Alun Thorne: Hollow victory reveals much

Mar 4 2010 By Alun Thorne

It was on the beach at Cannes that the world was first introduced to the ‘mankini’.

Sasha Baron Cohen wore the terrifying apparel during the French city’s film festival as part of his marketing campaign for his Borat film and the illuminous yellow man-thong thing has now become a prerequisite for every self-respecting stag do.

Like much of Cohen’s repertoire, it was marketing genius – a stunt that left an indelible, if unwanted, scar on every right-thinking person’s psyche.

Perhaps that is where property consultancy Drivers Jonas has been going wrong over all these years after recently falling foul of the French courts in an unseemly row over its marketing strategy at the MIPIM property show that takes place in Cannes every March.

The company – which officially became Drivers Jonas Deloitte this week after merging with the global business advisory giant – lost a protracted court battle with the show’s organisers Reed Midem over its use of a cafe outside the official arena itself.

The organisers claimed that Drivers Jonas’ use of the Pavillon Croisette restaurant to entertain clients breached the event small print that forbids companies that send delegates to the show from transacting business outside the main show arena. Perversely, if DJ had not sent any delegates to the show itself it could have hired out and rebranded the rest of the city to its heart’s content.

The court case is undoubtedly a pretty severe slap in the face for DJ – and the poor cafe owner who has also been sued – and one can’t help but think that it is something of a hollow victory for Reed Midem.

First and foremost, Drivers Jonas have been one of the backbones of the MIPIM event since its inception five years ago, sending countless delegates – including a good deal from its Birmingham office – to the show itself, and sponsoring numerous events promoting the show in the UK.

It is also a wake-up call for countless other property companies that send delegates to the show but entertain outside it – a walk down the same street as the Pavillon Croisette and you will see some of the biggest names in the European property scene all doing exactly the same as DJ.

It is unclear why Reed Midem decided to make an example of DJ but I wouldn’t be surprised if other offenders had decided to invest in stands at the show to avoid the dreaded writ.

The small-print in question is also hugely anti-competitive and one wonders whether it would stand up outside the famously insular court system of the French. It is like the ICC suing anybody who talks about politics outside the conference centre during the forthcoming Lib Dem spring get-together.

Finally, it will undoubtedly have left a bad taste in the mouth, which, in the current climate, you would imagine it could well do without. From a DJ point of view, one would imagine they won’t be putting too much of their marketing budget into Reed Midem’s pockets any time soon – apart from the £90,000 fine imposed on them by the French courts last week – and other companies must be reconsidering their strategies so as not to fall foul of the MIPIM gestapo.

MIPIM already has something of an image problem with those from outside the property sector – one has to question any ‘essential’ show that just happens to be on the French Riviera. I wonder if it would have quite the cache if it was held in Scunthorpe.

The show also grew out of the property boom which has subsequently bust with a capital B and the last couple of years has seen the number of delegates attending well down on the glory days.

This year Birmingham City Council is sending one of its strongest delegations led by the likes of Argent and Birmingham Development Company who have plenty to talk about at the moment.

Clearly it is an event with some merit – Mike Whitby never tires of telling us that it was at MIPIM that he first met the boss of Deutsche Bank and persuaded him to come and have a look at Birmingham – but the days of the city’s property community decamping to the south of France for the third week of March are but a distant memory and may never happen again.

To compensate those poor agents now stuck in Blighty, PR matriarch Jilly Cosgrove has for the past two years organised a special ‘Alternative’ MIPIM lunch at what used to be the Bucklemaker, and is now Andersons, just off St Pauls Square in the Jewellery Quarter.

The fact that this year’s event was sold out months ago and there is a waiting list suggests that MIPIM perhaps isn’t what it used to be and spurious law suits are unlikely to help its cause.

You never know, we might just start seeing a few more mankinis.