Sid Lee, the multi-disciplinary creative agency owned by Japanese advertising giant Hakuhodo, is to launch a new global sports practice, SportBusiness can reveal.
The new arm, called ‘Sid Lee Sport’, is likely to be announced this week and will provide an array of creative, sponsorship and operational services to brands and right-holders operating in the sector.
The launch of the new practice formalises the agency’s existing presence in sport following the 2021 merger with specialist UK event agency Infrared Experience Marketing. It is already the lead creative agency for Lidl and has provided creative and operational services for established sponsors like Visa and Oppo.
Sid Lee Sport will be headquartered in London with further offices in New York, Montreal, Los Angeles and Toronto.
Stephen Hall, former chief executive of Infrared and head of sport sponsorship at McDonald’s, will be the CEO for the new sports practice. He told SportBusiness he has spent the past two years recruiting a team to deliver his vision for the firm.
Hall said: “What I want to develop with Sid Lee Sport is that ability to deliver great, game-changing creative but coupled with a real understanding of sponsorship.”
He added: “When you work with the likes of Uefa or the IOC [International Olympic Committee], you see there are a lot of parameters you have to work between, and if you don’t understand that world, you can actually waste a lot of time from a creative perspective.”
He said the new practice will have around 24 full- and part-time staff and will try to draw on the events experience of Infrared and the creative capabilities of the wider Sid Lee group to provide an end-to-end service for brands and rights-holders.
It will also be able to use the data capabilities of sister company Kepler to measure the effectiveness of sponsorship campaigns. Hall described the recruitment of former Iris executive Rory Natkiel to work at the practice as another important component of this data-led approach. Natkiel is the former head of integrated strategy at Iris, who led the global strategy for the Adidas and Pizza Hut accounts during his time with the creative agency.
Hall said: “If you look at brands now, a lot of them demand far more than they did when I was even at McDonald’s back in 2007.
“What the demands are now in terms of return on investment, from the profit point of view, high impact, the measurement side of sponsorship is something that’s changed beyond all recognition. And someone like Rory, who comes with a completely different approach to anything that I’ve ever experienced, was the final part of the puzzle.”
Natkiel told SportBusiness the new practice would attempt to deliver a more joined-up approach to sponsorship campaigns.
He said: “If your events, operations, creative and strategic teams are working as one, there are obviously things that are going to come out of that that wouldn’t if you were just handing over a deck to another agency. It’s not just about the saving of money, it’s about those opportunities that can emerge once you start all working together as one team.”
The 24-strong practice will also include Natkiel’s former Iris colleague Laura Randall, who also served as an associate creative director for R/GA where she led the agency’s award-winning work on the Nike Women account. Other key staff members include Sid Lee’s current group account director Mike Grumbridge and its director of sponsorship, Jack Kenney-Herbert.
Sid Lee was founded in Montreal in 1993 as the Diesel advertising agency but changed its name to Sid Lee in 2007 to avoid confusion with the Diesel clothing brand. Sid Lee is an anagram of Diesel to retain the connection to the original name.
In 2015, the agency was acquired by Kyu, the strategic operating unit of Hakuhodo DY Holdings (HDY) run by the former CEO of Omnicom Asia Pacific and Omnicom Group vice chairman Michael Birkin.
Hakuhodo is the second-biggest advertising agency in Japan after Dentsu. As an offshoot of the new sports practice, Hall said the agency will look to build out a division providing consultancy services to brands looking to sponsor sport in the country.