The Paris Olympics

The 2024 Paris Olympics served up a sincerely odd blend of elite athleticism and sheer spectacle, with antics that will be remembered just as fondly as the feats of strength and speed. It was brash, bold, occasionally bizarre, often beautiful and somehow the most French thing the world’s ever seen even when they weren’t trying.

The Games started and ended with a bang, as French metal band Gojira belted an ear-melting rendition of?Ah! ?a Ira?to kickstart what was certainly the horniest opening ceremony on record, before a flying-piano and swan-diving Tom Cruise closed things off.

But what happened in between was nothing short of unforgettable, for better or worse. Snoop Dogg as the unofficial mascot. Swimming in the Seine. Not swimming in the Seine. Swimming in the Seine, again. A pole-vaulter cockblocking himself. Kim Ye-ji singlehandedly making shooting feel cool after 233 years of American brand damage. The Noah Lyles photo finish. Imane Khelif fighting for her dignity. Simone Biles in all her glory. An Aussie Hockey player busted buying bags. Kaylee McKeown’s glasses.?

Raygun.

Amid the fun, the athletes delivered jaw-dropping performances, shattered records and created new legends. But what made these Games truly special was how they captured the spirit of Paris, where elegance meets eccentricity and tradition dances with the avant-garde. In a city known for its art, fashion, and?joie de vivre, the 2024 Olympics have shown that even the world’s most prestigious sporting event can be a canvas for not just creativity, but pure and utter chaos. This year’s antics served as a reminder that the Olympics are as much about human expression as they are about competition.

1. Act

UP SHIT CREEK WITHOUT A MEDAL

A classic case of art vs. science

If we’re looking at Paris as a legacy brand, and the Olympic Games as one big campaign for it, it makes sense to draw on as much of the city’s culture as possible. Twirling together sport, art and history in a way that few other countries could, Paris drew on the city’s plethora of majorly famous landmarks as cinematic backdrops to sporting events. Equestrian at Versailles! Fencing at the Grand Palais! Archery at the Esplanade! Beach volleyball under the Eiffel Tower! Could one get any more French than that? ?

Then there was the most ambitious plan of all: to hold the swimming portion of the triathlon events in the Seine. On paper this is all very good. Very logical. Very?THE THEME, no? The event involves swimming (tick!). The Seine is an Extremely French Thing that is made of water (tick!). Yet the reality was less straightforward.

While swimming events were held in Seine for the 1900 Olympics, swimming in the city section of the 770km river has been banned for over a century, due to boating pollution and it being full of literal shit. And while it was confidently announced as early as 2015 that the Seine would be de-polluted to swimmable levels in time for the 2024 Games, it became pretty clear close to the moment that perhaps organisers had underestimated the task at hand.?

Despite alarming levels of bacteria just weeks — days — out from the event, organisers remained adamant that the show would go on. On 30 July 30, 1.4 billion Euros, two well-documented publicity dips by city officials and a bit of heavy rain later, triathlon events were postponed due to water quality issues. It was announced that, worst case scenario, the swimming part would be scratched and the race would go ahead as a duathlon instead of a triathlon. Which sort of defeats the point, don’t you think? But then: a miracle. Kind of. On 31 August, the triathlon went ahead.?

But at what cost? Read the full issue to find out.

2. Explain

SNOOP IS OMNIPRESENT

At first, we thought it was an Opening Ceremony thing. A host? A celebrity torch holder? But then he was everywhere. Having the best time. Horse crip walking into the Equestrian event. Swimming with Michael Phelps. Watching the skateboarding finals with Tony Hawk.?

But how the hell does Brand Snoop explain itself as an entirely relevant inclusion across all these sports?

Because he can. If you’ve been anywhere on the internet in the past decade, you would be somewhat aware of Snoop’s slow and conscious undertaking of any event, sport, tech or franchise that he can get his hands on. He is known and loved for his proclivity to do anything for money: that smokeless BBQ, Corona, 19 Crimes wine, Old Navy, Burger King, he’s made appearances in Bollywood films, he’s the most featured rapper of all time at 581 guest verses, from Big Time Rush to Nü Metal.?

If anything, his nondiscriminatory approach to securing the bag is consistent. And consistency begets authenticity. He’s a hustler. He always has been. People love him for it. Not in a tacky, money-hungry, losing-the-limelight sort of way, but in the way only Snoop knows how: with the grace of someone with a genuine interest in?things.?

He streams himself gaming on Twitch, loves a plethora of sports, has launched a gaming company (Death Row Games), bakes with Martha Stewart, and - as of three years ago – has previously spoken on the Olympics,?famously co-commentating?with Kevin Hart at the Tokyo 2020 Equestrian event.

So, it’s little wonder NBC took him to Paris as a “special correspondent” banking a cool $US500,000 a day for his appearances.?

It’s worked! Views were up. Engagement across the admittedly-already-sports-crazed US was up, with an audience average of 34 million viewers. Snoop was cast as the “unofficial US mascot” (and rightly so), but his global antics and adoration left people wondering if he may in fact have been the unofficial mascot of the entire Paris Games.

Was he actually an abridging message for the handover to LA in 2028?

More on that here in the full issue.

3. Amplify

Hell hath no fury like a disgruntled French person. And considering the human tendency to tell, say, one person about a good experience and as many as possible about a bad one, coupled with the French tendency?to complain for the fun of it,?it’s little wonder that Shit In The Seine went as viral as it did.

The campaign, if one could be so generous as to call it a campaign, is a fantastic example of the fact that there are people behind the platforms. That last series you binged on a streamer: was it because you saw a social ad for it, or because all your friends were talking about it? We know the answer. Ads work, but they really form part of a much more layered system of meaning making and influence that drives decision making.?

All this to say: the Paris organisers found it so difficult to push shit up the river, because they forgot one thing: a city talks. We were in Paris the very weekend Macron threatened to swim in the city’s fecal waters, and you didn’t have to log on to know that Paris was threatening to shit in the Seine if he did. You only had to walk into a boulangerie, sit at a bar, or ask someone for a lighter. It was the talk of the bloody town. The point? Again, an Olympics?for?the city means that people must be at the heart of it all. And people like to gossip.?

The takeaway? It's all in the full issue!

THEN THERE'S RAYGUN.

Raygun's breakdancing performance has become a viral sensation, but not exactly in the way she'd hoped. We assume. Part of us is still holding out for the one-in-a-million chance this was elite social satire. Her unconventional routine, which has been likened to a five-year-old in a pool, a dog losing its mind in a fresh patch of grass, and at least three Chris Lilley characters, quickly became meme fodder shared across pretty much the whole modern internetscape, from meme pages all the way to?Late Night Talk Shows?and an Adele performance.?

Say what you will about Raygun and whether her place was deserved or an example of entitlement, but don’t miss the lesson here: sometimes when your message is amplified in unanticipated ways, leaning in rather than fighting against it can yield spectacular results.

No, not all publicity is good publicity.?Seriously. But that doesn’t mean all seemingly negative media has to have a bad result, and it certainly doesn’t mean you have to play things by the book.

The key is to first seriously audit the impact on your core business functions. Is this having a detrimental impact on the team’s safety? Stakeholder confidence? Your ability to sell product? Sometimes you might be surprised that the actual answer is “No”, or at least, something like a slight shareholder wobble is superseded by massive growth in an unexpected category. The best real-world example of this we’ve seen is?how Banco de Bogota handled a recent crisis.

Back to Raygun: the initial onslaught was brutal. But did she hang her head in shame? Absolutely not. She leant into the joke and managed to find a positive message to align herself with; in doing so, she encouraged people to be their authentic selves and do what they love. The fact so many at home now love her is no coincidence. She has chosen to represent values many Australians identify with and in so doing, turned potential embarrassment into a moment of charm.?

Raygun almost immediately got herself back out there on?The Inspired Unemployed?Instagram and led the dancing at the Closing Ceremony parade with fellow Aussie athletes. Last time we checked, she was about to hit 100,000 followers on Instagram and likely by the time this is sent, she’ll be well over. That’s impressive compared to the 4,000 she had at the start of the Games.

She may have missed the gold, the silver, the bronze, or a single point but Raygun may very well be headed for the Australian canon, right next to a succulent Chinese meal.

Picks & Recs

This issue’s Picks & Recs is brought to you by SKMG’s own creative mastermind and COMMPRESS visuals guy, Benny, who covered the history of the Olympics from a design perspective. It's worth seeing in all it's glory in the full issue.

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