The solemn faces of the West Coast Eagles players following the team’s defeat by Sydney in last weekend’s elimination final has a silver lining for Jim Davies, managing director of the Eagles’ new advertising agency, 303 Advertising.
Mr Davies believes the West Coast Eagles brand has been far too “rational” and so aims to refocus the club’s brand strategy on emotion, primarily what he calls “using the inner strength”.
Whether it’s tackling harder, marking better, or pulling up the socks for a better season next year, the new three-year brand focus for the West Coast Eagles will be based on securing a prosperous future and the emotion needed to drive this success.
“The brand has been defined by three strong values – professionalism, leadership, and passion. The first two are very rational and the third is owned by someone else [Fremantle],” Mr Davies said.
“We wanted to bring out the emotion to the brand. It’s the first AFL club in WA, it’s the most successful, and it has an inner strength, or the strength within. We can capture that. It’s built from the heart out rather than from the outside in.
“The problem with its [WCE] brand is it hasn’t been focused or controlled.
“They’ve tended to focus on the past rather than look forward. They have to continually attract new members and they’ve got an ageing membership, so while it is hard to get a membership now we need to bring new blood in and create relationships beyond simple membership.”
303 Advertising pitched for the account last week against four other agencies and was appointed after presenting a brand positioning from its brand consultancy, Uffindell West.
West Coast Eagles marketing manager Deane Pieters said 303 Advertising’s brand proposition would result in the club owning its own space in a competitive market.
“We’re doing things reasonably well at the moment but 303 gave us territory to own outright. We’ve got passion but we’re looking at it differently and in an emotive way,” he said.
“This brief was more about strategy than creative and we were impressed with what 303 delivered.”
Mr Davies said there would be tougher controls on the use of the West Coast Eagles brand by sponsors and other stakeholders.
“We want to bring more control to the branding process, which includes working with sponsors and the media,” he said.
