Against the Odds
Services
Wake-up
We were tasked with creating a brand identity and accompanying website for Against the Odds, a campaign aiming to spark a movement across all levels of the sporting pyramid in Greater Manchester in support of phasing out gambling sponsorship and advertising in sport.
Wake-up
Around 1 in 15 Greater Manchester residents have been directly or indirectly harmed by gambling, and the promotion of gambling products through sport plays a significant role in normalising gambling and increasing harms. To ensure that the campaign would resonate with sports clubs and sports bettors, but also avoid any triggers for those harmed by gambling, we engaged with several different stakeholders through the concept creation process, and their input influenced our creative decisions. Healthy Stadia and Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) helped us gather attendees, representing a local lived experience group, a counselling charity as well as key sports organisations from across Greater Manchester.
Rise
To create this brand identity, we looked at what the campaign was trying to achieve on the whole, and how we could reflect that with the associated website and branded assets. The fundamental values behind this campaign are protection, partnership, and pressure. Pressure that people feel from the advertisers was reflected in the David and Goliath style tension in size between the ‘Against’ and ‘the Odds’ text within the logo and typemark. The idea is that ordinary sports fans and sports clubs need to increase the pressure on sports organisations who choose to partner with gambling brands and ease the burden of responsibility on consumers.
Shine
The slash used throughout the brand represents the way that the odds are presented (2/1 etc). However, beneath this, the slash also resembles a protective seatbelt that the campaign wishes to develop to protect sports fans from harm. Against the Odds isn’t just about ‘crossing out’ gambling sponsorship and advertising in sport, it’s about supporting people who are affected, and preventing further harms.
Rise
Working with Healthy Stadia, Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) and all connected stakeholders was a collaborative effort. We came together to make sure that the messaging, branding and website for this campaign was nuanced, and the various target audiences all felt seen, understood and represented. The campaign itself is all about teamwork – people coming together as a movement in support of this cause. To this end, we created the shield badge graphic to represent the collective, and give a clear nod to the sporting subject.
Outshine
The team at Healthy Stadia saw great value in the brand workshop at the start of the journey, adding “Thanks for facilitating an eye-opening workshop last Friday at GMCA. This was a really useful and we think attendees will have got a lot of value out of this both in terms of the ambitions of the Against the Odds project, but also how they think about developing other projects.”
Outshine