The Canadian division of L'Oréal, the world's largest beauty-products company, is announcing today that it is the "exclusive presenting partner" for Toronto's upcoming Luminato multidisciplinary festival of arts and creativity.
Confirmation of the deal, worth millions, will be made at a media conference in Toronto featuring L'Oréal Canada president and CEO Javier San Juan, along with Luminato co-chairs Tony Gagliano and David Pecaut. L'Oréal's participation in the event will occur under the banner "L'Oréal/Luminato: Partners in Creativity."
L'Oréal, headquartered in France, is an international company that manufactures a wide range of cosmetics for brands as varied as Giorgio Armani, Garnier, Redken, Lancôme and Kiehl's, as well as its own labels and The Body Shop, which it bought last year.
"That global brand is ideal for us," Pecaut said yesterday, in terms of "access across the country and eventually internationally."
With L'Oréal on board, Luminato is hoping to realize its ambition to be a serious rival to the likes of the Edinburgh International Festival and the Venice Biennale sooner rather than later.
"We realized we had to be very large right out [of]the gate," Pecaut said. "The days when you could start a small arts festival and build it over 20 years, like the Toronto International Film Festival did, are over. In a global world, you had to hit the ground running and be what you wanted to be in the first year."
The sponsorship -- which first took shape in early March in Montreal, where L'Oréal Canada is headquartered -- is an open-ended multiyear arrangement.
"At the very least," L'Oréal is committed to backing this year's inaugural event, which runs June 1 through June 10, as well as Luminato's 2008 and 2009 incarnations, San Juan said in an interview earlier this week.
No precise dollar commitment is to be disclosed at today's conference, but it's known that the total budget for this year's fest is now $12-million -- $2-million more than originally announced -- with almost half of this coming in cash and in-kind donations from the corporate sector. An additional $2.7-million this year is courtesy of the Ontario government, with an additional $4.8-million scheduled to be invested by Queen's Park in future years.
"Money is, of course, important because you're talking about a huge event," said San Juan, whose parent company, L'Oréal SA of France, reported a net profit of $3-billion in 2005.
"But the discussion [over the past six weeks]was not so much about money; it was not the centre of the negotiations. What was more important was the event and the ambition of the project."
In fact, at his luncheon meeting with Gagliano, San Juan said he was "not interested in any partnership where I am just going to be a logo, even if I will be the biggest partner or the presenting company. It's not enough. . . ." Instead, "L'Oréal, as a group, we're going to partner in providing ideas and even some artists," San Juan explained.
"At the same time, what we wanted was to have our brands . . . participate and meld into the event," but not in an overtly commercial way.
Details of this participation, which are being touted as "highly interactive," are to be announced over the next several weeks. But one L' Oréal commission that is expected to be revealed today is the creation of a 60-by-45-metre canvas mural, to be painted by Montreal artist Carlito Dalceggio on the side of the Hôtel Le Germain in downtown Toronto. Dalceggio, who has done decor work for L'Oréal's Montreal offices, will compose the canvas over the course of the festival, soliciting advice and comments from viewers as well as incorporating his impressions of other Luminato activities.
Next year, it's anticipated L'Oréal will largely underwrite the cost of bringing a performing-arts company from outside Toronto to Luminato.
Pecaut stressed that no naming rights are associated with the deal. Yes, L'Oréal "will have important billing" but "from the beginning we said we will not have anyone name the festival. . . . We wanted a name that was about Toronto and the experience of the festival," hence the T.O. tag in the last syllable of Luminato. Furthermore, in the case of the Dalceggio mural, "he's not painting anything remotely connected to L'Oréal."
"The artistic direction, the vision of the festival . . . is a kind of trust that we have to hold," Pecaut observed, "so sponsors have no ability to dictate content in any way."