Following the crown jewel heist at the Louvre Museum in Paris on 19 October, family-run German business Böcker turned the use of one of its furniture lifts into a witty campaign stunt, ‘When you need to move fast’.
The new tongue-in-cheek advertising tagline for Böcker, which is based in the town of Werne near Dortmund, is out on Facebook and Instagram, executed only within a day of the thefts.
The posts feature a picture of the Agilo furniture elevator that the thieves used to gain entry to the museum through a window, grab an estimated €88m (£76m) worth of Napoleonic jewellery, and in less than 10 minutes escape with the loot on motorbikes.
The device, whose inclined ladder is seen in press photos reaching to a first-floor balcony, can carry “up to 400kg of treasures at 42m per minute – as quiet as a whisper”, the company said.
Scharwatz said the company had in 2020 sold the mobile freight elevator to a company in the Paris region, which rents it out to customers. The thieves had approached the French company recently to express an interest in using the lift and then stole it during a demonstration of its use, which the owners reported to the police last week, she said.
Its marketing chief, Julia Scharwatz, said she and her husband, the family firm’s third-generation chief executive, Alexander Böcker, were reading the news online together on Sunday when they were “shocked” to see the picture from the dramatic robbery at the French museum showing one of their products.
“It became clear to us, oh my goodness, this is a reprehensible act, and they’ve misused our device to do it. But after it was apparent that no one had been hurt, we started making a few jokes and putting our heads together on slogans we found funny,” she said.
She said after the evening news, “countless people – our staff, business partners, clients – got in touch with us and we thought, wow, we have to do something with this”.
By Monday morning, the theft having taken place on Sunday, the campaign was brought to life.
“I thought it would go a little viral, but that it would go this viral was extraordinary. Our Instagram posts usually reach 15-20,000 people, and now we’re at 1.7 million. It’s crazy,” Scharwatz said.
She said 99 per cent of the reactions had been positive. “I can understand that it’s not everyone’s humour, but most people are getting a kick out of it”.
One Facebook user said Böcker’s “marketing division deserves a pay rise”. But another called the PR campaign “tasteless”, adding: “The French are stunned and saddened, while a German company makes fun of it and uses it in its advertising. Black humour …”
It was not immediately clear whether the social media posts were translating into new business, although Scharwatz said the company had received “a few inquiries about a furniture lift” this week.
Böcker, which was founded in 1958 and whose slogan is ‘My way to the top,’ says on its website that its business is built on “tradition and innovation”. It has about 600 employees.
