Lacoste
Winner of the
Creativity Award
René Lacoste, the founder of Lacoste, was not only a tennis champion but also an inventor and revolutionary. To enhance his mobility as a player, he introduced the first-ever short-sleeve polo shirt to the tennis court. The iconic Lacoste crocodile logo was embroidered on clothing for the first time 90 years ago. Since 1933, Lacoste has grown into a well-established, high-end brand, offering clothing, footwear, sportswear, eyewear, leather goods, perfume, watches, and other accessories. With over 8,000 employees worldwide, the company generates an annual revenue of US $2.5 billion.
Lacoste is a brand that continuously innovates and moves forward, just as its founder did at the very beginning. Throughout its history, Lacoste has maintained a desire for improvement and innovation. In addition to the polo shirt, the brand is responsible for inventing the tennis ball machine, steel tennis racket, polyurethane golf club, and other innovations that have contributed to the evolution of multiple sports. Even after all these years, the brand's actions continue to reflect its founder's spirit, who once described himself as an inventor. He said, "Inventor should be on my business cards - I've been inventing all my life!"
From its early stages to the present day, Lacoste has always collaborated with visionaries who imagine the future and shape the present. As a result, the crocodile logo has hybridized and prospered over time.
What sparked the search for a platform like Bynder?
Pre-2017, Lacoste’s brand team was outsourcing a majority of its creative work, with distribution then being handled by a variety of different, separated parties. At the time, this was effective and met business goals while lifting the load from internal teams, but the impact in the long term caused real issues. With such a proliferating range of content, and an ever-growing number of channels to push it too, it wasn’t long before the need for an internal, centralized system of record became apparent.
Lacoste wanted a solution that could bring the creation, management, and distribution of assets all under one roof, and strip away costly expenditure on external creative support. Also, the brand was well aware of the danger of suddenly switching to a new way of working and drastically increasing workload, so the ability to customize and create a bespoke, modular system was a priority. This modulation, and a clear transparency into production processes and workflows, would make internal efficiencies possible, without needing to radically overhaul the structure of its brand team.
Bynder as a DAM platform: The benefits
In short; Bynder’s Digital Asset Management DAM platform covered all of the bases that Lacoste needed, and laid the groundwork for future expansion and modulation to evolve with the needs of the business.
The DAM is now positioned at the heart of Lacoste’s martech stack, creating a single source of truth for any and all branded assets to be stored. Lacoste’s assets can now be managed internally, with access granted when needed to external parties or stakeholders, all thanks to the DAM’s access and usage rights controls. Users can access the assets they need, quickly, which is particularly powerful when orchestrating new campaigns.
For Lacoste, one of the biggest advantages of Bynder's DAM platform is its multi-functionality. The Creative Workflow module helps Lacoste's marketing team streamline the request, review, and approval process, making publishing branded content to the DAM quicker and easier. Configurable workflows mean the right stakeholders can be involved, at the right stage, to keep feedback rounds moving quickly.
Additionally, the DAM platform plugs into Lacoste’s other marketing technologies, such as Product Information Management (PIM). The PIM enables global creative teams to store and manage specific and complex product information. It also simplifies the maintenance of precise information across numerous sales and marketing channels by centralizing product data. As a result, Lacoste has an improved workflow that enables fast content delivery, localization when necessary, and consistent brand representation.
Although Lacoste acknowledges the fantastic benefits of the DAM, its IT team recently discovered new opportunities to expand the vision and value of Bynder across the enterprise. The company is now encouraging all teams to use its Brand Library on a daily basis. Inspired by Bynder, Lacoste is also launching a new project to simplify file sharing and increase convenience for its growing number of 500+ internal and external users worldwide.
Why Lacoste is a winner
Lacoste’s commitment to investing and prioritizing the creative process made the brand a natural winner for the Creativity Award, with a driven emphasis towards giving its internal creative teams the tools they needed to make an impact. This award recognizes the brand's achievements in transforming the Bynder ecosystem into a dynamic creative hub, resulting in remarkable outcomes for its marketing efforts and community engagement.
Shifting away from a costly, all-external creative production process, Lacoste recognized the value in finding a high-impact, low-effort solution to enable its teams to make powerful content that was high quality and on-brand. By streamlining creative processes with synergized tools that bolt onto the DAM, Lacoste’s creatives could focus on making high-impact content without worrying about having to manually adjust every single asset.
Lacoste’s desire to continue growing and evolving as a leading fashion brand in 2023 and beyond harmonizes perfectly with its commitment to outstanding creative, fueled by an understanding of how to maximize the impact of its deployed tech stack.
