Lacoste presents the crocodile as a rallying sign in BETC campaign

A rallying sign at the crossroads of cultures

On 28 May 2022 Lacoste presents a global brand campaign that repositions the crocodile as a rallying sign rather than a status emblem.¹ Developed with long-standing creative partner BETC, the platform centres on the moment two unrelated people meet by chance and notice that they share a piece of clothing carrying the Lacoste mark.^{1, 2} The films and stills frame these chance recognitions as small social events, complete with eye contact, raised eyebrows and quiet smiles, and use them to argue that the crocodile lives in encounters rather than in product.¹

The Maison describes the work as the installation of a new tone, fresh and full of spirit, anchored in the diversity of the people who already wear the brand.¹ The implicit positioning shift is from a single figure of effortless French elegance to a wider community of wearers whose differences become visible only in the moment they discover what they have in common. The crocodile sits at the centre of that recognition, no longer an exclusive identifier but a shared cue that can run across generations, geographies and styles.

Encounters built around iconic pieces

Each scene in the campaign begins with a Lacoste classic. On a beach, an older woman called Marga meets Anis, who could be the same age as her grandson, and they realise they are wearing the same pink polo shirt.¹ A skater wears the same bucket hat as a small girl, in different orientations, and the encounter turns on the question of whether the brim sits over the eyes or pushed up.¹ Two strangers cross paths in matching socks and slides and, after a beat of recognition, work out what they can possibly say to each other.¹ Each vignette starts from a single garment and reads the social distance between the two protagonists from there.

The casting strategy underpins the tone. The protagonists are largely drawn from a street casting of people who had never modelled before and who took on the role for one day, with the rough freshness that brings to a fashion frame.¹ Lacoste argues that the authenticity of the encounters depends on this freshness, and the films are paced to give the unprofessional reactions room to breathe rather than to smooth them out into a more conventional advertising rhythm.¹ The result reads closer to a series of short documentary scenes than to a traditional fashion campaign.

Photography, direction and music

Irish photographer Ronan Gallagher captures the print stills, working in a register that mixes documentary observation with a fashion sensibility.^{1, 3} The images are composed close to the bodies of the protagonists, with the polo, hat or sock pair as the literal point of contact, and the colour palette is held tight to the warm skin tones, sand and pavement that frame the moments. The campaign is also adapted for film, where the French director Laure Atanasyan stages the same encounters with humour and lightness across longer scenes of life that are deployed on social media as reels under the Original Kids name.¹

The soundtrack is The Sugarhill Gang's "Apache", a 1981 hip-hop record that itself sits at the crossroads between instrumental rock, country and western and early rap.^{1, 4} The choice mirrors the campaign's central argument, which presents the crocodile as a hybrid sign that connects rather than separates. The track plays joyfully at the moment of encounter in each scene, and the same musical hook signals the conclusion of the recognition across the social media cut-downs.¹

A repositioning that builds on a long campaign history

The 2022 campaign extends a relationship between Lacoste and BETC that goes back to the mid 2000s and produced "Life is a beautiful sport" in 2014, the slogan that reset the Maison's tonality after a period of perceived ageing.⁵ Where the 2014 work used a metaphor of leaping into the unknown to make a statement about elegance under pressure, the 2022 campaign turns to the granular social texture of how the brand is actually worn.⁵ The shift from courageous solo gesture to social recognition tracks the broader cultural movement of the early 2020s, in which fashion brands have increasingly framed themselves as connectors of communities rather than as carriers of singular aspirations.

For Lacoste, the gesture also consolidates the crocodile as a unifying device at a moment when the Maison is widening its reach across streetwear, sport, casual lifestyle and collaborations such as the Minecraft capsule from earlier in the same year.⁶ Reading these activations alongside the brand campaign clarifies the strategic logic at work. The crocodile holds the centre, the diversity of expressions around it widens the audience, and the recognition between unrelated wearers serves as the proof that the centre is holding. The 2022 platform is therefore less an advertising effort than a public statement of brand architecture, written in the language of small encounters rather than category claims.