The archive · Marketing & Growth · Marketing decision · 2022
Lacoste's Unexpected Encounters: the crocodile as a bridge — D&AD Yellow, One Show Gold
BETC staged chance meetings between opposites who share one Lacoste piece; the film and print campaign won two D&AD Yellow Pencils and a One Show Gold.
Lacoste
What it had to solve
Since 1933 the crocodile has crossed eras, styles and genres, worn by people from very different worlds. For the brand's new platform, BETC Paris turned that diversity into a simple question: what happens when two strangers who seem to have nothing in common meet by chance?
How it works
In April 2022 Lacoste launched 'Unexpected Encounters', a brand campaign by BETC Paris built on one observation: since 1933 the crocodile has lived on every kind of person — different eras, styles and walks of life, each wearing it their own way.
The campaign staged chance meetings between two very different people who discover they share a piece of Lacoste clothing. Directed by Laure Atanasyan with photography by Ronan Gallagher, the film and print scenes told everyday life with humour and lightness, turning the crocodile into the initiator of unexpected connections.
The work ran across TV, cinema, print, outdoor and social media. It won two D&AD 2023 Yellow Pencils for BETC — in Press & Outdoor and Photography — plus a One Show 2023 Gold Pencil in Out of Home, and became the reference point for Lacoste's modern brand identity.
Why it lands
- A shared garment is a concrete, everyday way to dramatize what the brand stands for: connection between different people.
- Contrast is the engine — pairing people who seem opposite makes the shared crocodile the punchline and the bond.
- One idea across film, print, outdoor and social gave the symbol repetition without repetition, each medium a new encounter.
- The campaign never argued or claimed; it showed strangers meeting and let the audience feel the connection themselves.
What it did
The campaign won two D&AD 2023 Yellow Pencils (Press & Outdoor and Photography) and a One Show 2023 Gold in Out of Home, and gave the crocodile a new role: a connector between different people rather than a status badge.
What you can take
Take an icon everyone already owns and make it the character: instead of describing what a brand means, show two opposite people meeting through it — the encounter is the argument.
Since then
Unexpected Encounters became a fixture of Lacoste's brand identity and a reference case in award annuals for symbol-led advertising. After the D&AD and One Show wins, BETC continued the 'crocodile connects' territory in later Lacoste work, and the campaign is regularly cited as an example of turning a heritage logo into a social connector rather than a status marker.
Sources
- Unexpected Encounters — Ads of the World
- Lacoste – Unexpected Encounters – BETC
- D&AD : Un Black Pencil pour Division
- The One Show: 11 Golds for FCB NY
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