The Women’s Professional League Limited, the governing body overseeing the top two tiers of women’s football in England, came to Creativebrief seeking a creative agency to help them shake things up with a full rebrand and launch. Through a progressive pitch process, which focused on strategic workshops rather than creative output, we partnered WSL with Anomaly, to launch a new emblem and visual identity. the brand-agency partnership continues to be successful. Ruth Hooper, CMO at WSL, sat down with Creativebrief's Editorial Director to talk all about it.
Between a new era of women's sport, a distinct brand, and a progressive pitch process; the Women's Super League are certainly shaking things up.
Now, in the wake of the Lionesses' historic win, the WSL’s marketing chief, Ruth Hooper opens up to Creativebrief's Nicola Kemp, about the new era of women’s football and the opportunities for brands.
"It's a dream brief"
Nicola Kemp, Editorial Director, Creativebrief
This is a different brand of football to the men's game. It's a different audience, and therefor a different brand experience. So you think of it through that lens of being a challenger brand, sitting on a product which is entirely different to the products which exist in our current marketplace. So we need to make sure we are packaging it in that way and that we are bringing fresh, new excitement and distinction into how we present our brand.
Ruth Hooper, CMO, the WSL
We need to make sure that we are being very clear with our communications on the reasons for the change, they why, and how actually it is going to benefit the community around women's football.
Ruth Hooper, CMO, the WSL
Of course you get that small 10% who are really giving you the hard truths of how they feel. I think what I learnt in that moment is that we needed to be clearer on why a rebrand is important.
Ruth Hooper, CMO, the WSL
Purpose-led marketing is great in the right places, but women's sport is not in the business of purpose-led marketing. We're in the business of showing how our product/products are about competition and entertainment.
Ruth Hooper, CMO, the WSL
Designing a process that allowed us to get to know the people better and how we would work together, was so much more important than seeing the creative work
Ruth Hooper, CMO, the WSL
We set clear criteria, we knew what we were looking for, and we wrote a really good brief, so that we then got what we wanted out of the process without flogging all of the agencies that were part of it.
Ruth Hooper, CMO, the WSL
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