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Michelin Man: The Inside Story
Impersonating the famous tire guy, our reporter (above) bathed in love and in sweat. Nothing new for this 107-year-old icon. A true tale of serendipity, survival, and brand management.

By ROGER PARLOFF
September 19, 2005
(FORTUNE Magazine) – My field of vision is constricted because I'm peering out of the cheesecloth mouth of the costume, and I've been instructed to keep looking down lest the mascot's head appear to be rocking back unnaturally toward the sky. A battery pack strapped to my back powers two blowers near my thighs that inflate the suit's nylon infrastructure and its outer artificial-leather shell. The blowers are supposed to provide circulation too, but acrid sweat is already soaking through my third T-shirt of the morning. I can now make out a nearby family of tourists, maybe from India, on the Times Square traffic island where my handlers have led me. I waddle toward them, waving exaggeratedly. They reward me with startled grins and laughter and are soon taking turns posing for photos with me. Earlier this morning, after just five minutes in this bathysphere-shaped getup, the neural synapses that control my social inhibitions suddenly toggled off. As long as I was encased in this thing, people of all ages, races, and creeds would reliably respond to me with enchantment and glee. Accordingly, I could approach anyone. The most forbiddingly beautiful women; the severest, most humorless executives; the baddest, buffest bike messengers--they would all be flattered by my attentions, enthusiastically shake my hand, touch me, hug me. Whoever categorized goodwill as an "intangible" had obviously never spent a day as the Michelin Man.

Though most Americans recognize the Michelin Man--the symbol of what is now the world's leading tire company by market share (No. 294 on FORTUNE's Global 500)--their appreciation for him is only tread-deep. They think of him as a younger cousin to the cuddly Pillsbury Doughboy, who was created in 1965. But the Michelin Man has been promoting tires since 1898. Though not the oldest corporate mascot (the Quaker Oats Pilgrim goes back to 1877, and Aunt Jemima to at least 1893), he has probably been drawn, painted, sculpted, die-cast, injection-molded, animated, and pixelated in countlessly more postures--and in infinitely more imaginative postures--than they or most of their protégés put together, including the Morton Salt Umbrella Girl (1911), Mr. Peanut (1916), Betty Crocker (1921), the Jolly Green Giant (1925), and Reddy Kilowatt (1926). (I exclude Mickey Mouse, born in 1928, because he is Disney's product itself, rather than simply an emblem of its product.)