Virgin Sport brand launch
Virgin launches a new sports service across TV and online, with free Barclay’s Premier League and Coca Cola championship video highlights.
Virgins in sport
Logo concepts and identity design
Being new to sport, Virgin needed to build a brand identity from scratch. To further differentiate their sport offering, Virgin wanted to be quirky, irreverant and capture the voice of the fans. We came up with a colour scheme and graphic language to bring these concepts to life, and still give sport it’s own look and feel, whilst remaining true to the parent brand. This also included extensive brand guideline documents.
All the goals, all the games, all the clubs
Website design
Virgin Sport launched with a new sports portal, creating one of the UK’s most comprehensive and original internet sports services. Site visitors are able to watch highlights from all Barclays Premier League, Coca-Cola Championship, League 1 and League 2 matches completely free of charge. We came up with designs that took existing portal layouts and made them work harder. Key to the success of the Virgin Sport brand was the limited use of red, whilst still reflecting the brand with heavy use of the brand typeface. Particularly, the new pages incorporate quotes from the fan forums fed in live via XML into a Flash front-end.
Bringing football back to the fans
Van design concepts
Because the fan’s voice is so important in sport, Virgin kitted out an old library van with a live video linkup to be their new mobile TV studio - the Virgin Media Fan Van - which goes out on the road at fixtures throughout the season. This ‘fan van’ allows Virgin to record post-match reaction as it happens, and to have a visible presence at matches, using promo girls and footie challenges. We came up with several concepts to make the van a reality, including a van completely covered in astro turf and a pimped up ‘A-Team’ style truck.
Video news and irreverant comedy shows
TV graphics and microsite design
In addition, a series of ‘ready-for-broadband’ programmes, produced by Premium TV, follows the ups and downs of the Barclay’s Premier League season, with comedy characters ‘Mr Sheepskin’ and ‘Danny Dier’ created by ex-Southend footballer and comedian, Terry Alderton. These are supported by twice-daily news and highlights shows.
Total football ATL campaign
Online design and outdoor concepts
To attact new Virgin Media customers, we worked with the customer aquisition team and created a ‘Total Football’ landing page which was advertised on TV and Radio. We also produced outdoor concepts for 48 sheet and 96 sheet poster sites for ‘Total Football’, and further concepts for brand guidelines documents.
V Player
Syndicated Media Player design
To further extend the broadband reach for video highlights, Virgin wanted to syndicate content licensed by the FA Premier League and Football Association. We came up with the concept of the V Player, a video player that can be easily incorporated into a website. This has been taken up by The Times, The Sun and The Mirror.
Visit the live site
What the press say
What the punters say
- Loving the new site 10/10 Joe Craig, Brentford
- Great changes, site looks the biz now 10/10 Paul Yorke, N1
- A really great site 10/10 Nigel, Wimbledon
- It’s ace! 10/10 Alf, Doncaster
- Really cool 10/10 Lee, Almondbury
- Like the new look 7/10 Alan Plank, Hammersmith
- Like the new look, much better than the old site 9/10 Jo Craig, Norwood Green
- Different from the BBC 7/10 Jeff Smith, Carlisle
- I think it is brilliant well done virgin kick in the teeth for sky 9/10 Mark Liddell, Bolton
- Snazzy and sharp - love that rotating thingy 9/10 Maciek, Bognor
- About 220% better than before 8/10 Ralph, Hoxton
- Looking good guys, here’s hoping Sky find a real battle on their hands. Keep up the good work 8/10 Craig Adams, Yorkshire
