The 2024 Olympic Games and Paralympic Games has Paris (and all of France and its territories) in presentation mode. From walking the city to riding the metro and visiting institutions like Monnaie de Paris, the Olympics are on stage. A well-conceived and designed branding campaign adorns famous facades, including government buildings throughout the city. A group of six sculptures, copies of the Venus de Milo by artist Laurent Prebos, have been installed at the steps of l’Assemblée Nationale, France’s Congress. Each sculpture, clad in one of the colors of the LGBT movement, embody an Olympic discipline -- basketball, boxing, javelin, para-archery, surfing and tennis.
The Olympics are arguably one of the most well managed and monetized branded civic experiences worldwide. However, during a recent trip to France’s capital we saw that serving up branded experiences is taking place in some surprising corners of the city.
For example, we were stunned to see l’Assemblée Nationale runs its own boutique – for perspective, this would be akin to a Congress -branded gift shop on Pennsylvania Ave. (truly hard to imagine). The items for sale are also unexpected: from dish towels and toys to mugs with bipartisan messages like Soif de Liberté (Thirst for Freedom) or Votez Pour Moi (Vote For Me). Most carry the red, white, and blue colors of the French flag and an icon representing the Assemblée façade.
A short walk from l’Assemblée and its store are the Tuileries Garden and the Louvre Museum. Both are wonderful civic experiences onto themselves but the real discovery was the Carousel de Louvre, an underground shopping mall next to the Louvre Museum, and more specifically its public restrooms.
PointWC, which runs les toilettes, has found a way to turn the public restroom experience into both a shopping experience (six roles of colored toilet paper for 9.90 Euros) and a designed experience (installations of beautifully arranged colorful toilet paper rolls). We’re waiting for the collaboration with Pantone!
Finally, the Cathédrale Notre-Dame, the grande dame of civic experiences, forced the city to reconsider its presentation after a fire destroyed a good part of the beloved landmark in 2019. When it became evident that the cathedral couldn’t be returned to its full glory in time for the Olympics, officials turned to tactics typically employed by brands – construction enclosures as storytelling opportunity and elevation of craftsmanship, a viewing platform to observe the work and take pictures of progress to post, and an immersive VR experience that also serves as a fundraiser.
While new categories emerge constantly and D2C, B2C and B2B marketing is becoming increasingly blended, the augmentation of the civic experience still provides so much opportunity as well as a common physical canvas in an age of digital fragmentation. Here you can amuse and entertain, provoke dialogue, increase engagement, or educate the body politic with or without an Olympic moment.
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