Sid Lee acquires urban culture expertise – content production company, Yard.

Is the nature of advertising changing? If advertising wants to connect with urban audiences it is. It’s changing from “at you” to “with you”.

It’s staging events, promoting lifestyles, being the voice of culture and enmeshing itself in sport.

Forward-thinking agency, Sid Lee a, knows this. So it has acquired Yard, the content production agency that has cornered the market for content aimed at the urban generation. This gives Sid Lee and and kyu collective, access to yard’s knowledge and prowess in media, event creation, marketing and insight into urban DNA.

The union began earlier this year, so the companies have already combined their expertise and talents. YARD will add to Sid Lee’s knowledge of early adopters. Sid Lee Paris will be able to enlarge its creative offering, adapting campaigns to the growing urban audience, as well as benefiting from the expertise offered by Miles, YARD’s production studio.

Yard’s clients – Nike, Desperados, Beats by Dre, Uniqlo, Jordan, Red Bull and Converse, to name a few – will join those of Sid Lee Paris’s, which include Honda, KFC, Paris Saint-Germain football, Dom Perignon, Skyn and BNP Paribas, among others.

Yard’s Concrete Football, for example, is a first of its kind film about the culture of street football, and makes Yard the first agency to be featured in Netflix’ selection. available on Netflix.

The deal, forged by Yard, producers of the documentary, and Netflix, shows that agencies can produce meaningful cultural content.

The documentary delves into the heart of the sport, portraying the life of football on concrete – where rules can be bent and gatherings are about friends, style, attitude, wisecracks, laughter and not keeping score. It captures a moment of togetherness, wherever and whenever, all around the world.

To do this, the producers turned to some of France’s best players, those who pounded the pavement before becoming stars on the field (Mahrez, Aurier, Benatia, Dembele…). The film also features interviews with some of the biggest names on the French rap scene (Gradur, MHD, Ohplai, Niska…), highlighting the fact that the amateur game is about so much more than just the sport, it’s part of a lifestyle.

“Yard’s strength is in its contents’ ultra-relevancy to urban youth, as well as its capacity to relate to the target. We like to qualify it as ‘liquid audience’, a loyal audience who follows and consumes Yard’s content, whatever the touchpoint,” stated Johan Delpuech, managing director and Partner, Sid Lee Paris.

Sylvain Thirache, president and executive creative director, added, “Yard is, for us, the opportunity to develop a new creative script and to offer innovating forms of content to our clients in order to make them true cultural actors in people’s lives”.

This alliance is a major step for Sid Lee’s new strategy in the kyu collective. The strategy, which is founded upon the idea of building brands for the modern age and keeping one step ahead, has already grown internationally through collaboration with other kyu member companies, including the integration of agency IDEO’s design-thinking prowess and Infrared’s specialisation in hospitality.

Yoan Prat, co-founder and managing director, Yard, explained his company’s perspective, “By joining Sid Lee, we’re crossing a new threshold in Yard’s development. The agency will bring us structure and substantial expertise, in strategy and in craft, as well as client development in the long term.”