Lacoste’s latest global campaign, “Life is a Beautiful Sport,” is one of the more thoughtful examples of sports brand storytelling I have seen recently.
The campaign revives a slogan the brand first introduced in 2014. The centerpiece is a short film directed by Fredrik Bond, following a young woman running through the streets of Paris, moving through gardens, kitchens, and side streets before arriving at Court Philippe-Chatrier at Roland-Garros, where she hands a tennis ball to Novak Djokovic. The reveal is that she was a ball girl the entire time, returning the ball to play. It is a simple idea, executed with a lot of intention.
What makes the campaign worth examining from a communications standpoint is the thinking behind why Lacoste made the choices they made, and what those choices reflect about how the brand understands its own identity.
Lacoste was founded in 1933 by tennis player René Lacoste, whose nickname was the Crocodile. The iconic polo shirt he created was born from a practical decision: he wanted to feel more comfortable on the court and altered his own clothing to make that happen. The brand has been a partner of Roland-Garros since 1971, a relationship that now runs through 2030. The Roland-Garros stadium itself was built to host the Davis Cup in 1928, following the victory of the French team, of which René Lacoste was a member, over the United States the year before, and Lacoste won the tournament himself in 1929. The history between the brand and the tournament goes back to the same origin story.
That context matters because it explains why the campaign carries the weight it does. The slogan, the film, the ambassador, and the tournament setting all reinforce the same central idea: that sport is an attitude and a way of moving through the world, one that extends beyond competition. The campaign’s executive creative director at BETC Paris described the goal as reinterpreting the signature with a more lifestyle-driven, more joyful, and more colorful perspective, while keeping it grounded in the everyday life it has always drawn from.
Alongside the campaign, Lacoste also refreshed its visual identity. The typographic update reintroduces more pronounced serif forms drawing from the brand’s historical visual language, René Lacoste’s handwritten script appears in selected brand expressions, and the crocodile has been reconsidered through the lens of Robert George’s original 1927 illustration. The broader palette adds clay, a direct reference to tennis courts, and farine, an off-white linked to René Lacoste’s first blazer. These are refinements of things that already existed rather than dramatic departures. The brand went back into its own archive to sharpen what already made it recognizable.
As someone working in sports PR, the timing of the campaign is another part I find most interesting. The campaign launched several weeks before Roland-Garros, which runs from May 18 to June 7. Lacoste built momentum going into the tournament rather than competing with it for attention once it started. That is a deliberate choice about how to use a moment you already have equity in.
The broader lesson is that the strongest brand storytelling in sports tends to come from organizations and brands with a clear, consistent sense of what they stand for, communicated over time rather than reinvented in response to what is happening around them. Lacoste has been telling essentially the same story for over 90 years. The campaign works because every element of it, the film, the print, the logo refresh, the ambassador, the tournament sponsorship, all supports the same central idea. That kind of coherence is harder to build than it looks, and it is worth paying attention to when you see it.
You can also read this issue and subscribe to Built in Public on LinkedIn: Built in Public
Built in Public is a newsletter where Amani Marie documents her growth as a young sports public relations professional in real time. It focuses on what she is learning, what she is observing across the industry, and the people and work that stand out.
Some issues will examine moments in sports and how they are communicated. Others will reflect on career development, access, and what it takes to build in this space over time.
This is intended to be a space for learning, sharing perspective, and tracking progress along the way.
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