JKR

As a tennis player, Jean René Lacoste picked up his nickname ‘The Crocodile’ because he never let go of his prey. The Lacoste brand was possibly the first to put a garment’s logo on the outside of the clothes. Once upon a time that would have been ground breaking.

To their credit, this is about where the Lacoste brand stopped innovating. It’s admirable that the brand has never become jaded about returning again and again to some of their fundamental ‘brand truths’ – their advertising has drawn on their legacy (see above) and if one squints, all their above communication (even female fragrances dramatised by girls floating around or chasing balloons) can be traced back to a certain light-footed agility on court and I guess the lightweight fabric of the original shirts.

So here is their ‘new’ fragrance. It puts the embroidered logo on the bottle in the position it would occupy on the chest of their shirts. It has a tactile debossing on the sides that provides grip, but also references those originals shirts’ patina. And, in the duty free billboards, the packs are shown pushing through the shirt fabric (no generic hunky model required).

The fragrance comes in tennis white (called ‘Pure’), crocodile green and azure blue – the colours Lacoste typically leads with. In other words, the brand has done nothing clever with this ‘classic’ representation of themselves. And that’s the genius – the strength to celebrate what makes them great, rather than trowel on some new ‘contemporary’ interpretation. To paraphrase that really annoying Patek Philippe watch campaign, as brand managers and agencies we never actually own iconic brands – we just look after them for the next generation.

This behaviour of being a responsible custodian is easier said than done, as every brand manager and creative head wants to ‘make their mark’ and add their own voice to the brand they manage. It takes real balls, a real commitment to what is good for the brand, to add less, not more. Congratulations, Lacoste, for being authentic (predictable even), rather than clever. And I wonder, did they take inspiration from the relatively recent simplification of Coke’s packaging, which by getting back to basics has provided a springboard to contemporary expressions such as the aluminum bottle?

The sun is out, it’s Friday – have a great weekend…