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BETC’s new LA office will help artists monetize their passions and partner with brands

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By Minda Smiley, Reporter

October 9, 2017 | 5 min read

Paris-based agency BETC has opened a small operation in LA to support a new business venture that it says will merge the worlds of business and culture.

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BETC co-founder Rémi Babinet and BETC LA managing director Clarisse Lacarrau

Called BETC LA, the office will be led by managing director Clarisse Lacarrau, who previously served as head of strategy at BETC Paris. Havas-owned BETC, which also has offices in São Paulo and London, is billing its LA outpost as a “new breed of company” that will disrupt the “traditional, often too commercial relationship between talent, corporations, and agencies.”

The first work to come out of the new venture is a digital platform that BETC LA co-created in partnership with Benjamin Millepied, the choreographer of Black Swan and founder of the LA Dance Project. Called LA Dance Workout, the platform is an online monthly subscription service that offers dance workouts and lessons. After a free 10-day trial, the subscription costs $14.99 for one month and $35.99 for three months. A magazine called La Dance Magazine featuring news, interviews and performance archives also comes with the subscription.

BETC LA and Millepied’s LA Dance Project will evenly split intellectual property contracts and revenue made from the platform, a model that the agency is hoping to emulate in the future with other artist projects. The hope is that these types of projects will ultimately attract brands as well, with BETC LA serving as a sort of bridge between talent and companies.

Lacarrau said BETC LA is currently in talks with three brands that are interested in partnering with LA Dance Workout. She did not reveal which brands, but said that one is in the fashion space, one is a water brand and that the third is a hotel chain.

The agency invested $1.2m in the LA Dance Workout platform, which BETC said was spent on bringing the site to life as well as creating and producing content for the platform. It worked with Studio 6, the in-house content production studio of Havas North America, on production.

Using its work with Millepied as a guidepost of sorts, BETC LA plans to partner with other artists in the future to help them concept and bring creative ventures to fruition. Lacarrau said that she believes BETC is “one of the best positioned companies” to help the likes of chefs, musicians, actors and other artists connect with brands since it has a history of helping clients make a splash in pop culture.

Last year, BETC Paris’s viral Louise Delage campaign, which cleverly used Instagram to show how the signs of alcohol addiction aren’t always obvious, was widely covered in the press and racked up a number of awards at Cannes. BETC Paris is also the agency behind Evian’s ongoing ‘Live Young’ campaign that stars the brand’s iconic babies.

Lacarrau said she believes that BETC LA's unique business model will help solve some of the issues that more traditional agencies are grappling with since it will provide the agency with new revenue streams while also giving brands access to the artists it works with.

"We want our brands to really be part of culture, to make them understand that [if] they want to be part of people’s minds and people’s conversations, they need to bring something else than just marketing," she said. "We think that this project is a way to say, 'hey, we are a good bridge between business and culture.' It's needed right now."

She said that the agency has two more projects in the works at the moment, one with a composer and another with a chef. BETC LA does have not have a permanent space yet, but Lacarrau said it is currently sharing an office with one of Havas's locations in Venice.

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