Wembley stadium stands above north London as a modern British icon, akin to the Angel of the North and the Severn Bridge.

We decided to take a top-down approach to branding this huge monolith for the League Cup Final 2015. We disregarded everything that we were told (within the law), and covered every spare bit of the stadium in the livery of each team's colours and the faces of their star players. We looked into the way that the space worked as a wider whole, and how fans of different teams arrived and placed beautiful photos of their teams to gently stoke friendly rivalry in the approach to the game.

We worked with the wonderful photographer Mitch Jenkins to shoot both team managers and various key players of each team (Chelsea vs Tottenham), alongside a range of genuine fans. We curated the placements throughout the stadium to make sure that the right players, managers or fans were paired with their rival counterparts. We then wrote tailored messaging for each placement that directly played back to Capital One's sport sponsorship message 'The Card in your Corner'.

ENSURING EVERY
APPROACH WAS BRANDED

The graphic icon stye that the branding used were set at the beginning of Capital One's sponsorship two years prior. We updated the icon set to make them more dynamic, and to provide us with more flexibility in messaging. We also added the brick wall behind it as a nod to grass roots football and dressing room camaraderie.

We mapped out every media placement around the stadium, covering five potential approaches for fans to arrive. We then created non-repeating paths to the stadium so that everyone would see contextually relevant, branded messaging from their team. There were over 140 pieces of print, placed alongside many digital spots of all shapes and sizes. One of our favourites was the jumbo car park side, showing Harry Kane and Diego Costa looming 60ft over the arriving fans.

GETTING BEHIND THE SCENES

We also placed vinyls in the pitch-side player areas for further exposure through the Sky coverage on the day. It was a mammoth task, but the months of hard work more than paid off during a fantastic weekend.

Next project:
Now TV Jamboree

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