Marketing

You may not know who Bertha Ringer is but in 1888 she pulled off one of the world’s first marketing stunts for a car business. How did this come to be? It all started in 1869 when a 20-year-old Bertha fell in love with an introverted engineer. And, though he was a clever man, he was hopeless at business. He lacked self-belief and would often doubt himself. Bertha thought differently. She believed in the engineer so much that when his workshop almost went bust she did not hesitate to invest her dowry and inheritance in order to save the business. Who was the lucky chap? It was none other than Carl Benz, founder of Mercedes-Benz and the man Bertha would eventually marry.1