The five-ring circus of the Olympic selection process for 2016 is over. In my view, the right guys won. And brand image (along with the fact that Rio had the map) had everything to do with it.

A year ago in a short piece for Moncole magazine, I forecasted a Rio win: “One question the IOC will consider,” I wrote in my submitted draft, “is what will the Olympics brand do for the host city and what will the host city’s brand do for the Olympics?…Rio holds the DNA of Brazil; and Brazil is the great hope of Latin America. And can you imagine a more endearingly colourful games after the explosive regimentation of Beijing and the jaunty high-mindedness of London? Boy,” I gushed, “does this one make sense.”

For its part, Chicago seemed to take itself definitively out of the running only during the final IOC deliberations when its champions, including President Obama and his wife, played too much to type. Here’s Monocle’s Tryler Brule (“All down to the Rio brand?“) on how Chicago’s team showed its Yanks-will-be-Yanks daft side:

From the moment Air Force One touched down at Copenhagen Airport, Kastrup, the Chicago bid team was doomed, [not by] the swagger that comes with a 747 thundering into a tiny Nordic capital…but [by the] over-rehearsed, stiff, slightly smug and overly corporate presentations…. Chicago’s bid might have been technically up to scratch but [when] Mayor Daley got up and pitched his town like he was wooing another Boeing to move its HQ there, he lost Europe. When Doug Arnot butchered the French language, he lost the Francophone bloc. And whoever allowed the Obamas to serve up such helpings of cheese so early in the day should be sacked. Michelle Obama’s overly personal story was disjointed and her husband just looked annoyed that he had to address such a small audience.

(“Helpings of cheese.” Ouch.)

Yes, it’s official: Barack Obama, however conciliatory and charistmatic he is as a world leader, is still capable of being humstrung by, and making his own contributions to, the dark elements of Brand America: earnestness, unctuousness, entitlement, etc. I might even take comfort in this realization, if it weren’t so damned disappointing. (Really, he never should have gone to Copenhagen. The New Republic was right about this.)

So, congrats to the cariocas. My friend Flavio Azevedo, who was a consultant to the Rio 2016 project, emailed me two days before the announcement: “If we win, I will pay you a bucket of caipirinha in Ipanema beach.” Flavio, you’re on!