Au revoir, mes amies

It’s been a long time since Mme. Tremblanc’s Grade 8 French class, but I still dimly recall a handful of words, including: rapidement (fast) and cheval (horse). And fromage (cheese).

I’m hoping fast, horse and cheese will get my friend Courtney and I through the next week in Paris. France wasn’t top of my travel wish list, but the lure of the Prix d’Amerique pushed Paris to the foreground.

After reading fellow blogger Dean Hoffman’s piece in the December 2008 edition of TROT, I was intrigued. After checking out the website, I was hooked.

I’m either way more susceptible to savvy marketing than most people, or just more cognizant of it. Regardless, the marketing folks at the Prix d’Amerique are definitely gunning for my demographic, and they got me hook, line and sinker.

The ultra-hip Prix artwork features a young, mischievous Marie Antoinette at the reins of a majestic Standardbred. The souvenir t-shirts were created by world-famous designer Christian Lacroix. The 30-second TV commercial features the music of Rage Against The Machine. The whole website works bravely from a pink colour palette — maximizing the iconic, rockstar credentials of Marie Antoinette. The overall design of the campaign for this year’s race borrows rather boldly from the design elements of the very cool 2006 film about Marie Antoinette by Sofia Coppola.

Beheaded queens in the sulky. Haute couture track tees. Rock soundtracks. Sexy pink websites . . . all to sell an 88-year-old harness race. It will be fascinating to see how many of the 40,000 fans in attendance fit my demographic (but with better francais).

Assuming we survive the media scrum following the race, we’ll have a blog report for you early next week.

Au revoir!