There is something quintessentially British about ‘The Pools’, a weekly ritual for millions of ‘soft’ gamblers enjoying the simple pleasure of filling in their weekly coupon predicting the outcome of that week’s football. Littlewoods, Vernons and Zetters were the most famous pools companies in the UK. These brands were brought together in 2007 by Sportech and are now known simply as ‘The Football Pools’.
Since then, habits have changed and players can now gamble on lotteries, poker or odds based traditional betting shops online – more quickly and easily than ever before and whenever they want. Our task was to help re-ignite passion for The Football Pools and help the iconic brand appeal to a new, younger audience.
‘The chance to develop the world’s oldest football gaming company was naturally very exciting for us. We focussed all our attention on making The Football Pools more relevant for today’s player, while not losing the goodwill and feeling towards the Pools built over the last 91 years.’ says Co-founder David Law.
Our first recommendation was to align the organisation around a guiding core essence. ‘It’s all to play for’ not only encapsulated the unique experience of playing the pools, but set a standard to work to as an organisation. In terms of the identity, SomeOne took a ‘digital first’ approach.
‘We were trying to appeal to a younger demographic, one more familiar with an app or on-screen programme guide,’ says Lee Davies, Design Director.
The brand icon now appropriately references a football and the extended brand world makes use of a goal net property that can serve as a background or as a more active way to contain photography or hosted content. Using Neo Sans as the digital typeface and an ‘evening mode’ colour scheme helped enrich the identity, bringing it up to date and making it adept for digital application.
The Football Pools has undergone an extensive modernisation, to move the customer experience to a now truly responsive one, fit for any device. The site is being further developed by Thoughtworks and Grand Parade. Alongside the digital application.
We are helping apply the new identity to all printed comms and direct mail, something that is still a vital part of the existing customer journey and subscripton method of play.
David and his team at SomeOne not only produced an outstanding and contemporary new identity for our business but more importantly underpinned the creative with a rock solid strategy good enough to take us into the next phase of The Football Pools.