From Heist to Hype: How One Heist Became a Marketing Win

The Louvre heist turned marketing masterpiece. Armed thieves used a stolen Boker Aglio lift truck to scale the Louvre, break through a window and steal jewels worth More than $100 million. You saw that story in the last week. We reported it here as well. They fled on scooters. Now the shock in France turned to disbelief when the German company that built the lift used this crime for an ad campaign, which I think was absolutely brilliant. They made an ad and posted it on Instagram and other places. Bakker's viral post read, when you're in a hurry, the Bakker Aglio carries your heavy treasures. No one was injured, and the CEO admitted the lift itself had been stolen years earlier. But the Internet loved the audacity. Francis, Furious. Germany's calling it marketing genius. I do think this is genius. When I was growing up, and even as recently as 10 or 20 years ago, when you talked about marketing genius, you talked about things like Apple's 1984 commercial, that they played it one time, and it was in 1984, and it was, you know, the woman walking in swinging the hammer and shattering the screen of Big Brother. And they spent, you know, months, if not a year making that ad. It got tremendous publicity and aired nationwide. That was what was considered marketing, Gene, and it was at the time. But we live in a different world now. It's about speed, and quite often it's about having the most interesting thing to say. In the old days, if you're a big corporation, Apple was even then, you could take money, you could just write checks for millions, multiple millions of dollars for TV time, a million or two to make the ad, and you could force that into the conversation. Not so easy to do that anymore. The number one way to do it is to say something interesting. And that is, in fact, what this Lyft company did. Apparently the CEO and his. His spouse, also a colleague, saw the story about how the news footage released by the police of their lift and how the criminal got on the lift, went up to the second floor, got the jewels and left. And. And they asked themselves, should we try to capitalize on this? The first thing they wanted to know is like, was anyone hurt or injured? Obviously, if there had been a shootout and someone murdered, it would have seemed crass to try to capitalize and make money when people are dead. Well, that didn't happen. I think the next question, was anyone seriously injured? Well, that didn't happen. So here they were, where their own product was a part of not just a regional story, a national story, but an international story. I Mean, this story got so much play around the globe, and they correctly deduced, hey, we're in this story, like it or not, number one. Number two, our product is displayed in a way that shows its unique strengths. Look how reliable it is. Look how quickly it helped people steal $100 million. Three, no one was injured. Four, no one would say they're trying to encourage criminals to. To buy their lifts, to commit acts of thievery. It's a little different than if you're a dynamite company. Someone used your dynamite to rob a bank, and you're saying, hey, our dynamite's so effective, it robbed the First Union Bank. If you wanna rob a bank, come get our dynamite. That would clearly cross the line. That would strike people as bizarre, odd, weird, and there'd be a huge backlash. Not so in this case. It struck me as funny. It struck most people as funny. Some of the French officials are not that happy about it, but they got attention. And it's hard to put a dollar value on what happened here, but I would have to think that it would be north of several million dollars in terms of. You had to quantify the number of positive mentions building the name id, the positive mention traffic to the URL of this company, and people like me talking about it, it was worth millions and millions of dollars. And it's not because the CEO decided to write a check. It's not because they hired Don Draper of Mad Men fame to come up with a brilliant idea in spur of a moment when he's sitting in a conference room after a hangover. That's not what happened. This was an intelligent person looking at the news, looking at their company, seeing opportunity, and acting quickly. They didn't put this into a committee or ask an ad agency to do research and testing and come back in six months. We write a script, spend another six months producing. No, they acted quickly. This is the future of marketing. I mean, this is the reality of marketing today. For people who want to do it well, this is the way to do it. You latch yourself on to something already in the news that's already fascinating people, that is engaging people, that people want to talk about. You then attach yourself to that news story in a way where it makes you look good. Again, this is not a dynamite manufacturer saying, use your D. Use my dynamite next time you want to blow up a bank. It's not like that. And it's clearly a little bit funny, too, because we have all these movies showing great heists, all these TV shows about jewel thieves and all the crazy things they do to get in and out in the middle of the night. There's, you know, Tom Cruise dodging lasers, and these criminals just backed up a big lift, walked through a window, came out a few minutes later and zoomed right down. So it's humorous, it's visual, which is good for tv, it's topical, and it really puts together all the things you need. So these people deserve the positive attention they're getting. Will someone complain? Sure. Will there be some, especially in France, saying you're making light up of crime? Yeah, but I don't think that's going to persuade most people. I applaud them for this. And I have no, I say I have no need for a lift. I actually have a lift coming to my house next Wednesday because I have a very heavy table that's being brought in. It's too heavy for people to lift, so they're going to have some left. I'm going to look and see if it's the same brand because now I'm even thinking of lifts, and that's not something most people do. Okay, so what is the real message here? If you see something in the news and you have a company that relates to that product in some way and you can tastefully have fun and make yourself look good in the process, then do it. Be like this Lyft truck company that was used in the heist at the Louvre. Be a part of the news. That is the number one way of marketing in the modern world. Okay, that was fun. I got to tell you, that was a lot of fun. Not so much fun for the security detail at the Louvre. And the directors of the Louvre do have some egg on their face, but interesting for the rest of us.