Trying to winkle out a couple of back page columns on a weekly basis can take a wearying toll. For the reader ploughing through them, it can be even worse. Someone suggested to me recently that an effective way to alleviate the general stresses and strains stoked up by the tortured agonies of the creative process was to try colonic irrigation but I responded by saying that I wasn’t particularly interested in gardening. And if you thought that wizened witticism was old then you’ll not like the historical horticultural havering that I once cross-pollinated a Red Hot Poker with a Forget Me Not and ended up with a Painful Reminder. Now, there’s an antiquated, cornball gag that’s not been heard since Capability Brown tried to lighten the mood when planting the herbaceous perennials at Blenheim Palace.
All of which brings us nicely into the world of football club badges. Or something like that. Earlier in the week, Juventus, those Serie A giants of Turin, revealed amid grand pomp and ceremony a new, minimalist logo/badge/crest/brand identity with a futuristic white on black letter ‘J’ which, depending on whether you know your art from your elbow, was either a cutting-edge, award-winning masterpiece in modernism or resembled a spare bit of track you’d find in a Scalextric box.
There was also a new slogan: “Black and white and more”, which is one of those embracing phrases that is supposed to tug on the heart strings of fans and convey a “we’re in it together and we’re in it for life” kind of mantra when really it’s just an excuse to shove that aforementioned logo/badge/crest/brand identity onto a Thermos flask to flog online.
Nothing whips up a stooshie among fitba’ fans quite like the tampering and meddling with items that have become cherished and tweaks and tune-ups to a badge can open up a real can of worms. In the turbulent aftermath of the Rangers financial debacle, and the subsequent "old club, new club" harrumphing that followed, I was always awaiting the unveiling of a freshly designed insignia which incorporated the ‘Ctrl, Alt, Del’ buttons from a computer keyboard; you know, that trinity of tapping thingymebobs that you frantically thunder away at in unison in a flustered, cursing attempt to reboot the entire system after some calamitous malfunction. It tends to happen a lot in the harrowing production process of the ruddy column.
Anyway, the Juventus re-jigging has been rather quite interesting and bamboozling in equal measure. No doubt, the design was done by some unfeasibly trendy creative trailblazer with a haircut so innovative it’s probably been downloaded straight onto their head from the internet. This correspondent is probably just jealous. I’m so far out of fashion I’m actually shuffling back in the other end.
The problem, for this scribe at least, is not the re-branding as such, more the paraphernalia and head-scratching goobledygook that gets trotted out in gay abundance by those cooing go-getters responsible. It’s all mystifying marketing-speak about “amplifying our meaning”, “thriving in new channels” and “evolving media touch points.” Good grief, the last time I tried to evolve my media touch point I was hauled up before the Press Complaints Commission. Listening to all this new age cooing and dynamic jargon – which admittedly sounds like a Brendan Rodgers press conference - makes you think of those excitable folk who use huge numbers of smiley face emoticons and exclamation marks on messages to hammer home just how “with it” they are.
Let’s face it. Football is big business, apart from maybe here in Scotland where it’s more of a desperate exercise in guddling down the back of the couch. Football’s insatiable appetite for money remains quite staggering and hawking your brand to as many markets as possible is as much a part of the game as a 25-yarder into the postage stamp. Everybody is at it, of course, in this world of eye-watering corporate profiteering. Look at those five interlocking rings that symbolise the Olympic Games, for instance. Each time the quadrennial showpiece in running, louping, flinging and dooking comes round, those circular bands crop up on the packaging of a variety of hum-drum household products.
Fabric detergent, disposable razors, limescale remover? Nothing, after all, symbolises the global unity, the moral beauty and the inspiring athletic endeavour of the Olympic ideal quite like a bottle of foam that will remove stubborn bathroom grime with a couple of squirts.
Juventus, like many clubs before them, have ruffled a few feathers among the core of their support with their new vision of a commercial future. The beautiful game continues to be the bountiful gain. No wonder the players kiss the logo/badge/crest/brand identity. It’s bringing in their £120,000 a week wages.
Now, how’s my media touch point evolving?
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