A family-run German business unwittingly became wrapped up in the crown jewel heist at the Louvre museum in Paris and is turning the use of one of its furniture lifts into a publicity coup.
“When you need to move fast” is the new tongue-in-cheek advertising tagline for the company Böcker, which is based in the town of Werne near Dortmund, in a campaign on Facebook and Instagram mounted within a day of the brazen thefts.
The posts feature a picture of the now world-famous 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 says.
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,” she said. “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 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 campaign was born.
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.
Böcker, which was founded in 1958 and whose slogan is “My way to the top”, says on its website its business is built on “tradition and innovation”. It has about 600 employees.
Scharwatz said the response to the new advert had been overwhelming.
“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.”
She said 99% 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.
