• by Larissa Faw , October 16, 2017

Lagardère Sports and Entertainment is expanding beyond its core sponsorship practice with Lagardère Plus, a full-service global agency to help brands "win the battle for attention," says Kern Egan, president, Americas, Lagardère Plus. 

As part of the expansion, the firm has acquired London-based creative shop Brave with a client roster that includes Amazon Prime, Brown Forman, Greenpeace, and Panasonic.

Lagardère Plus launches with inaugural clients BMW, Bridgestone, Citibank, Danone, EA Sports, Epson, Hyundai, Lacoste, MetLife, MetroPCS, Veuve Clicquot, and ZTE. 

"As people are increasingly deleting advertising from their lives, partnership marketing becomes far more important and central to the marketing mix for brands to create genuine connections," says Egan.

The network will incorporate Lagardère Sports and Entertainment’s existing global consulting businesses, including agencies akzio!, Germany's Zaechel Int., and France's Sponsorship 360, all of which will be rebranded as Lagardère Plus. 

Andrew Georgiou, CEO, Lagardère Sports and Entertainment will serve as CEO, joined by a global consulting team, including Egan overseeing the Americas; Andrew N. Pierce as global president; Jonathan Isaac as chief strategy officer; Tim Frith as head of consulting in the U.K.; Hervé Bodinier as executive general manager in France; Olaf Bauer as managing director in Germany; and Malcolm Thorpe as vice president, business development in Singapore.

Lagardère Plus will operate under its parent Lagardère Sports and Entertainment, a company with more than 1,700 employees worldwide.  The agency will have approximately 300 employees at launch with plans to add additional staff through strategic hires and acquisitions. Currently the agency's footprint encompasses Berlin, Dallas, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Hong Kong, London, Manchester, Munich, New York, Paris, Singapore, Shanghai, and Tokyo.

"We see anyone who is advising a brand on their marketing efforts through any kind of partnership anywhere in the world as our competitor," says Egan. "We think we can show brands how to do it better and we’ll be hard at work proving that."