Selling the Games: Paris 2024

As Paris gears up to host the 2024 Summer Olympics, the City of Light begins to transform into a sports paradise. Although Paris is already a popular travel destination, they are trying to make it synonymous with its historical landmarks and bring forth the beauty of their city even more. In the months leading up to the Olympics, many tourist attractions and historical sites (where some events will be hosted) will close down for renovations. Even now, there is scaffolding up in lots of popular areas with Paris 2024 banners spread across. Everywhere you turn in the city, you are reminded of the Games taking place soon.

A criticism in the past has been the lack of sustainability surrounding Olympic infrastructure that is often developed to accommodate large spectator crowds. Most notably, stadiums in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, have been left abandoned since the Olympics, mainly due to high maintenance costs and a lack of necessity for them. In an effort to promote a culture of sustainability, 95% of the games will be hosted in already existing infrastructure. There will only be one new building created–an aquatic center that will be solar-powered and features the use of recycled materials and bio-based building materials. The housing for the athlete villages has also been pledged to be turned into affordable housing after the games.

Paris is clearly anticipating the importance that digital marketing and social media will play in the promotion of the city and these games. By having almost all of the events take place in established stadiums and historical sites, the Games will be advertisement to not only the 15 million expected attendees but also the billions of people worldwide who will either watch it on traditional television channels or social media.

As the first in-person summer games since the pandemic (when TikTok really took off), it is expected that the platform will be seeing a lot of Games content, which is great for marketers to understand and leverage.

Ways brands can leverage the Games this summer:

Influencer marketing

This shouldn’t come as a shock as influencer marketing has begun reaching its peak in popularity, however, it is important to keep in mind things such as brand alignment to ensure that brands are sponsoring the athletes that make sense and fit their goals/target audience
Athletes have the ability to create exclusive behind-the-scenes and ‘get ready with me’ content that many are curious to see

Discovery

Brands can partner with lesser known athletes/events and still have a large impact–simply because of the large amount of traffic that the games will generate
Many people use TikTok as a way to discover new things and as a brand, the earlier you can spot a trend and hop on it before it is ‘cool’ the more influence you can build in that sector

You may be wondering why they’re so focused on marketing Paris if it is already one of the most popular tourist destinations out there? While that is true, the fact that the surfing events will be taking place in Tahiti, French Polynesia, might explain this a little more. Although Paris is a very popular tourist destination, it is also the French capital and holds thousands of years of French history. That, alongside modern French culture, is what I believe they are trying to market and bring forth to mass audiences. Even as a well-known country, not many people take the time to see and understand the historical sites and cultural heritage Paris (and subsequently, France) has to offer. The Olympic stage is one of the biggest in the world and what better way to showcase a culture than to put it at the forefront of everything?