A family-run German firm stepped into the media spotlight this week thanks to a marketing campaign featuring the now world-famous furniture lift used in the Louvre jewel heist.
“When you need to move fast” is the brazen or brilliant—depending on your sense of propriety—new advertising tagline for the company Böcker, based in the German town of Werne, that debuted across Facebook and Instagram on Monday.
The ad depicts the Agilo furniture elevator that the thieves used to enter a window at the Louvre, where they ransacked its Apollo Gallery for some $102 million worth of Napoleonic jewelry. The thieves fled with the loot on scooters, all within a shockingly efficient seven minutes.
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A photograph of the Böcker lift reaching the first-floor balcony of the museum as police mill about its feet was published widely in the global press. The marketing chief of Böcker, Julia Scharwatz, told the Guardian that she and her husband, the company’s third-generation chief executive, Alexander Böcker, were “shocked” to see their device in a picture from the historic incident.
Scharwatz told the Guardian that Böcker sold the elevator to a company in the Paris area that rents out such equipment. The thieves approached the company with a feigned interest in renting the device and then stole it during a demonstration. The company reported the theft to authorities.
“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 added that after the picture began to circulate online “countless people – our staff, business partners, clients – got in touch with us and we thought, wow, we have to do something with this.” A day later, the tagline hit the internet.
“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. The reaction were mostly positive, she said, though at least one Facebook user called the ad campaign “tasteless”, adding: “The French are stunned and saddened, while a German company makes fun of it and uses it in its advertising. Black humor…”
With no suspects in custody and eight French Crown Jewels still missing, the heist has become a publicity crisis for the Louvre, as well as French President Emmanuel Macron, whose administration had only narrowly survived a vote of no confidence.
Louvre director Laurence des Cars told the French Senate on Wednesday that the heist exposed the museum’s security “weaknesses.” She added that she submitted her resignation to Culture Minister Rachida Dati, however Dati did not accept the offer.
