The Great Lie You've Been Told About The Mona Lisa

You have no idea why the Mona Lisa is so famous

Happy Thursday, y’all! So a BIG announcement at the end of this issue of Backstage Pass. Please make sure you read till the end, and while you are thinking about it, please click the Like button if you are enjoying Backstage Pass. It helps me by boosting the issue’s visibility on Substack. Thank you!

Pop quiz: What’s the most famous piece of artwork in world history?

Chances are, you said The Mona Lisa. Leonardo’s signature work is widely regarded as the most famous piece of art ever created by man.

But have you ever stopped to think about why that is? Da Vinci was a masterful artist and perhaps encapsulated the idea of what it meant to be a Renaissance man more so than anyone other than maybe Michelangelo.

But The Mona Lisa is a fairly unassuming work. In fact, I would argue that it’s not even da Vinci’s most impressive work, I think the size and composition of The Last Supper makes it a more significant work. And past that, Michelangelo’s David statue or the ceiling of The Sistine Chapel are works of art with such complexity and scale that they seem to be on another level compared to The Mona Lisa.

Yet most art critics, casual or not, view The Mona Lisa as the masterpiece of masterpieces, the work of art by which all others are judged.

But that wasn’t always the case. In fact, as recently as 1911, The Mona Lisa was basically ignored outside hipster art circles in Paris. The painting was viewed as a masterwork by an accomplished Renaissance artist, but outside of that, it carried no special cache.

That all was about to change.

On the morning of August 21st, 1911, three Italian men left The Louvre, crossed the street, and boarded a train and left the city at approximately 8 am, without such as a notice by anyone at the museum.

Which was curious, because the three men left The Louvre carrying 200 pounds of wood encased in glass, and covered with a blanket.

That’s right, these three men had just stolen The Mona Lisa. In broad daylight.

And just like that, they were gone. A clean getaway. In fact, no one at the Louvre even noticed the painting had been stolen until 28 hours later!

In a weird quirk of fate, it turns out that the bare spot in the gallery where The Mona Lisa had hung stood bare for 28 hours. And even when the painting was discovered missing, it wasn’t assumed to have been stolen. At the time, the paintings in the Louvre were being photographed. The photographic technology at the time was primitive, so the only way to get a decent photograph of each work was to remove it from the gallery and take it to the roof where better lighting was available.

So 28 hours later, when an artist who was painting in the Louvre finally noticed the empty spot, he brought it to the attention of security. The artist assumed the painting was being photographed on the roof, and asked the security guard to check with the photographers and see when it would be returned.

That’s when the Louvre discovered that the photographers didn’t have it, and that it had been stolen.

This is the point in our story where things begin to get interesting. Media in France and then the world picked up on the heist. Again, at the time, The Mona Lisa wasn’t even the most famous painting in its own gallery, much less in the Louvre. But everyone loves a good scandal, and the French letting 3 men steal from the Louvre in broad daylight had all the makings of one. As media coverage intensified, conspiracy theories about the thieves began to emerge. One popular theory was that American business tycoon JP Morgan had commissioned thieves to steal the painting. Contemporary artist Pablo Picasso was actually considered a suspect in the theft, and was even arrested for the theft! It turns out, Picasso wasn’t involved in the theft of The Mona Lisa, but had been involved in the theft of two other works at the Louvre.

A week later, the Louvre reopened and a mob of people flocked to the museum to see a bare spot on the wall where a week earlier, The Mona Lisa had hung. The same painting that none of them cared to see, but now all of them were willing to fight through a mob to see the space where the painting had hung.

Think of the absurdity of this scene for a moment: Here was a mob of people, pushing and elbowing strangers to get a clear shot at seeing a bare spot on the wall where a painting had hung…that a week earlier, any of them could have seen by themselves, but none of them wanted to.

That alone is testament to the power of scandal and storytelling.

Meanwhile, what seemed like a perfect getaway for the three Italian thieves, was quickly falling apart. Their intent had been to take the painting and quickly sell it for a nice profit. But the media coverage of the theft made it almost impossible to sell the painting. The thieves stored it in Paris, until 28 months later, when they attempted to sell it to an art dealer in Italy. The dealer verified it was The Mona Lisa, and contacted the police, who arrested the thieves.

The Mona Lisa was returned to the Louvre, and a mob of people again flocked there to see the return of the painting that was now viewed as being the most famous in the world.

Isn’t that interesting? The fame and notoriety of the painting really has little to do with the art itself, but rather with a theft over 100 years ago.  Just think, if those thieves had stolen another unknown painting and left The Mona Lisa there, we might today consider that unknown painting to be the greatest piece of art in the world.

This speaks to the power of storytelling. Specifically, taking an idea, object or product that people aren’t noticing, and marry it to something that’s more interesting. The Mona Lisa was a mostly overlooked Renaissance painting UNTIL it was stolen. The theft of The Mona Lisa gave it a scandalous backstory that interested people. Think about it, before the painting was stolen, it was unknown outside a few French art collectors. After it was stolen, it became the most famous painting in the world. The theft gave The Mona Lisa an interesting story, and that made the painting more interesting as a result.

By taking a ‘boring’ painting and throwing it in the middle of a worldwide scandal, suddenly the painting became far more interesting because it was part of a scandal that was captivating attention around the world.

Remember when in earlier issues of Backstage Pass I talked about how you focus on your customers to build awareness, not your product? It’s the same general idea: The customer isn’t interested in your product, they are interested in themselves. So if you want to create marketing that gets their attention, you focus on the customer. That is what interests them, and when you show them how your product fits into their life, that’s where you gain their interest and attention.

Effective storytelling can be an incredibly powerful form of customer engagement. Consider this 4-minute commercial from Pantene that aired in Thailand:

BIG announcement! Backstage Pass will offer paid issues starting August 1st!

Starting August 1st, Backstage Pass will switch from running 2 free posts a week, to one free post and one paid. The publishing schedule will remain the same, there will be a new issue on Tuesday and Thursday. Tuesday’s issue will continue to be for free subscribers, while the Thursday issue each week will be for paid subscribers.

Another change will be the content. For free subscribers, the content will remain the same, nothing will change other than you will go from getting 2 issues a week to just a Tuesday issue. The content for the paid subscribers will be more in-depth. The free will continue to cover the ‘why’ of customer engagement, while the paid version of Backstage Pass will cover the ‘how’. The paid issues will be longer, more in-depth and will be written for an audience that is ready to implement these tactics at the their own business or working in their role at another company.

A general rule is the free issues will continue to be around 1,000 words an issue, while the paid will be more in the 2,000-2,500 word range.

Topics will including detailed analysis of existing company customer engagement initiatives, such as loyalty programs, brand ambassador programs, customer advisory panels, etc. There will also be detailed how-tos on topics like creating content for each stage of the buyer’s journey, leveraging customer journey mapping, how to integrate AI into your content marketing strategy, etc.

The first paid issue on August 1st will feature a detailed teardown of The North Face’s XPLR Pass loyalty program. I’ll walk you through how the program works, the moving parts, and show you what you can replicate or improve upon for your own customer engagement efforts.

Pricing for the Paid version of Backstage Pass

The pricing will be slightly different than many substacks in a couple of ways.

First, the regular monthly rate is $7.50 a month. But if you commit to an annual subscription, the price dips down to just $60. That’s a 33% discount over the standard monthly rate. I’m doing this to encourage you to invest in a full year of Backstage Pass, because I think the cumulative benefit from a year’s worth of info will really compound for you.

Second, if you subscribe now through the end of the month, you can get an additional 20% off either the monthly or annual rate for life. This is the only time I plan on ever offering a lifetime discount. I wanted to do this because I want to reward the first subscribers who ‘take a chance’ on a relatively new substack with a great deal. So from now till July 31st, the monthly rate is reduced to $6 a month, and the annual rate is $48, which is just $4 a month. Click here to lock in this 20% lifetime discount before July 31st.

The offerings for the paid version of Backstage Pass will continue to evolve over time. In the short-term, I plan on adding subscriber-only chats very soon, and will be incorporating some audio elements to the paid issues, and possibly the free ones as well.

So please check out the paid offering and I’d love have you subscribe, or share the 20% discount offer with a friend or colleague who you feel could benefit from it.

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Mack