Michelin rated restaurants to make France drive more

In 1900 there were barely 3,000 motorcars in all of France, the roads were terrible, and André and Édouard Michelin were trying to sell tires to a market that scarcely existed. Driving was a rich man's novelty with nowhere in particular to go.

The brothers printed 35,000 copies of a free guide stuffed with everything that made a journey possible — maps, tire-change instructions, fuel sellers, mechanics, hotels. Restaurants entered later; anonymous inspectors and the star system followed in the 1920s and 1930s, grading whether a meal was worth a detour — that is, worth burning tires for.

The Michelin brothers gave motorists a free guide to hotels, mechanics and, later, restaurants worth a journey — manufacturing reasons to drive, then grading them with stars.

Gave motorists a free guide to hotels, mechanics, and restaurants worth a journey, manufacturing reasons to drive and thus wear out tires, then graded them with stars.

A guide gave drivers a reason to take longer trips, increasing miles driven.

More miles driven meant more tire wear and replacements, boosting tire demand.

Owning the guide made Michelin the authority on where to drive, a lasting asset.

The guide later became a profitable business independent of tire sales.

If your product is used only as a side effect of another activity, invest in making that activity more appealing, not in marketing the product directly.

Demand solved one level upstream: the guide became the world's restaurant authority and has pulled drivers onto roads for a century. The guide outgrew the tire business it was invented to serve: its stars now make and break chefs' lives, and the move itself — manufacture demand for your complement, then own the authority layer over it — became a strategy archetype taught a century later.