In their first season, Auckland FC won the A League and New Zealand brand launch of the year(*)
Ok, it certainly helps that in your first season you:
- win the League
- crush your local competitor in all the derby matches
- come from ‘little New Zealand’ and dominate much bigger more established Australian clubs
- win your first six games
- go 523 minutes before conceding a goal
- have a coach and a team that from day one play an expansive and attractive style of football
- adopt the legendary and beautiful Inter Milan colours (is there a more beautiful football kit)?
Safe to say the product is good then.
But can we take a moment and recognise that, in terms of establishing a brand, the launch and first year of Auckland FC is almost without peer?
Someone once said that “hindsight is 20/20 vision” and it seems obvious now that a sports mad city like Auckland would embrace and learn to love its own football team playing in the Australian A league against clubs from Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Wellington.
But New Zealand can be a hard place to start new things. For all its work ethic and creativity, there’s little American or even Australian style optimism. If the British greet newness with cynicism then New Zealand revels in its own brand of down to earth scepticism.
So an American billionaire introducing a football team in a country obsessed by rugby and home to the legendary All Blacks?
‘Yeah but nah’, or at least ‘let’s wait and see how that goes’.
Well, it’s gone bloody well.
Happily, we at Stickybeak are part of the squad and do their testing and polling and it turns out that 75% of Aucklanders are not only aware of the team but are aware of its position in the league. I mean this is Auckland, not Manchester. And it is less than six months since the first ball was kicked.
Q: Did you know Auckland FC are currently top of the A League ahead of 11 Australian teams and Wellington Phoenix?
Which is why the club management have worked so hard to combine a real European style football ‘ultra’ atmosphere at one (The Port) end of the ground and water slides and sand pits and a family fun vibe at the other.
One of my favourite memories of the season was CEO Nick Becker walking hand in hand with his two kids across the pitch at half time to play in the giant sand pit the club had built. Meanwhile at the other end of the ground, flares and drums were going and opposition fans were having their parenthood loudly doubted by the more hard core contingent.
It’s very hard to cater for the football fan of today and tomorrow at the same ground – in fact I can’t think of a Premier League club that has succeeded in this.
So no surprise that it’s not only in awareness that they score so well. Look at these ‘preference’ scores:
Q: How much pride and excitement do you think Aucklanders feel about Auckland FC and their success this year?
75% of people think their fellow Aucklanders feel pride and excitement at this success. I mean it is football, not a new detergent, but in pure base brand terms that’s amazing.
And finally, an astonishing 91% of Aucklanders think all of this is good for the city. Talk about social license.
Note to all New Zealand and Auckland politicians: “Take their meetings and bend over backwards to help them further establish this club and do not get on the other side of an argument with them”.
Q: Do you think the success of Auckland FC is good for Auckland?
Establishing a new club, a product, a brand or anything needs a leap of imagination not required in business-as-usual situations. Getting sponsorship and commercial partnerships for an established club means you have data on attendance, viewers, fans, shirt sales and expected editorial media coverage.
When none of that exists you have to sell a vision. And that can be hard to buy for people in corporate structures that tend to be risk averse so credit should be given to McDonalds and Anchor who were first in. And then ANZ’s New Zealand business who faced down their Australian bosses and plastered the city with fabulous posters and billboards after every game.
As always in these things, great agencies doing great work is part of the mix so hat tip to Zac Suvalko at Thoughtful Design and Matt Dickinson at True.
This football obsessive is very glad that my adopted home town has finally got religion on god’s game and that there is room alongside the global mega brand that is the All Blacks for a new and exciting entrant.
Forza Auckland FC!
PS: The Times and legendary football writer Martin Samuels has a great take on Auckland FC
(*) I’ve no idea if there is such a thing as the New Zealand brand launch of the year, but if there was, they’d win.
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