Montblanc : Everything in a name

Restrictions on access to services reinforce a basic brand quality.

The Site

Montblanc, the Germany-based luxury goods company famous for its trade-marked pens, has given the media area in the Corporate section of its website a distinctive title: Press Lounge.

To enter the ‘lounge’ journalists must first register with the site. This involves submitting an online application (“for an account”) that requires professional details including Press Card Number and Name of Organization. No media services are apparent outside the lounge.

The Takeaway

Just as every club or casino has to have its cloakroom, so a company website must provide a facility for the media. Montblanc consciously and cleverly takes this obligation and through the set up of its Press Lounge – from its naming to the vetting of applicants – uses it to reinforce one of its basic brand qualities: exclusivity.

Where others call their media area a ‘room’ or ‘centre/center’, Montblanc chooses ‘lounge’, a word that conjures images of first-class reception areas in airports where the facilities are a cut above the average but accessible only to the privileged few. This message carries through to the lack of media services outside the lounge (not even a press release or a headline in sight) and the imposition of a stringent application procedure – all it lacks to match that for an élite club is a requirement to be proposed by an existing member.

Practical benefits for Montblanc’s communications team include a hand-picked contacts list and no need to deal with tiresome enquiries from ‘the wrong sort of people’.

First published on 03 August, 2006