I had my weekly meeting with a group of young girls I mentor last week, and we had a discussion about women and slavery. One of the girls, Cynthia, was doing a book report on the lives of African women during the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.
Being the history buff that I am, I began telling the girls about Sarah Forbes Bonetta, a young girl of Yoruba descent originally named Aina from an area that now part of south-west Nigeria. As a child, she was orphaned by a war between her family’s clan, the Yewa, and the more dominate King Ghezo and his Kingdom of Dahomey. Sarah was captured by the Dahomans and was going to be killed.
But her life was saved in 1849 by an intervention by British naval officer Frederick Forbes, who was there to negotiate the end of the slave trade. Although Britain officially ended the slave trade in 1807, both West Africans and Europeans participated in illegal trade for many years after. Apparently King Ghezo gave Sarah to Forbes as a gift to Queen Victoria. According to Forbes, Ghezo said, “She would be a present from the King of the Blacks to the Queen of the Whites.” A year later, Forbes renamed the girl Sarah Forbes Bonetta after himself and his ship HMS Bonetta.
Forbes said this about Sarah: “She is a perfect genius; she now speaks English well, and [has] great talent for music… She is far in advance of any white child of her age in aptness of learning, and strength of mind and affection…”
She was brought to England, where she immediately impressed the Queen so much that she made Sarah her goddaughter. Sarah lived a short and but interesting life, as you will see in the video below.
Behind every great man… is an even greater woman! Karl Benz is best known as the German engineer who invented the world’s first patented automobile – Patent-Motorwagen No. 3 – to use a one-cylinder internal combustion engine and a single forward gear. But the world probably wouldn’t have known about his revolutionary machine without the help of his wife, Bertha Benz, who helped usher in the modern marketing industry.
If there was ever one story about a woman making things happen for a man, it would be this one. While Karl Benz was a genius when it came to car making, he was really bad at money management and making sound business decisions. After a number of failed business ventures and with the support of his wife’s family wealth, Benz was able to form the industrial machinery company Benz & Cie in 1883. When the company became a success, Benz was able to focus his energy on building the horseless carriage.
However, it soon became apparent that Benz was also bad at marketing. The first few public demonstrations of his automobile went badly, with one demonstration ending with the car crashing into a wall, and the crash terrified onlookers.
Benz also didn’t get much support from higher authorities either. German Kaiser Wilhelm I felt that replacing cars were stupid and unpatriotic. Even many church leaders at the time felt that cars were the work of the devil! Benz also faced competition from another German innovator Gottlieb Daimler, who was working on his own version of the automobile.
Enter Bertha Benz. She didn’t feel that her husband was properly marketing his invention, as she saw great potential in his work. In August 1888, Benz took the car out for a drive with her two sons without her husband’s permission and travelled to her mother’s home 60 miles away. This seemingly simple drive was pretty radical at the time, as she became the first person to drive an automobile long distance and bring worldwide attention to it.
Along the route as Benz drove, many eyewitnesses were surprised by how safe the automobile seemed to be. While many onlookers were shocked to see such a machine roll down the road, much less one driven by a woman (OMG!); nonetheless, Patent-Motowagen received the attention and press Benz hoped she would see.
Along the journey, Benz was also the mechanic. During the trip Benz had to stop at a pharmacy to refuel with petroleum ether, and that pharmacy became the world’s first gas station. With the help of a blacksmith, Benz fixed a chain and the brakes in the automobile and cleaned the fuel pipe with a hairpin. Benz is widely credited for inventing brake pads.
A few days later, Benz travelled home a different route so more people could see the invention. Upon getting home, Benz discovered that the automobile couldn’t travel uphill, as she and her sons had to push it up steep routes. This forced her husband to create the world’s first gear system.
And the rest, as they say, is history. Sales for the patent went straight through the roof almost immediately due to the publicity and Benz & Cie became the world’s largest and most profitable automobile company within 10 years.
The lesson here: creating a innovative, strategic marketing campaign around demonstrating how a product is used is the best form of marketing.
So the next time someone says that women can’t drive or fix their cars, tell them about Bertha Benz!
I had my weekly meeting with a group of young girls I mentor last week, and we had a discussion about women and slavery. One of the girls, Cynthia, was doing a book report on the lives of African women during the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.
