Paris 2024 Runway Olympics: Country-of-origin branding and lessons for filial cannibal Nigeria

IKEM OKUHU

Ikem Okuhu, a journalist, author, PR professional, brand strategist and teacher, is the CEO of BRANDish, publishers of BRANDish, Nigeria’s first nationally circulating Brands and Marketing magazine. He has a career that has traversed print media, oil & gas, banking and entrepreneurship. Ikem is the author of the book, “PITCH: Debunking Marketing’s Strongest Myths”, a dispassionate exposition of the dos and don’ts of successful engagement in the marketplace, especially the Nigerian marketplace. He can be reached on + 234 8095121535 (text only) or brandishauthority@gmail.com

In the wake of the embarrassing and, if I may add, needless dispute between Dangote Refinery and the Nigerian government as represented by the NNPC Limited, the Paris Olympics arrived with a basket of lessons on country-of-origin branding that I feel this country and its leaders should learn from.

I recognise the fact that my nation, especially at the leadership level, is hard at hearing, most times for no reason. Still, it is worth presenting how France provided great leverage for French businesses by exploiting the opportunity of the 2024 Olympic Games.

I was almost led to admire the creativity behind the street carnival format adopted for the opening ceremony of the 2024 Games until I saw the ingenious marketing goals that compelled the host nation to abandon the traditional stadium venue for a city-wide street and sea showcase.

Paris is one of the world’s fashion capitals, competing with cities like New York, London, and Milan. A 2024 report gave the French capital the number one spot for leading fashion capitals; the city is the headquarters of more than 30 major labels, and combined with its gourmet traditions, has earned the reputation as a major destination of choice in the world.

With many major world cities sweating to win tourism dollars, and with new destinations, especially in Saudi-Qatar-UAE axis increasingly drawing attention, France went into the hosting of this year’s Olympics to sample its fashion and tourism opportunities to the world. A lot of the opening ceremonies were held at the Eiffel Tower. The final act, which had renowned singer, Celine Dion enchant the world with one of her best renditions took place on this tower which stands out as the pillar of Parisian tourism. The athletes taking part in the Games did their parade on boats that sailed down the popular 777-kilometre-long Seine River. Nearly all the major points of tourism in Paris, from the Champ de Elysee to the Golden Triangle, were fully showcased in ways that had the 2.9 billion people who watched the opening ceremony around the world drooling.

Ahead of the Games, France nearly erupted in protestations when the citizens cried out against a whopping $1.5 billion budgeted to clean the River Seine in preparation for the opening ceremony. Many citizens felt it was so many dollars drowned in the river, but the government of Emmanuel Macron focused on the purpose. It knew that a tourism fillip to the tourism and fashion industries in France would repay that investment in little or no time.

You see, France did not spend the huge sum it invested in the Olympics merely for global sportsmanship. Neither did it do so because the Games espouses love in a world riddled with strife and war. This country was thinking about economics.

Every year, about 50 million tourists pour into this country, with nearly all of them ending up in the capital, Paris. Since the coronavirus pandemic, visits dropped, but by 2023, the number of arrivals has soared, reaching a high of 47 million. The 2024 forecast expects a return to the 50 million visitor mark, boosted by the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

France’s tourism economy is rated the highest in the world by Forbes, which, in an article published on January 20, 2023, also puts earnings from this sector at more than $36 billion per annum. Every year, France earns.

Added to tourism, France, according to data from Statista, will earn $16.63 billion from fashion in 2024 alone with revenue expected to show an annual growth rate of 6.51 percent, resulting in a projected market volume of $22.80 billion by 2029.

With what happened at the opening ceremony of the 2024 Olympics, one can safely predict that this country will surpass every projection.

This was chiefly why every place of potential tourism lure in Paris was grafted into the opening ceremony. No stadium in the world could have told the sort of story this country told about itself. Every bridge and every street became a fashion runway where choreographed troupes strutted catwalks in voluptuous dance routines, with the models adorning the exaggerated costumes you can see only in fashion shows.

France was speaking to the world through the mirrors of the industries that constitute her bragging rights in the comity of fashion and tourism nations.

While countrymen were protesting what was thought to be the wasteful cleaning of the River Seine, France looked around in search of how to either reduce the cost for the prosecution of the entire games or even totally absorb it. It did not take long to locate one of her biggest fashion houses, LVMH.

LVMH is the largest luxury conglomerate in France and is home to high-end labels like Louis Vuitton, Dior, Chaumet, and Tiffany & Co., is the premium partner for this year’s iteration, marking the first time that a high-fashion company has backed the elite sporting competition. The sponsorship, which reportedly cost $163 million, has previously belonged to less-glamorous megabrands like Visa, Procter & Gamble, and General Electric. LVMH’s coup means its suite of deluxe, heavyweight labels will be showing up throughout the Games in all sorts of inventive ways, giving the most-watched sporting event a high-end makeover that feels particularly fitting for its host city.

For $163 million, France not only opened the entire City of Paris as an exclusive merchandising platform for LVMH but also opened a window through which the entire world was immersed in the veritable brand that the company represents. More importantly is the first-of-a-kind opportunity that enabled the brand to enwrap the sacred totems of the Olympics locked and revealed in specially crafted Louis Vuitton boxes.

The Olympic torches that toured the city of Paris were all locked in LV boxes and the cinematography was intentionally worked to showcase this to the world. Before the celebrity torch bearers took charge, the masked athlete who ran with the torch around the city was also shown travelling through such places as LV headquarters and the factories where craftsmen were working on products such as shoes and other stuff that make the sponsor such a valuable brand across the world.

In addition to these, it has also been understood that all the medals to be won during the games would be presented, locked in LVMH boxes. Even the Gold, Silver, and Bronze would be presented on specially designed and branded trays bearing the name of the sponsor.

There are about 329 events that will take place at this year’s Games. What this means is that at least 987 medals bearing the name of the brand will be presented to athletes during the event. Add that to some sports like boxing and judo which allows multiple bronze medals and you will realise that LV and/or LVMH would be on close to 1,000 medals to be given to athletes who would carry them home and, with the active collaboration of their various governments, cities, and families would continue the immersion.

To cap it up, the medals themselves were also designed by an LVMH company, Chaumet and you can be sure they wouldn’t miss the chance to embed their brand on the ultimate prizes.

In an interview with American network, CNN ahead of the sporting fiesta, chairman and CEO of LVMH, Pietro Beccari spoke of how much alignment the brand and the Olympic Games shared.

“We talked about excellence, we spoke about quality, we spoke about being prepared for every challenge, and that is something that is very close to our heart,” he stated.

What Beccari did not say was how much value his business is getting from such an alignment.

If the gap between LVMH and other major brands in the world of fashion begins to widen during and after the games, it will be down to the clever marketing behind the sponsorship. And you can be sure the company will not remove its foot on the pedal until the next four years when another city would host the global event.

As for France, I do not think there has been any city that made profits from hosting the Olympics beyond global influence with a little showcase of tourism here and there. But France took a different path that is very likely going to spike tourism income while also cementing its position as the world’s haute couture numero uno with its endless opportunities to grow its industries in its economy.

Imagine if France and her leaders were as binary as those in Nigeria and allowed inexplicably narrow thinking to drive the 2024 Olympics hosting activities: They would most likely have had what many could still have seen as a spectacular showpiece inside one of their stadia. The world would still have applauded and gone ahead to watch the sporting activities like the ones before it.

But France thought differently. It thought about using the platform of the world’s biggest sporting event to do business. It selected one of its strongest exports as a partner. There was no thought about who the founder of LVMH is and whether he is from the north of France, Monaco, or the city of Paris. The possibility of LVMH becoming bigger and riding roughshod on everyone else was also not out for consideration. The country did not surreptitiously and openly recruit agencies of state to belittle her flag carriers.

This is why what has been going on between the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, the other agency we did not know much about until now, Nigeria Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) on the one hand, and Dangote Refining and Petrochemicals Limited is disgraceful. What does the federal government stand to benefit should they succeed in ruining the opportunity this newly established project has to join the league of companies that are adding value to crude oil through refining?

Given the support granted to Dangote all through the construction of the $20 billion refinery, people have begun to wonder what the business and its owner suddenly did wrong to necessitate the desperate attacks against it by no other people than the industry regulators under whose supervision, a dizzying N11.35 trillion was spent between 2010 and 2023 on turnaround maintenance of the publicly-owned refineries in the country without getting a pint of diesel.

If LVMH was a Nigerian brand, one wouldn’t have been surprised if agencies of government hired some of the itinerant tailors and cobblers that roam the streets of Nigeria to sew a Louis Vuitton or Dior emblem on one of their contraptions just to make the point that those are companies reputed for poor quality.

I do not think Dangote is so loved by ordinary Nigerians, but there are things a nation should not do against businesses engaging the world from within its boundaries – It amounts to culpable diplomatic evil. In the part of the country where I come from, it is forbidden for a close or even distant family member to inform a suitor about the nature of the family he is coming to marry into; let the suitor widen his search and get the information he needs from outsiders.

What the NNPC and NMDPRA are doing to Dangote, and if I must add, what agencies at the nation’s airport attempted to do to Air Peace following the commencement of its Lagos – London flight operations were nothing short of filial cannibalism – a queer situation where an animal eats its offspring. Only a few animals like pigs do this and it happens mostly when the animal is starved of food soon after farrowing. The presence of food however prevents this.

The Niger Delta region of Nigeria has been exposed to horrifying environmental degradation in the course of oil exploration. However, it took years of struggle before the governments of the countries of origin of the multinational oil companies began to speak about the damages done to the environment by these businesses.

Dangote hasn’t done anything like this, at least yet. Air Peace did not commit any crime except being a Nigerian company that joined a business with its main value proposition being to reduce air fares on international routes. Yet, agencies of government are fighting, rather than encouraging them.

It is hard to understand.

The Paris Olympics are here. As our government waits for our athletes’ return with Louis Vuitton-branded medals, the weeks intervening before then should be invested in learning from what France did.

If, as many of them do, their tastes for foreign designer label items increase, let them know that the key enabler was the Paris 2024 Olympics and that their taste buds for those labels were inspired by the government of France supporting brands like LVMH.

• business a.m. commits to publishing a diversity of views, opinions and comments. It, therefore, welcomes your reaction to this and any of our articles via email: comment@businessamlive.com