Towards the end of my placement year, I took the time to consider what I would do during my final year at university outside of the Television and Broadcasting course. As you can imagine, one of those activities included joining the University of Portsmouth Basketball Club. However, rather than trying out for one of the men's teams, I decided to make what I believed to be a more effective contribution towards the club.
I was originally a member of UOP Basketball Club during my first year and played for the men's first team. However, due to other commitments, I decided not rejoin during the following years at university. Therefore, for my final year at Portsmouth, I felt that I should attempt to use what I had learned over the course of my placement year to help the marketing of the club.
In August, I contacted the president and vice-president of UOP Basketball Club to ask about the possibility of filming and editing highlights from home games and other events hosted at the university. Thankfully, they were both on board with the idea and I started to develop ideas for how I could efficiently and effectively produce content for the club. This included:
- Producing game highlights (2 to 3 minutes long) to be shared on YouTube
- Using individual clips from the game highlights (30 seconds or less) for Instagram
- Incorporting multi-camera coverage into home games
UOP Basketball Club's intial logo introduced in 2013
However, at the time of planning potential media content, I found that the club had no distinct brand identity. Their main logo, designed in 2013, was used sparingly across their social media platforms and there seemed to be several different accounts created for the club over the course of its lifetime. Therefore, thanks to some free time over the summer, I decided to try and create a new logo for the UOP Basketball Club that could be used across its digital content for the 2018-19 season.
Initial designs for the new logo
The design was inspired by American high school basketball team logos, particularly regarding the fonts used. However, I also wanted the design to resemble the shape and colour of the University of Portsmouth Athletic Union logo. After finishing a draft logo, I pitched the idea to the president and vice-president of the club who were happy to adopt a new logo for the upcoming season. However, while we were in agreement on the overall look of the logo, we each had different ideas about the fonts used. Therefore, I forwarded them a series of logos with varying fonts in order to settle on the final design.
Examples of the new branding in freshers' fayre flyers, the club's Facebook group and the newly created YouTube channel
With the season now underway, it has been exciting to incorporate the rebranded logo into the freshers' fayre flyers as well as the highlight videos of the men's and women's team trials. As the year progresses, I hope that this new logo may help to build a strong and consistent brand identity for the club. Having been recently appointed Media Secretary for UOP Basketball Club, I'm sure there will be plenty of opporutnities to develop my skills in digital marketing.