(Q - Hogan: Tell me, is there anything in Father Méhus's introduction that can help us, and direct us to the stupidity at the end of the journey?)
MB: Father Méhus, if we take it in its entirety... the story of Father Méhus which was in Max Valentin's mind originally, the introduction to hunting. The story of Pere Méhus, it contains…
No, but Father Méhus taken as a whole... listen, try to understand things simply. You shouldn't... there's no point in building things up endlessly. Father Méhus is the story that a communicator named Régis Hauser came up with to sell his treasure hunt. There are riddles, there's something, I'll give you a little scenario, I'll give you a little presentation text with the right words, the chosen words that get the adrenaline pumping in the reader who says to himself: “Wah, treasure hunt, I'll find it”.. it's not that complicated, I'll go there, I'll look”. This is the job of the communicator.
He created this in the late 70s, after discovering Masquerade. This is the exact chronology of the facts.
Then, when we started putting together this golden owl story, Max Valentin went back to his copy, corrected his copy, rectified his copy, et cetera.
But what is interesting in the story of Father Méhu...I think we should not go further than that: it is revealing of the initial intention.
A communicator imagines, after reading Masquerade, after seeing the score that Masquerade achieved: more than 1 million copies sold and so on.
Well, you should know that when we talk about Masquerade, you have to understand: the Anglo-Saxons are very fond of treasure hunting. So when in the 70s your plane, you were traveling, your plane landed in London, you were given the Masquerade book with a little researcher's kit, a compass and cool stuff. There was really very well orchestrated communication around Masquerade and that really struck Max Valentin, who said to himself: “it’s an extraordinary marketing product and I’m going to create my own puzzles, and I’m going to try to sell my product to customers”.
So he imagined this scenario of Father Méhus around the first enigmas, of what became the Golden Owl and what was originally, indeed, the egg of Father Méhus.
So, through this, we must see the advertiser's intention, the way in which he initially planned to sell his product. You should never think that you are dealing with someone whose vocation was to create treasure hunts, this is not the case. Max Valentin was an advertiser whose vocation was to sell communication campaigns to clients who paid the highest possible price.
And so this hunt for Father Méhus’s egg was an extrapolation of Masquerade, he said to himself: “That’s a good thing. I should be able to do something with that.” And he created the egg of Father Méhus, He wrote, drafted this scenario of Father Méhus. You have to see his intention, you have to read it, how and what words, what term, what expressions, precisely, he was able to choose to get the reader's adrenaline pumping.
The reader in this case must have been a decision-maker, a business manager who said..., who responded to Régis Hauser: “OK, I buy your product, your treasure hunt, how much does it cost? We will sell my product through this”; and therefore everything that was written at that time was oriented from a communicator's business perspective. This is what we can say about the story of Father Méhus.
(Q - ??: So, do you think there are errors in it or not?)
MB: But no, there is no mistake, there must be an intention. The story of Father Méhus, it's an intention, it's how Régis Hauser, communicator...I have today in my archives, I have a binder which is marked, which is printed: "Grizzard- Hauser, Europe”; that was the title of Régis Hauser's consulting firm, at the time I knew him, so in 92. 1 year before the launch of the owl. He was a communicator, so what you read in the story of Father Méhus is the work of a communicator who constructs a scenario for a sponsor, a client who owns a brand, who must sell a produced through a treasure hunt. So it’s a scenario built to encourage potential customers to get into the story, to be interested in this hunt and to get into it… there you go
(Q - ??: I agree about the scenario. But, for the puzzles themselves, were there little things that he corrected because were there calculation errors, or things like that or is it more that he tweaked it?)
MB: If I want to be honest with you, Max Valentin's only problem was knowing how long the hunt would last. When we sell a product to a sponsor, which was the case with the Chouette d'Or, we sell the concept of a treasure hunt, so we tell someone who is going to throw away a bunch of money, we tell them : ”Dude, do you want to launch your brand? I am proposing an operation that will be publicized, a treasure hunt that will interest as many people as possible, etc. These are the components, this is how we are going to interest people and this is what part we can get from it at the brand level.”
So Max Valentin's only problem, when we launched the operation, was to say how long will it last? He did the kakou and arrived: “yeah there, I have calibrated the flush, I am going to correct a few things, I am going to calibrate it so that it lasts this long”. At the time he said that, he was completely incapable of controlling this parameter. He was totally unable to say, the hunt will last 6 months, a year, 2 years, 3 years, 6 years, 30 years. He couldn't say it.
He had no possibility, no parameter in hand that could allow him to say, this is how I have calibrated the hunt, this is how long it will last. It was impossible, he had no precedent. He had no parameters to attach to to say, this is how we are going to do it and this is how long it will last, so he told us...
(Q - ??: In 2023, we’re still not there).
MB: Yes, but I remember these meetings, the three of us were with Hervé, my friend, who should have been the sponsor, with Régis, the three of us were, we were in a magnificent office. I was the one who did the decor, so this office was fabulous. Well, we were talking and he was there telling us: “well, I’m going to take a certain number of parameters, I’m going to calibrate the flush, it shouldn’t last much longer, etc.” Wait, I had never heard of treasure hunting, my friend Hervé, he had never heard of it, we didn't know what we were talking about and as for Max Valentin / Régis Hauser, he didn't had never gone on a treasure hunt, so he had done 1 surprise rally. He wasn't an expert in surprises, had he done 1?
And he told us: “I’m going to calibrate the flush, I’m going to correct it a little, it shouldn’t last any longer, it’s going to last that long.” but the guy was talking to us like a good salesman, like a Camelot.
(Q - Blackbeard - Yeah but precisely, in relation to that, there weren't several possibilities for hiding places, places to...?)
MB: (laughing) But... it was 1992, he didn't know! He had imagined the thing in relation to Masquerade and he said to himself “damn, there's money to be made with this, it's a good thing, it's a good idea”. Period.
When I say period, I mean period. That is to say, he knew nothing more. He was unable to say: “it will last 3 months, 6 months”. We believed him when he said: “Okay, I calibrated the thing, I corrected it a little. It will last about 3 years. We're going to make sure that... thing” but that's why I'm telling you today, but in all simplicity, in all honesty: understand it; in this Max Valentin treasure hunt, he said to himself: ""At some point I'm going to give an additional indication, I'm going to do the little sting that goes well and the guys will find it. And if I don’t do the piquouse Well, they’ll never find what.”
MB: Father Méhus, if we take it in its entirety... the story of Father Méhus which was in Max Valentin's mind originally, the introduction to hunting. The story of Pere Méhus, it contains…
No, but Father Méhus taken as a whole... listen, try to understand things simply. You shouldn't... there's no point in building things up endlessly. Father Méhus is the story that a communicator named Régis Hauser came up with to sell his treasure hunt. There are riddles, there's something, I'll give you a little scenario, I'll give you a little presentation text with the right words, the chosen words that get the adrenaline pumping in the reader who says to himself: “Wah, treasure hunt, I'll find it”.. it's not that complicated, I'll go there, I'll look”. This is the job of the communicator.
He created this in the late 70s, after discovering Masquerade. This is the exact chronology of the facts.
Then, when we started putting together this golden owl story, Max Valentin went back to his copy, corrected his copy, rectified his copy, et cetera.
But what is interesting in the story of Father Méhu...I think we should not go further than that: it is revealing of the initial intention.
A communicator imagines, after reading Masquerade, after seeing the score that Masquerade achieved: more than 1 million copies sold and so on.
Well, you should know that when we talk about Masquerade, you have to understand: the Anglo-Saxons are very fond of treasure hunting. So when in the 70s your plane, you were traveling, your plane landed in London, you were given the Masquerade book with a little researcher's kit, a compass and cool stuff. There was really very well orchestrated communication around Masquerade and that really struck Max Valentin, who said to himself: “it’s an extraordinary marketing product and I’m going to create my own puzzles, and I’m going to try to sell my product to customers”.
So he imagined this scenario of Father Méhus around the first enigmas, of what became the Golden Owl and what was originally, indeed, the egg of Father Méhus.
So, through this, we must see the advertiser's intention, the way in which he initially planned to sell his product. You should never think that you are dealing with someone whose vocation was to create treasure hunts, this is not the case. Max Valentin was an advertiser whose vocation was to sell communication campaigns to clients who paid the highest possible price.
And so this hunt for Father Méhus’s egg was an extrapolation of Masquerade, he said to himself: “That’s a good thing. I should be able to do something with that.” And he created the egg of Father Méhus, He wrote, drafted this scenario of Father Méhus. You have to see his intention, you have to read it, how and what words, what term, what expressions, precisely, he was able to choose to get the reader's adrenaline pumping.
The reader in this case must have been a decision-maker, a business manager who said..., who responded to Régis Hauser: “OK, I buy your product, your treasure hunt, how much does it cost? We will sell my product through this”; and therefore everything that was written at that time was oriented from a communicator's business perspective. This is what we can say about the story of Father Méhus.
(Q - ??: So, do you think there are errors in it or not?)
MB: But no, there is no mistake, there must be an intention. The story of Father Méhus, it's an intention, it's how Régis Hauser, communicator...I have today in my archives, I have a binder which is marked, which is printed: "Grizzard- Hauser, Europe”; that was the title of Régis Hauser's consulting firm, at the time I knew him, so in 92. 1 year before the launch of the owl. He was a communicator, so what you read in the story of Father Méhus is the work of a communicator who constructs a scenario for a sponsor, a client who owns a brand, who must sell a produced through a treasure hunt. So it’s a scenario built to encourage potential customers to get into the story, to be interested in this hunt and to get into it… there you go
(Q - ??: I agree about the scenario. But, for the puzzles themselves, were there little things that he corrected because were there calculation errors, or things like that or is it more that he tweaked it?)
MB: If I want to be honest with you, Max Valentin's only problem was knowing how long the hunt would last. When we sell a product to a sponsor, which was the case with the Chouette d'Or, we sell the concept of a treasure hunt, so we tell someone who is going to throw away a bunch of money, we tell them : ”Dude, do you want to launch your brand? I am proposing an operation that will be publicized, a treasure hunt that will interest as many people as possible, etc. These are the components, this is how we are going to interest people and this is what part we can get from it at the brand level.”
So Max Valentin's only problem, when we launched the operation, was to say how long will it last? He did the kakou and arrived: “yeah there, I have calibrated the flush, I am going to correct a few things, I am going to calibrate it so that it lasts this long”. At the time he said that, he was completely incapable of controlling this parameter. He was totally unable to say, the hunt will last 6 months, a year, 2 years, 3 years, 6 years, 30 years. He couldn't say it.
He had no possibility, no parameter in hand that could allow him to say, this is how I have calibrated the hunt, this is how long it will last. It was impossible, he had no precedent. He had no parameters to attach to to say, this is how we are going to do it and this is how long it will last, so he told us...
(Q - ??: In 2023, we’re still not there).
MB: Yes, but I remember these meetings, the three of us were with Hervé, my friend, who should have been the sponsor, with Régis, the three of us were, we were in a magnificent office. I was the one who did the decor, so this office was fabulous. Well, we were talking and he was there telling us: “well, I’m going to take a certain number of parameters, I’m going to calibrate the flush, it shouldn’t last much longer, etc.” Wait, I had never heard of treasure hunting, my friend Hervé, he had never heard of it, we didn't know what we were talking about and as for Max Valentin / Régis Hauser, he didn't had never gone on a treasure hunt, so he had done 1 surprise rally. He wasn't an expert in surprises, had he done 1?
And he told us: “I’m going to calibrate the flush, I’m going to correct it a little, it shouldn’t last any longer, it’s going to last that long.” but the guy was talking to us like a good salesman, like a Camelot.
(Q - Blackbeard - Yeah but precisely, in relation to that, there weren't several possibilities for hiding places, places to...?)
MB: (laughing) But... it was 1992, he didn't know! He had imagined the thing in relation to Masquerade and he said to himself “damn, there's money to be made with this, it's a good thing, it's a good idea”. Period.
When I say period, I mean period. That is to say, he knew nothing more. He was unable to say: “it will last 3 months, 6 months”. We believed him when he said: “Okay, I calibrated the thing, I corrected it a little. It will last about 3 years. We're going to make sure that... thing” but that's why I'm telling you today, but in all simplicity, in all honesty: understand it; in this Max Valentin treasure hunt, he said to himself: ""At some point I'm going to give an additional indication, I'm going to do the little sting that goes well and the guys will find it. And if I don’t do the piquouse Well, they’ll never find what.”