Victor Lombardi

Design Strategist

Michelin.com
1995

Another project I worked on while with DDB Needham, Michelin didn't quite know what their first website should do. Of course, neither did anyone else. Luckily we knew what it shouldn't do. At the pitch, a competitor made their presentation first, a visually stunning example for the day (which probably wouldn't taken five minutes to load). Their design culled together all of Michelin's brands into one website, and thereby diminished Michelin's premium brand by associating it with less expensive tires. We quietly decided not to show our visually inferior work and instead talked about how our strategic approach was different, preserving Michelin's time-proven approach and priceless brand perception. We won.