From April 18-20 L’Oréal brand Garnier Fructis sponsored the Garnier Fructis World Skiing Invitational as part of the eighth annual 10-day Telus World Ski & Snowboard Festival in Whistler, B.C. The invitational, which saw some of the world’s best skiers compete in the Salomon Superpipe and Salomon Big Air contests, was also sponsored by Freeze Magazine and Panasonic.

A look at the festival schedule shows a similarly wide array of sponsors at Whistler’s biggest annual event, from the Ripzone Snowboard Invitational to the DKNY//Jeans Live Outdoor Concert Series, the RBC Olympic FanFair, the Nintendo GameCube Terrain Park, and the Saab Salomon Crossmax Series.

This year’s event had the strongest attendance ever, drawing a total of 260,000 resort visits over 10 days. Festival chairman Doug Perry, of Whistler-based event organizers w1, says 2003 was also a new high-water mark in terms of corporate support. ‘Essentially we’re at capacity for corporate partnerships.’

Strategy caught up with Claude Prevost, VP marketing for Garnier Fructis at Montreal-based L’Oréal Canada, just after his post-event high.

Why did Garnier Fructis choose to sponsor this particular event?

We are not like [sports-gear manufacturers] Salomon or Ripzone so it was an interesting marriage of what the packaged goods business is all about with the core [ski and snowboard] industry. We took a chance and it turned out in our favour.

We knew that Whistler Blackcomb was the mecca of the board/free-skier movement. We knew that from a core values perspective there’s an interesting fit there because you have the same values as Garnier Fructis – free spirit, accessibility, irreverence. We also knew that the free skiing movement is the up-and-coming discovery that will probably be declared the next Olympic sport. It’s all about catching the wave at the right time and surfing it for a good number of years.

Did L’Oréal have any apprehensions when sponsoring this event?

L’Oréal Paris would never do something like this. It’s not consistent at all with the core brand values. What we’re all about at Garnier Fructis is accessibility; being universal in our appeal to consumers. With the Garnier Fructis and Garnier Fructis Style franchises we felt we needed to go out to the people, be more grassroots and have a bit more edge in how we communicate. Only recently has the company been interested in doing something like this. Garnier is basically the street-fighting brand of L’Oréal.

What was Garnier Fructis Style’s presence at the event?

We’re all about styling products so when we first tacked on with the property [in 2002] we were tagging the shampoo. This year we wanted to devise an interesting consumer intercept program to take advantage of the micro-environment. We called it the Style Zone. We set up chairs with kids from the mountain who knew the scene and a bit about hair styling. Not professionals; just average kids. We hired them and taught them about the product attributes. They sat consumers in the chair and got them styled up.

What was the response?

We were booked from opening to closing. The event was meant to be casual but demand was so huge that we would take appointments. We styled over 2,000 people last year and the same this year. It was mostly kids 18 to 24, but we had 54-year-old guys coming out with mohawks after a few cocktails.

Why was the interactive element important?

With kids the question is how do you make yourself relevant within this world that they live in. What we were able to do was give them an interesting coif. It really became part of the socio-cultural vibe of Whistler Blackcomb. When kids are in a tribal mode, they actually challenge themselves and are able to show themselves off to their peers. That’s where they’re able to differentiate themselves from the normality that’s out there.

Interesting – most of the senior ski execs were quite pessimistic about us at first. Garnier? What is this? It’s not [ski-wear company] Orage or Salomon. It’s this mass consumption product. And we actually made it relevant and I think we added an interesting twist.

What were your sales results like?

We still need to do our post-event analysis. Small businesses rely on gut feelings but we at L’Oréal need to demonstrate to upper management and our shareholders that this event had a good payout. The number of samples we gave away, the number of impressions… that all counts towards brand equity, but we are not just looking to have a cool factor. I need to sell a lot of units to offset the costs of this particular promotion. The payout comes when we take the likeness and image of this event and then go to the trade with a promotional offer and the event needs to be very aware of that.

We’re very happy with the property, I think it’s now poised to go to bigger and better things. But I think both Whistler Blackcomb and w1 need to work more closely with their sponsors and with the amount of sponsors. There’s a lot of players. Eventually properties need to wake up and say you know what, we can’t turn our event into a logo storm. We’re doing these kinds of initiatives to break the clutter.

How effective is a title sponsorship? There must be value in the number of media impressions alone.

That doesn’t hold the bar for me. World Skiing Invitational is the logo, right? Not Garnier Fructis. I do not equate any particular type of value anywhere to logo placement on traditional print. It’s all about providing something more.

Overall, were you satisfied with the experience?

In the West it can be difficult to reach kids in the right environment – an environment that has a mixture of sports, music and the right venue, which is Whistler Blackcomb. Getting all those component parts together is quite daunting.

Molson is now out of the Snow Jam and there are no more events of this magnitude. [Toronto/Vancouver experiential youth marketer] MASEV is working on something. There have been a lot of attempts, but this one has the backing of Whistler Blackcomb, the backing of the municipality and of the whole community. It’s basically a fifth season. There used to be nothing going on at this time of year and now there is.

But let’s face it – the event is an opportunity for Whistler economically. It’s a self-financing marketing and public relations and promotional effort because the sponsors foot the bill for it.