If you’re lucky enough to get to a major Cup Final, planning, planning and more planning is vital at every stage if you work with content.
There are there major areas of work:
1] Build-up
2] The Match
3] Post-game
It’s only possible to nail these elements if you’re fully prepared well in advance.
The content team at Aston Villa were certainly that in the lead-up to the 2018/19 Play-Off Final.
As well as the standard events like press conferences, interviews and photoshoots that circle every match, there was plenty of hard work that went in to preparing for this important showpiece game.
1] Build-up
Picking up on the popularity of the club’s players with its fans – and the new chants that reverberated from the stands – home and away – I decided to commission the creation of Music CDs to celebrate this togetherness in the build-up to the Play-Off Final.
Launched across all social media channels, they proved incredibly popular – and as well as the illustrations, a video was also created on the eve of the Wembley game.
It incorporated all the chants into one piece of content – and reminded fans to sing them to their advantage on Play-Off Final day.
2] The Match
The inventory surrounding each game in 2018/19 was obviously uniform when it came to team line-up, goal, HT/FT graphics.
But, to celebrate this one-off Wembley clash, we commissioned new designs.
Still consistent with our brand colours, they switched to a predominantly white effect – with standard claret and electric blue as secondary elements.
To link-up with the music theme in the build-up, the background of all these graphics featured words to fan anthem, ‘Allez Allez Allez’, which caught the imagination of supporters in the final few weeks of the season.
All in all, the graphics proved popular on the day and gave the game a fresh look and feel.
3] Post-game
This is where the most work goes in – as you want to be fully ready ahead of a potential victory in a major final.
Of course, there are obvious video opportunities that present themselves after a win at Wembley – such as celebration shots on the pitch and in the dressing room.
But the content team did a great job of identifying innovative and creative content types in the days before victory at the national stadium.
There was plenty of scope across an array of formats.
They included an illustration of Dean Smith being knighted, a video of the famous lion wearing a Premier League crown and a Google Maps spoof entry.
You have to be prepared for every eventuality, of course, and sometimes a plethora of content gets wasted if you lose.
If it’s a defeat, as it was the previous season against Fulham, it’s short, sharp, simple ‘thanks to the fans’ and ‘well done to the opposition’ messages.
Thankfully, on this occasion, it was the right result.
As a result, the content team were able to see the fruits of their labours come to fruition.
Paul Brown 