The Football League is banishing its reputation for “bobble hats and Bovril” by producing advertising campaigns which have been mimicked across the world and are helping lift its appeal with commercial partners, according to its new marketing director. Drew Barrand, who joined the Football League last year from sponsorship agency Pitch, said the Football League, the governing body of 72 football teams in the three divisions below the Premier League, was undermined by only “sporadic” marketing activity which “lacked a little bit of direction” in the past. Barrand said the Football League’s brand had become synonymous with “Bovril and bobble hats” and deemed “old-fashioned” in some quarters.
CHANGING PERCEPTIONS: Barrand said two recent digital advertising campaigns were trying to overturn this perception, and they are reaping positive results and helping draw interest from commercial partners. Speaking of The Football League’s #OwnTheArch campaign, Barrand said, “People don’t expect the Football league to do something like this. They don’t expect to like this. I think we have been stuck a little bit in this nice, organic, everybody loves The Football League because it’s been around for ages.” The #OwnTheArch campaign offered fans of Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur -- the two finalists in the Football League's Capital One Cup -- the chance to decide the colors of the Wembley Stadium arch by tweeting either #ChelseaAtWembley or #SpursAtWembley. More than half a million fans engaged with the campaign with 100,000 tweets of the OwnTheArch hashtag.
GETTING ATTENTION: More important, Barrand said, the #OwnTheArch campaign raised eyebrows in the commercial world, beefing up its negotiation position. The Football League has followed it up with its Stand Up & Be Counted campaign, a prize draw campaign aimed at commercializing int'l fans. “We try and generate as much data as we possibly can [from fans] and then hand over the specific data on each individual clubs back to the club for them to commercialize,” Barrand said of the new campaign. Clubs in the Football League -- which include Leeds United, Fulham and Hull City -- use the data for merchandising, subscription and other sales opportunities, he said. Barrand was speaking at a "fan engagement" event hosted by Premier Sports Network, a networking club founded by sponsorship consultancy Eleven Sports & Entertainment.
John Reynolds is a writer in London.
