WRONG BRANDING?

Did Adrian Christy get the branding for Badminton England wrong?

At the time, Adrian explained in articles written for Badminton England’s magazine and with e-mail correspondence to me explaining how he felt badminton had a ‘good image’ and wanted to communicate badminton as a friendly, fun and inexpensive game.

Badminton England developed a tag line – ‘play it, love it, live it’

I expressed my concerns to Adrian, saying how I believed Badminton had a very poor image and BE needed to say something specific, factual, about badminton that would start to address it’s image as a ‘soft – tip tap game’. Rather than use a vague marketing line.

My thinking was to use a line based around ‘badminton the world’s fastest racket sport’.

I had conducted some research whilst travelling in the UK and asked people how they would describe badminton and there reaction when I mentioned it was the world’s racket sport. I found most people were unaware of this and very surprised to learn abut badminton’s dynamic qualities.

Even after several discussions and a meeting with BE’s Commercial Director I couldn’t find a way to change their marketing strategy for badminton.

I developed a range of ideas which I initially used for t-shirts with various images all using ‘the World’s fastest racket sport’ line. These ideas were forwarded to Badminton England and Badminton Europe.

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