We were very pleased to win a six-way competitive tender to develop a set of resources for The FA “to create a change in the quality and effectiveness of marketing and communications by FA Charter Standard leagues and clubs”.
Our role was to set a style and tone of voice that would help to demystify the world of marketing and communications for the thousands of volunteers who run grassroots clubs around the UK and enable them to market themselves more effectively.
We established that the majority of the target audience have very little experience of marketing and communications so it was crucial that we created a style that simplified the principles of marketing and made them seem manageable and achievable.
We decided to use a language all volunteers would understand: the language of football. Beginning with the name What’s Your Pitch? the campaign is filled with football references to describe the key areas for football clubs to focus on. For example, branding comes under the title The Club Crest and PR is renamed The Back Pages.
The visual style references the lasting appeal of retro design in football, which is popular with both older volunteers and style-conscious younger age groups. To help drive the campaign and engage volunteers with the various areas we produced a set of short, animated videos, one for each section of the campaign, that introduce the range of resources that are available to volunteers.
Introduction video
Going for promotion video
Club crest video
Sponsorship video
The back pages video
Underpinning the resources available on The FA’s Your Game website is an interactive online diagnostic tool, called The Tactics Board, which has been built using the latest HTML5 technology. The tool allows volunteers to answer a set of simple questions online and then produces a tailored report on the best ways to market their club, pointing them in the direction of the most suitable resources available on the site.
The project was launched in November 2011 as a key part of The FA’s drive to increase awareness of the Your Game website.