Marketing Michelin: Advertising and Cultural Identity in Twentieth-Century France - Book Review

Journal of Social History, Fall, 2003 by Ellen Furlough

This book works well on many levels. While Harp examines Michelin as a business, he also analyzes Michelin's role as a "cultural actor." As such, this book succeeds in providing fresh perspectives on both French business and cultural history. Harp's well-researched study of Michelin's savvy and technologically modern business practices contributes to revisionist interpretations of French business prior to World War II as "backward." Drawing upon conceptual and methodological approaches drawn from the "new" cultural history (which is rarely done in French business history), Marketing Michelin eschews notions of corporate manipulation and focuses instead on how business practices reflected and produced cultural meanings and cultural change. Michelin's history illuminates the difficulties firms have faced historically as they needed not only to create a new market, and in this case one that depended upon its association with another product (bicycles and then automobiles), but also to sustain and enlarge that market. These efforts work best when firms situate themselves at the conjuncture of commerce and culture, when they perceive the forces of change and embrace them. Harp's clear and well-researched explication of Michelin's diverse promotional campaigns and its association of the Michelin name with a wide range of cultural developments yield much insight. As with any ambitious work, this book sacrifices depth in some areas--such as economic data and information on Michelin's competitors and on Michelin's increasingly global reach--as it creatively examines the historically productive and mutually constitutive relationship between business and culture. Harp's sophistical blend of business and cultural history enriches both approaches and should serve as a model for other scholars.

Ellen Furlough

The University of Kentucky