French athleisure brand Lacoste launched a campaign at the start of April to promote its new signature collection with Paralympic swimmer Théo Curin.
The tie-up is based around the idea inspiration and attention to detail. The brand and the athlete both agree that many success stories start from humble origins and are a result of a journey based around constant attention to detail and small improvements.
Curin, a quadri-amputee athlete, grew up with no sporting role models to look up to or to inspire him and admits that his life sometimes seems like a long conversation with his childhood self.
The spring collection and launch leveraged Curin’s epic swim across Lake Titicaca: a 122km challenge that took 10 days. When Lacoste found out about the project, it contacted him to suggest he work with them to design a collection and thus become ‘the first French disabled athlete whose T-shirt and cap can be worn by anyone’.
Lacoste Creative Director Louise Trotter worked with Curin to create a logo that reflects his personality and spirit and then to design a collection with the athlete’s DNA and experience woven throughout. The details focus on maximising ease-of-use despite the wearer/ambassador’s limited mobility: thus buttons are replaced by snaps, while sturdy straps appear on backpack zippers and sweater sleeves.
Curin’s collection launched on 1 April and was available worldwide in-store and via Lacoste.com and the campaign launched on the same day created by agency BETC Paris.
The marketing was led by a hero ‘Lacoste x Théo Curin’ video, which sees Curin describe his long journey to swimming success, and which was the result of the agency team shadowing the swimmer as he prepared for the Lake Titicaca challenge. At the close of the spot, Curin metaphorically gives something back to the boy he was and also to every kid who longs to see themselves represented by those sports stars achieving great things.
“It seems crazy that no disabled athlete has their own line of clothing bearing their name,” said BETC creative directors Aurélie Scalabre and Olivier Aumard. “When Alexandre Girod and Julien Vergne, the creatives, came to us with this concept, we immediately thought that this was exactly the idea needed to cement Lacoste’s partnership with Théo, and a way to celebrate his achievement by developing with him this unprecedented collection.”
“The fact that a brand like Lacoste asked me to set up a collaboration like this shows that things are still evolving in the right direction,” explained Curin. “What I liked is that I was involved in every step of the design: choice of products, colours, adaptations, etc., and also that it is a universal collection. I’m very proud of that. It was really important for me and for Lacoste that anyone could wear it, like any other collection.”
The campaign was created for Lacoste Brand Managers Catherine Spindler, Nicolas Rakocevic, Louise Trotter and Stephanie Derrey by a team at agency BETC Paris which included Agency Managers Fanny Buisseret, Romain Cialdella and Theophile Geslain, Executive Creative Director Remi Babinet, Creative Directors Aurélie Scalabre and Olivier Aumard, Art Director Julien Vergne, Copywriter Alexandre Girod, Assistant Art Director Mathis Payet and Traffic Manager Nathalie Sanseigne.
The production company was General Pop, the films were helmed by Director Axel Delwarte and sound production was handled by Axel Guenoun.
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