Lagardère Active: new business development ambitions

For Didier Quillot, CEO Lagardère Active, Business Development, which had already been initiated at the end of the Eighties with the rollout of ELLE licensing activities in Asia, is today a major strategic direction for the future development of Lagardère Active brands and business ventures.

To give a new impetus to those activities, Didier Quillot has assigned Delphine Grison, Head of Strategic Marketing and Development the mission of coordinating all corporate development projects in concert with the various heads of Lagardère Active business units.

Lagardère Active Business Development is driven by both:

• Its wealth of prestigious brands : ELLE, Paris Match, Version Femina, Europe 1, Gulli, Virgin Radio, Doctissimo, which are trendsetting and have stood the test of time ;
• The unique diversity and variety of its business lines (print, radio, TV, internet, mobile) and the multi-sided talents of those who take care of them.

Lagardère Active’s objectives are crystal clear:

• Turn Lagardère Active’s media into global brands ;
• Leverage contacts with consumers;
• Tackle new sources of additional non-ad driven revenues for Lagardère Active ;
  Monetize the strenght of contents produced by Lagardère Active.

To this end, Lagardère Active is fielding a flexible organization that brings together all Company’s talents (editorial staff, program teams and publishers, etc.) as well as specific fields of expertise:

• Custom Publishing, under Evelyne Laquit, which designs and produces editorial contents for commercial and large audience brands such as Nespresso, Orange.
• Lagardère Active Spectacles, under Jérôme Langlet, which puts on shows and produces entertainment products for the various brands of Lagardère Active (for instance: Mozart, l’Opéra Rock).
• Lagardère Active Enterprises, headed by Fabrice A. Plaquevent, which exploits the international and media brands of the Group under licensing agreements (for instance: ELLE).
  As of 2010, Lagardère Active Enterprises has also been developing a new business venture: acting as leading Licensing Agent in the world of fashion.
  That activity is to be expanded into TV. Benoit Roque, who has just joined the Group, is now in charge of signing new licensing agreements for the TV Division.

A great many projects and partnerships were STARTED at the beginning of september 2010

• Both a print and web-based editorial platform for SNCF, the French Railways, and its subsidiaries within the Custom Publishing Division, which is being finalized.
• Two new prestigious brands are being added to Lagardère Active Enterprises’s portfolio : Christian Lacroix (Asia) and Lulu Castagnette (Worldwide, excluding France).
• New projects within Lagardère Active Spectacles Division :
  The re-staging at Paris of Mozart L’Opéra Rock, the Nuit Velours RFM with de Palmas or the second instalment of ELLE en Scène with M.

Didier Quillot, CEO of Lagardère Active, said: « The high recognition enjoyed by all our brands, the quality of our bonds with audiences and the expertise of our editorial and business teams are all growth drivers for our Group. I therefore decided in early 2010 to give a new impetus to our business development drive by strengthening our presence in the emerging segments that fulfil the expectations of audiences (entertainment and events ) or in high-growth segments (emerging countries). Our mission is to build an ecosystem for virtuous development that will bring in additional sources of revenues. »