My Brand of Football

I support Arsenal – London’s biggest and most successful football team. Arsenal is now a leading club brand in the globally popular English Premier League. It is the 5th richest club in the world with hundreds of millions of supporters worldwide. Football brand loyalty is unlike almost any other. Supporters and fans have a deep relationship with the brand whatever the club’s situation. Brands have supporters, football clubs have the most passionate supporters

All big football clubs now understand the power of their brand. They need to, because for the first time they are reaching beyond their traditional home markets to sell their brands to the world. Only the very strongest football brands will succeed in tapping the markets of China, North America, Japan, and later, India. Each of these clubs will need to understand exactly just what its brand is and will need to manage this brand more sensitively than football clubs ever have before. Even 15 years ago a football brand was not the same thing it is today. American, Japanese or Chinese fans were virtually nonexistent.

Football fans still mostly support their local club (unless they are from outside Manchester), know the club history, and have strong brand loyalty. That changed during the 1990s. First satellite TV and later, the internet, carried the big European club brands to the corners of the earth. Imagine a bar in Mumbai or Sapporo. A dozen people are sitting around a TV watching Arsenal play Barcelona. None of them knows that Barcelona is a city in Spain, a country they will never visit. All of them support either club, though they probably support other clubs as well. The Arsenal brand means something different to these new fans than it did to local London fans in the 1980’s.

To the fans history really matters. All great brands have a real narrative and Arsenal’s is one of the most fascinating of any club, anywhere. In 1886 Scottish and midland born workers at the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich, Kent (which was not then part of Greater London) formed the “Dial Square” football team. Kent was a cricket and rugby county but the workers wanted to form a factory team in the sport that they knew and loved. Dial Square was one of the Royal Arsenal workshops fronted by a Vanbrugh designed formal gate – it still exists and is now a Young’s pub – well worth a Thames river trip to visit alongside the Royal Arsenal museum

On Christmas Day 1886, after some initial success in local games – including victories over Eastern Wanderers and Chiswick Park – they changed their name to Royal Arsenal and became established in local football as “the Gunners”. They played on Plumstead Common and eventually settled at the Manor Ground. They never played in Woolwich. Several of the workers had been employed at the munitions factory in Nottingham, before moving south, and played for Nottingham Forest. They asked their former club for some spare kit, which was duly supplied, it is why we wear red. The white sleeves were another later, Herbert Chapman inspired, innovation in 1933.

In 1891 the club turned professional – the first London club to do so – and had to re-name as Woolwich Arsenal (professionalism was frowned upon by the public schools dominated London Football Association so Royal was a no go area). They then became the first London club to join the emerging and rapidly expanding Football League – formed by Northern and Midland teams.

In 1904 the club won promotion to the First Division of the League. The club had some minor success and won London cups and trophies but none of the national competitions. However, by 1910 the club were in a really poor state, not performing well on the pitch, with declining crowds and income (a problem with their industrial catchment area) and on the verge of bankruptcy. The club went into voluntary liquidation.

Enter a white knight – an extraordinary and visionary man who effectively changed the club’s fortunes, forever. Sir Henry Norris, the Mayor of Fulham and Chairman of Fulham Football Club decided to buy a controlling stake in Arsenal with a plan to merge it with his other team and create a London super club  (a London FC?) – the Football League vetoed this. Sir Henry was a property developer, a leading mason with extensive contacts in the church and soon to be MP. He would not be thwarted in his desire to build a powerful London football team.

He came up with an amazing and truly pioneering grand plan. He looked north where the property market was booming and transport links were excellent. Somehow he persuaded the Archbishop of Canterbury to approve his purchase of the lands of St Johns College of Divinity in Highbury, Islington. This was an extraordinary feat. Never before had a club re-located and despite local residents, and some small local football clubs’ objections, the first version of Highbury was built and the first game played in 1913 – a 2-1 victory over Leicester City.

It was really bad timing because Arsenal were relegated and the Great War began in 1914. The Football League ceased but oddly some London games continued and Spurs shared Highbury as their home ground. After the War Sir Henry pulled off the most amazing trick of all. He got Arsenal promoted, despite the fact that they were not eligible, to the First Division. He cited the match fixing at the end of the 1914-15 season between Liverpool and Manchester United as just cause. He was determined to protect and grow his investment. Nobody really knows how he persuaded the Football League to do this but he was an influential and persuasive character. Spurs who had a more legitimate cause to stay in the First were relegated. They have never got over this – it still makes me smile.

So Arsenal were never really promoted and their forthcoming success meant they were never relegated – a unique position in football history. The next figure to change Arsenal’s fortunes is a true legend. Sir Henry recruited Herbert Chapman to join the club as manager in 1925. He was then England’s most successful club manager having led Huddersfield to be champions for 3 consecutive years. Chapman truly revolutionised the club, the team and the tactics. He brought in some great players, at some considerable and controversial expense. The club was transformed and in 1930 he led Arsenal to their first major trophy. Arsenal beat his old club Huddersfield 2-0 in the FA Cup Final at Wembley.

The “Bank of England Club” was born. Arsenal went on to be the dominant force in football throughout the 30’s. In 1931 they became the first London winners of the Football League. Herbert Chapman’s pioneering team started the process of Arsenal becoming London’s most successful team. They have been League Champions 13 times, FA Cup winners 9 times, League Cup Winners twice, the European Cup Winner’s Cup, the European Fairs Cup and the Double 3 times with more to come.

Highbury became “The Home of Football” and Archie Leitch’s original ground was developed into a magnificent Art Deco Stadium in the 30’s becoming a historic landmark in the football world. Over the next seven decades Bertie Mee, George Graham and Arsene Wenger built, developed and managed wonderful and successful teams there. I first saw Arsenal play at their home in the late 70’s when I moved to London. The bewitching talents of Liam Brady persuaded me that this was the club for me. I took my son, Tom, to his first game in the 90’s. We had the delight of watching Dennis Bergkamp score his first ever, brilliant, brace of goals there. We have been going back to watch the team ever since – it really was our “fever pitch”.

However, the much loved, and now missed, Highbury was too small – it only held 38,000 seated fans. It could not accommodate the growing number of supporters and the demand for season and executive tickets. It was not fulfilling it’s potential and generating the income required to compete at the very highest level. Arsenal needed to move on again. Within a relatively short time frame an amazing new stadium was built at Ashburton Grove and, to the fans delight, it was only 1000 yards from Highbury. Yet another inspired, groundbreaking and pioneering move. The club played their first games at the Arsenal, Emirates sponsored, Stadium for the 2006 / 2007 season with a ground capacity of 60,000. The Arsenal Brand got bigger and richer. I don’t think any other English football club will ever manage a ground move so effectively, and profitably, again.

So history matters and a football brand was built. Why is this interesting from a social networking point of view? A club is dependent on its fans and one of the wonderful things about the internet and blogs is that fans share their joys and frustrations, their inside knowledge – on everything from new players to travel tips – and even tickets on the web. Supporting Arsenal is “Open Source”. I have met Arsenal fans online – Arseblog is my preferred fan blogsite amongst many; informative, funny and truly representative of a fan’s point of view. I have met these same bloggers and fans off-line at games at home and around Europe. I have met fans from Australia, France, Holland, Sweden, Ireland and from all over the US. I have been invited to watch games, with local supporter’s clubs, in New York and San Francisco. When watching a Champions League away game I was entertained by the drinking vikings of the Norwegian supporters club – it was far more fun than the actual game. Wherever I travel in the world I can ask advice about which bar is best to watch the next game from back home. I have met fans around the world in the most intriguing places – when in Morocco in a remote bar in the Atlas mountains I asked a waiter wearing an Arsenal hat why he supported Arsenal. Expecting something from more recent global broadcast reasons he gave me the most surprising answer “because my father did” – truly wonderful (this club brand runs deep). I have had similar experiences in Costa Rica, Miami and Mexico and will have many more I am sure. This is a truly global brand with British, American and Russian owners who will use multi-channel marketing to build a growing audience. Not quite the popular view from the old timers of the original London terraces – but the inevitable future.

I am a shareholder, season ticket holder, fan, consumer, blogger, brand consultant and digital marketeer. I love this brand because it involves everything I am interested in. Brand creation, digital marketing and social media. Why a great brand has to have a real history. Why harnessing a consumer passion is so important to drive brand inclusion. Why people like to share a passion. This personifies the BrandVoice mantra of engagement, dialogue and performance. The football is pretty fantastic too.

This year is the 125th anniversary of a munitions factory works team, from Kent, started by David Danskin from Scotland and Fred Beardsley from Nottingham. They started the team because they loved playing football. They could never have foreseen what the team, and the club, would achieve from such humble origins. It was not a leading London Club, and it was not called Arsenal, but it is now one of the world’s most powerful and successful sports brands. I can only thank them for their passion and commitment.

I reward the club with mine.