A Unified Image: Maintaining Message Across Materials
By Bill Smith
Associate AD for Communications, University of Arkansas
In the crowded marketplace, the entity with identity will win the consumer’s attention. So often in sports information, we are concerned with our approved colors and consistency in our logos in public presentation, but do not pay the same attention to the messages we are providing to the general public.
The athletic season is no different from a political campaign, and the product that we are selling is the sport rather than soap, the coach rather than the candidate.
Unity of message across the various delivery systems is the key to success. To often, the SID office is not in coordination with marketing or other external communications divisions of the athletic department or university. The attention to detail in unifying a campaign will pay off in both the external and internal perceptions of the team during the season.
Humans respond to the simplicity of the icon – the symbol that can be a name, face, or image – and those icons have inherent meaning to the viewer. Football helmets are icons; the department mascot is an icon.
But, is your press guide theme iconic? Will a supporter immediately understand the concept? Does it create, in the classic sense, a representation of your team?
Repetition isn’t something done in the weight room or the practice facility. It needs to happen across media for the message of your sport to become recognized, to achieve icon status.
Visual elements that can be easily reproduced on supporting materials are crucial. It starts at the font level, making sure that the department’s identity fonts are utilized where appropriate. In the Women’s Athletics Department, we have a default serif and sans serif font to be used in all printed items. These fonts were chosen to support our identity script, a combination of school name and mascot that is used when themes are not appropriate.
Once established, there should be an artistic image that remains consistent with the theme. In last year, the cascading random type from the Matrix trilogy provided the backdrop for all women’s basketball material. This season, it is the clasped hands of a team huddle photograph.
The theme is repeated on everything, and becomes its own icon. This is where marketing and communications must come together. It dilutes the impact when the team poster, press guide cover, inside press guide layout, schedule card, and ticket brochure use different pictures, color schemes and iconography. The school name and mascot logo are not enough to pull together competing themes.
The repetition must be relentless. Do the scoreboard graphics match the theme? Is the television ticket ad consistent? Is it on the website for the sport?
Carry the theme all the way down to support materials used at events. We use the theme icon on seating charts, timing sheets, press releases – anything that is viewed in relation to the sport.
This season’s theme text is one example. Not only did “One Team, One Goal” appear on everything from the log sheets to press notes, the specific drop shadow and effects from Photoshop that give the look to the theme are carefully added to player introductions – names mimicking the theme layout – on the video board, matching graphics in the season ticket advertisements for newspaper and television.
Current publishing tools make this effort easier than in the past. If the SID office is not charged with creation of theme items, make sure to acquire digital assets from the designers prior to the season. Always use original art to insure consistency and avoid font substitutions. Be sure that when creating the central image that it can be repurposed into different aspect ratios. The press guide cover, the CD/DVD sleeve, the No. 10 envelope fitting ticket brochure and the common schedule card all have varying formats.
Moving into the season with collateral material to support an all-America campaign, continue the same basic set of imagery to avoid the breakdown of continuity. A good example was last year’s Matrix-based layouts for the team’s “Enter the Arena” were used for special flyers and DVD covers used to support Shameka Christon’s bid for conference player of the year and all-America honors.
Remember, icon comes from the Greek for image, and our original languages were composed of pictographs. Attention to very small details in iconography has importance that initially appears drastically out of proportion. How many times has the office noticed “something was wrong” with a publication? Chances are a stray font change, a misplaced graphic item, even something as obvious as a wrong logo, was the small thing that began to unravel the message.
As the keeper of the departmental image, the sports information or communications office should be proactive in this area, and begin to take more of a public relations campaign approach. Stay in front of the athletic director and decision makers – coaches, assistant coaches, marketing director, agents, advertising agencies – to emphasize the role the SID office should have in deploying a successful campaign strategy and to remind these stakeholder of the wide range of materials that should be employed.
CHECKLIST
Make sure the sport theme is consistent in:
Font – color – image – theme
On the obvious external materials, including:
Press Guide
Ticket Brochure
Schedule Cards/Magnets/Calendars
Promotional Posters
But don’t forget collateral items:
Fact Sheets
Press Releases
Internal Operational Documents
(Timing Sheets, Seating Charts, Floor Plans)
Or overlook electronic media:
Television Advertising
Arena Displays
Coaches’ Shows
Internet Presence
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