Meet André
I’ve spent two decades in the sponsorship marketing industry building a deep understanding of how to reach fans and build brands through the shared passions of sports and entertainment. I deliver marketing, communications, sponsorship, measurement, and experiential expertise to brands and rightsholders alike.
After spending three years with IMG running the Chris Evert Pro-Celebrity Classic in Florida (‘98 - ‘00) and then hundreds of grassroots NBA basketball events across Europe, I joined Octagon in Paris, France in 2002. I went on to open the agency’s office in Frankfurt, Germany in 2004 and managed Octagon’s Germany business for six years before relocating to Octagon’s global headquarters in Connecticut in 2010.
Over the last 18 years, I became one of Octagon’s primary experts on global sporting properties in particular FIFA World Cup™, the Olympics, the NBA, and participatory sports. I was also a go-to resource on large-scale, big-idea driven campaigns, purpose marketing as well as emerging platforms like women’s sports. Clients like AB InBev, Kaiser Permanente, Johnson & Johnson, Siemens, Hyatt, Harman/JBL, and others have trusted my experience, imagination, and knack for knowing what will work, to shape their most significant marketing strategies, inform major sponsorship negotiations and investments, design campaigns, build internal and external communication frameworks, and guide experiential engagements with their fans and consumers.
I’ve founded Gold Rabbit Sports to leverage my global expertise and experience to help brands and rightsholders think about sponsorship in a more modern way. I believe strategic partnerships in sports and entertainment have the potential to powerfully influence and impact an organization’s marketing and business objectives while simultaneously serving a broader societal and cultural purpose. My goal is to help clients recognize and take advantage of these multiple dimensions.
I am a lucky husband and father of two thriving boys. I speak English, German and French and am a member of Sports Business Journal’s Forty under Forty class of 2015, a published thought leader, a go-to source for media discussing sponsorship platforms and effective experiential marketing, and am always on the lookout for new moments to meet.