Thompson Brand Partners

Olympic Dillon

Delighted to see that Fontsmith's FS Dillion has been implemented as a signage font for a number of key venues at the London 2012 Olympic park, and it looks fantastic. Well done guys!

Take a look over at the Fontsmith blog.

Not too proud to beg...

Some of us are eating carbs like we've never heard of Atkins, some stretching like Black Swan auditionees and others (like me) are just trembling in their trainers...

Why? Well, this Sunday come rain or shine the most dedicated members of the Thompson team will be taking part in the annual Age UK 10k, The Abbey Dash.

We're running in aid of a fantastic cause, the NET Patient Foundation - a charity close to our hearts.  The charity is the only one in the UK to offer advice and support to sufferers and families of those with NETs (neuroendocrine tumours), a relatively uncommon group of cancers. Symptoms are often confused with more common complaints such as IBS, meaning NETs are frequently diagnosed incorrectly or missed completely.  

The money you help us raise will enable the NET Patient Foundation to continue their amazing work offering up to date support and advice, raising funds for vital research projects and increasing awareness of this little known illness. Read more here:  NET Patient Foundation

So please dig deep for Sarah, Guy, Jonny, myself and the NET Patient Foundation and help us to hit our target of £1,000. And if we do, we promise to take share lots of pictures of Jonny's  goosepimply legs.

www.justgiving.com/thompsonbp

Thank you! x 

A story of how our design really works!

This is an update of the story of our rebrand of Prozone, the football analytics and insight business, who at the start of 2009, like many SME’s, had a poor record and was struggling to achieve the huge potential its technology offered. It needed a serious improvement in form to turn things round and enable its owners to exit the business. The brand had a huge role to play.

 This is the story of how our re-brand helped Prozone achieve all its objectives and secure the biggest prize of all, a successful exit. And we’re not just talking domestic success, the new branding helped drive massive international growth, secure key hires, land prized clients and made the Prozone name such a threat, the competitors only had one choice… to buy it!

 In 2009, the business owners agreed a plan to exit and appointed a new MD to help achieve best value for their holdings. The new MD embarked on a sales and marketing-focused strategy, established key account managers and started to develop a product road map. Despite a good name with high levels of visibility, the Prozone brand was tired and poorly articulated.

 To help maximize value, Thompson Brand Partners was commissioned to rebrand Prozone and was set the following specific objectives, which the owners considered would result in maximum returns at the time of their exit:

objective 1 - Establish the brand as the leading name in performance analysis

objective 2 - Increase sales and profitability

objective 3 - Develop the level of international business

objective 4 - Secure more major clubs as clients, especially Manchester United

 The rebrand brief included a need to articulate the Prozone brand and what it stands for, the development of a new brand identity to help bring this to life, a clear brand hierarchy and the rollout of the new branding throughout the business, its communications and products.

 Now 2 years later, as always in football, the results speak for themselves:

Sales up 37% in 2 years.

Annual operating profit up 129% in 2 years.

Return on investment on our design fee of a net-busting 3,800% in just 2 years.

 International sales increased by 100% between June 2010 and June 2011.

US sales increased by 75% between June 2008 and June 2011.

Secured key new clients:

 FIFA, UEFA and The FA. Liverpool, Barcelona, Red Bull New York, Spartak Moscow, and…

Manchester United! (taken from main competitor Amisco, who has since acquired Prozone)

The development of the Prozone brand has been a significant factor in the owners ability to sell their holding. This was achieved in June 2011 - a successful exit, bang on plan!

100% of the share holdings of Prozone Sports Limited were bought by the French based SUP, which owns the biggest competitor brand, Amisco. Together Prozone and Amisco will form the undisputed world leader. The Prozone brand is being retained in the UK market and its technology will be used by Amisco to the benefit of its own clients, which include Inter Milan, FC Bayern Munich, SC Lille and Canal+. Whilst we are not able to disclose details of the sales consideration, in retaining the Prozone brand, Amisco recognises its strength and potential. Brand value was a significant element of the sale consideration and we have a very, very happy client on our hands.

www.prozonesports.com

More tortoise than hare...

...but I got there in the end!

Yesterday, I had a FABULOUS morning running the 5th ever Leeds 10k Run For All - and I'm now feeling very proud!  

Over 9,000 runners took part, despite the astonishingly bad weather (apparently it's the first time in the 5 years that it's rained...), and as my first 'proper' race it was really something to be part of! My only target was to finish without stopping and not only did I do that, I also did quite the sprint finish. Unfortunately, according to the official photos, I look like a complete idiot when I sprint...

Here are my vital statistics:

Time: 1 hr 16 mins 41 secs

Position: 5691st

Blisters: 2

Money raised: £182.00

 

Thank you to all those who sponsored me - Cancer Research UK will be very happy indeed.

Rach x

A very, very lucky man (and woman)

Rachel and I had the privilege this week of a tour of the London 2012 Olympic Park, and were both blown away by the experience. With just over a year to go and the Torch Relay details just announced, all the main venues are nearly finished and the Park is really starting to take shape.

Even our high expectations, fuelled by those fantastic shots of the aquatic centre and velodrome in particular, were well and truly left standing in the blocks. As the 2012 branded bus circled slowly round the site, wonderful building after wonderful building came into view, generating great excitement amongst our fellow guests.

The main stadium came first, with its steep sides and angular floodlight stantions. I hadn’t realised that only 25,000 seats are permanent and the other 55,000 are temporary fittings. The other thing that strikes you is how much the field of play is sunken below ground level, which must make for a dramatic entrance when you first take your seats (apologies for the quality of the pics, but we were not allowed off the bus!)

The biggest of all the buildings, and most impressive in its own way, is the media centre. Its wide enough to take 5 jumbo jets wing-tip to wing-tip. It is colossal and will take over as the permanent home for many global broadcasters, for the duration of the Games. Some start to move in this year, needing 9 months to fit out their space. Just getting your head round the scale of the media event, the time scales and numbers involved and the worldwide thirst for coverage is difficult in itself.

Next up is the dedicated energy centre, one of two, designed to provide sustainable power for the entire Park. Then a new school for the community, post Games. Then the village (make that 17,000 apartments!) the athletes will live in. Then the temporary basketball building, with its cool white irregular cladding. Then the new shopping centre wrapped around Stratford station. Then the BMX course, tumbling over rocks and rivers. Then the hockey stadium. Then… well, you get the idea.

If anything, the aquatic centre is a shade disappointing, due to the temporary stands fixed either side of Zahir Hadid’s beautiful sweeping roof. Once these two additions are removed after the games, the building will be stunning, sweeping like a stingray, encapsulating two pools and a diving centre.

The outstanding building amongst all these gems though, in my opinion, is the velodrome. I know that the shape of the track is an architect’s dream, lending itself to the creation of wonderful shapes, but this building surpasses even our heightened expectations. The sharp roof, sitting snugly over the banked track, juts out over the adjoining A12 with utter confidence. It is an outstanding example of the best in British design and engineering and will no doubt form one of the iconic images of the Games.

What doesn’t quite come over yet is the extent of the gardens, waterways and park space between all the buildings. It surprised me how much the Park really will be a park. Once complete with the landscaping in place, it will form a stunning backdrop to the events and a superb place to circulate and chill.

And if that is not enough, the other venues for the Games include such icons as Wimbledon, Wembley, Lords, The Serpentine, The Mall and Horse Guards Parade. After all the hype and coverage, today has made it feel so real. My prediction is the biggest wow factor will come from one of my all time favourite views of London. For me, nothing beats sitting by the Royal Observatory at the top end of Greenwich Park, where the equestrian events will be held, looking down over the Naval Buildings on to the East End and Isle of Dogs to the Olympic stadium itself. This will be one of those truly breath-taking views of what should be a breath-taking Olympic Games.

 I can’t wait now. Did you get any tickets?

 

trainers at the ready folks.

It's been a while (4 years to be precise) since I took part in parkrun* at Leeds' Hyde Park and the last time I ventured online to sign up, their website was pretty basic/rubbish.

So last night when, due to a new health kick, I visited the website once more to see if the timings and locations of the events were still the same (which they are), I was met with a real visual treat. They've undergone a fabulous rebrand, really in-keeping the friendly, welcoming and eco-friendly ethos of the organisation. And it helps that I'm a complete sucker for cute animation.

Have a look here

Rachel x

*parkrun (no caps please) organise FREE 5k runs every single week in parks all over the country, normally on a Saturday morning. There's two within 3 miles of my current location behind my desk in fact. You just sign up once online by 6pm on the Friday and then you are free to attend as often as you like. It's not competitive (unless you want it to be), but can simply be used to keep fit, monitor your fitness and training, or for a bit of a weekend amble. It's also ridiculously sociable, always culminating in a post-run coffee at some nearby cafe. Do it.

Catalan vs Matalan

Now I can't take the credit for the rather magnificent headline above. It came via The Sport (where else) and it of course referred to the big European footie match this week. The result of course is old news and you'd have to live on the moon (or America) not to know the result.

But I was taken aback by a rather remarkable thing which I read in the Guardian. When they were doing their pre match team comparisons - how the full back match up etc- they compared shirt sponsorship deals.

Manchester United   Shirt sponsor: AIG Contract value: £56,000,000 (yes, million)

Barcelona       Shirt sponsor: Unicef Contract value: £0

Apparently Barcelona refuse to sell their shirt sponsorship and prefer instead to give something back and sponsor one of the world's most prominent charities. Amazing. Can you imagine this happening in the UK? Absolutely not. We're so far down the commercial road that it's simply unimaginable. Forward-thinking, responsible and altruistic...not in our back yard methinks.

Check out this other fact:

Manchester United   Owned by: Fat cat millionaires from the US

Barcelona       Owned by: Its members (ie the fans)

Not only did they outclass Manchester United on the field, they outclass them off the field too and to be quite honest embarrass our overall approach to football in the UK. 

This sporting life

Just finished watching Lindsay Anderson's landmark film This Sporting Life. Set amidst the coal pits and Rugby League communities of 1960s Yorkshire, it has not lost its power to deliver powerful social and emotional messages to our modern sensibilities.

Crazy modernist music, Brandoesque performances from Richard Harris (as Frank Machin) , stark cinematography, stunning support cast, the best ever filmed sport sequences, unanswered questions...it's all in there. It's a supremely working class film in every way.

I grew up on Rugby League and visited all these mystical grounds -- Wakefield, Swinton, Salford, Barrow, Hull -- I know it sounds crazy now when the world is so much smaller than then. This film captures the cultural significance of Rugby League on the communities that relied on it so heavily for their identity and their ambition. 

There's something too about the position Machin plays. In those days in League, the no. 13 (loose forward)  was THE pivotal player in the team so his position is all the more significant.

Big match

The Leeds Rhinos are playing in the World Club Challenge this weekend. 

They won it last year and if they win it this year, it'll be back to back wins which nobody's done before.

Good luck to the Rhinos - I reckon they'll do it. 

What's wrong with liking snooker?

What a lovely bank holiday weekend I had. Did the usual bank holiday things - wash the car, did the garden, met up with friends but also watched plenty of snooker. Yes, I like snooker - I didn't think there was much wrong with that until I was ridiculed at the pub on Sunday. I was supposed to be meeting them at The Oak in Headingley at 4pm but it was about 6pm I turned up after the first session of the grand final of the snooker world championship - Ronnie O'Sullivan v Ali Carter. I was supporting The Rocket, he was on good form but not as fine as his performance in the semi-final, but still great to watch. A few drinks down the pub where I told my friends I couldn't stay out as I was going back to watch the second session. And that's when the ridicule began. Well, for those who enjoy snooker you'll know the results and for those who don't you probably don't care the final score was 18 - 8 - to Ronnie of course.