Michelin Man named AW’s ‘Icon of the Millennium’
During Advertising Week’s AW New York event earlier this month, the rotund but spritely face of Michelin was named ‘Icon of the Millennium’. Bibendum was honoured at a ceremony held in Times Square.
During Advertising Week’s AW New York event earlier this month, the rotund but spritely face of Michelin was named ‘Icon of the Millennium’. Bibendum was honoured at a ceremony held in Times Square.
He’s looking sprightly for a Supercentenarian who’s reached his 13th decade. Bibendum, the Michelin Man, has turned 120, and will spend much of the year celebrating. A major exhibition covering 120 years of Bibendum will open on 27 July at L’Aventure Michelin, the tyre maker’s museum in Clermont-Ferrand, France. Visitors can revel in the Bibendum story until 31 December 2018.
The Michelin Man can perhaps be seen as the Doctor Who of the tyre world. Not only has his appeal endured over the decades, every so often he changes his physical form and habits while retaining his core values. So far Bibendum, as he’s also known, has represented Michelin in eight guises. Now he has morphed once again, and the 9th Michelin Man is ready to show his face to the world.
Michelin has renewed its logo and visual identity. In short, Bibendum has been reconfigured as modern line drawing rather than the 3D rendering of the decade or so since 2000. At the same time the mascot has been brought together with the company’s name once again.
A premium-price timeslot during yesterday’s Super Bowl marked “an important change” in Michelin’s marketing strategy. The 30-second advertisement – the first Michelin advertising appearance during a Super Bowl game – was the debut of a new global campaign.
The Michelin Man – aka Bibendum – was voted the last century’s best corporate symbol by an international panel of judges in 2000. Although today’s Bibendum is a slimmer, more active and environmentally-responsible character than the gorging, wine-drinking epicurean created by French illustrator O’Galop in 1898, his perky charm remains. A new, trucker-friendly version of the congenial Michelin Man is now available to purchase.
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