 12,000
brands of champagne (and you thought you had competitor
problems!), Mercier is still the best seller in
France - a market that consumes 175 million bottles
a year.
It's a classic case study in seeing things differently,
making a market and differentiating a brand. While
there are others that have found a niche or certain
cachet (Patsy's bottle of Bolly in 'AbFab'; Moët
& Chandon in 'Killer Queen'; Winston Churchill's
daily bottle of Pol Roger), it's thanks to Eugene
Mercier that we'll be raising a glass of sparkling
white to toast friends and loved ones in the days
ahead.
That's the power of marketing.
Wishing you a very prosperous 2006.
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