Why a tyre company created the Michelin Guide and gave it away

Imagine you are one of the few drivers in France in 1900. Where can you buy fuel? Who can fix your car? Where will you sleep tonight? Nobody knows, so you stay close to home.

André Michelin has an answer for you, and it is not a tyre. In 1900, the brothers make a small red guide for drivers, and they give it away for free.

Inside, there are town maps, and a page on how to change a tyre. There are lists of places to buy fuel, garages and hotels, town by town, and a few paid ads. Everything a driver needs to try a longer trip.

The brothers print 35,000 copies. That is many more guides than there are cars in France. They are betting that more people will drive soon.

In his first pages, André makes a bold promise: "This work appears with the new century, and it will last as long as the century."

Now you know where to stop, so you drive to the next town, and the one after it. Each trip with the guide in your car takes you a little further from home.

And every kilometre takes a little rubber off your tyres. The guide costs you nothing, but the trips cost your tyres. One day they are worn out, and Michelin sells you new ones.

So the guide does not sell tyres. It sells trips, and trips wear out tyres. Today this is called content marketing: a company gives people something useful to read, so they use its product more.

For twenty years, the guide stays free. Then, the story goes, André walks into a tyre shop and sees his red guides. Nobody is reading them. So what are his guides doing there?