Overview

As a lifelong Aston Villa fan and club member, I was included in a cohort of supporters who were invited to contribute to a rebrand of the football club’s brand identity.

The rebranding exercise aimed to modernise the club’s brand identity while respecting almost 150 years of rich heritage. The project involved a thorough review of the club’s current brand position, as well as research into contemporary branding trends and best practices.

Framing the problem

A Rebrand is a strategic update to the look and feel of an existing product or service. The benefit of a rebrand project is that we are not starting from scratch. The club has experience with its supporters, understands their product and knows what works and what doesn’t. We have valid information to base design decisions upon so the challenge is understanding what to keep and what to jettison.

Rebranding is about responding to known issues. So rebrand projects can quickly become a question of ‘Evolution or Revolution?’.

In this case, we need to evaluate and respect almost 150 years worth of existing brand equity and the clubs’ links to the local community.  We need to measure the existing brand value against potential wholesale change. It’s tempting to jump into a rebrand project and reboot with an entirely new vision and look, but that can be too drastic and lose the audience’s loyalty. The original design may have elements or concepts that have merit and that fans know and trust. In these instances, the solution is often an evolution of the existing.

Supporters have an emotional and deep psychological bond with the Aston Villa brand. The club is, and has been an intrinsic part of the local community for several generations. At all times, supporters are judging quality, credibility, relevance and brand superiority. Strong brand equity will create feelings like social approval, security, self-respect, and excitement. So we should focus on and protect these positive attributes and qualities that create and maintain this bond.

Review of existing club crest

A brand audit is basically a brand-healthcheck that evaluates your brand’s position in the marketplace, its strengths and weaknesses, and how to improve it.

Jakob Nielsens hueristic-evaluation principles are not entirely applicable here, but there are basic evaluation principles which apply here;

• Survey the fans. Do we know what they like? Do we know what they want? Do we know what would be unacceptable change?
• Survey target market customers who are not familiar with the brand. What do they like?
• Consistency and Standards? Do governing bodies (e.g. The F.A. / F.I.F.A.) have compliance standards or guidelines for club branding?
• What are we measuring? What are the goals? A marketing plan? New brand values? Brand Positioning? New USP?
• Assess marketing materials? Are they fit-for-purpose in the digital environment?
• Flexibility and Efficiency of use? What about print use cases or use of brand materials in the physical environment?

Suggested updates

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