Lagardère Plus Creates Umbrella Brand For Consulting Efforts

Looking to put a consistent brand personality on what has been a "disparate set of consulting offerings" around the world, Lagardère is consolidating them under a new Lagardère Plus brand, according to Terry Lefton of SPORTSBUSINESS JOURNAL. Additionally, Lagardère acquired Brace, a London-based creative agency with clients including Amazon Prime, Brown-Forman, Greenpeace and Panasonic. The Lagardère Plus brand incorporates Lagardère Sports & Entertainment's consulting businesses and adds akzio! and Zaechel Int'l in Germany and Sponsorship 360 in France -- along with new strategic, creative, digital and analytics capabilities. That adds to seven agencies and more than 300 employees globally. The purpose, said Lagardère North America President & CEO Andy Pierce, is to have a more unified offering to compete with the likes of Momentum Worldwide, Octagon and IMG, and to have sports, entertainment and sponsorship marketing of all types housed in one group (SPORTSBUSINESS JOURNAL, 10/16 issue).