Last week, I took my son to London for a couple of days’ sightseeing.
There was an uncomplicated joy in seeing the city through his eyes, because he was awestruck by everything, from the genuinely impressive (Big Ben) to the objectively crappy (glittery keyrings with Princess Diana’s face on them).
The Tube provoked a giddy rush of questions, exclamations, and more questions. He read every ad, every sign and every poster, thrilled when he recognised a word in this noisy, alien, underground world.
“Lioness” was a big one, spotted on the list of London Overground lines. I explained that it was the nickname for the England women’s football team, that they had a line named after them because they won a trophy, and that they were playing a semi-final the very next night.
“Daddy,” he said. “If they win again, will people care as much as they do about the men’s team? Or is that too much to hope for, given the stubborn inflexibility of our patriarchal culture?”
Course he didn’t. He’s five, and I’m not a mendacious LinkedIn influencer.
In reality he spotted a picture of Super Mario on a nearby film poster, which immediately snaffled his complete attention.
But as I tried to ignore questions I couldn’t answer about the adventure-hungry (read, unprofessional) Italian plumber, I did marvel at how well the Lioness brand has infiltrated our sporting, and then wider national, identity.
A low-key start
Reflecting on the last Euros triumph in 2022, journalist Jacob Whitehead noted how ubiquitous the brand had become.
“There were Lionesses on jerseys, Lionesses on hoardings, Lionesses on pub signs and in newspaper headlines,” he wrote. “It has become one of the most powerful sporting brands in the UK. In a landscape filled with marketing spiel, it has truly been taken to heart by the team.”
But the initial adoption of the Lioness name was low-key, and gradual. A writer called Glenn Lavery was hired by the Football Association (FA) for the 2007 World Cup, and he started using it in his copy as an alternative to repeating “England.”
In 2012, an FA marketing manager called Leigh Moore used it as a Twitter hashtag before a match against the Netherlands, motivated in part by frustration that the game was being overshadowed by the England men’s team’s dismal showing in that summer’s Euros.
The name grew in popularity, both inside and outside the England camp.
It was memorable and evocative, and gave the team its own identity. Previously they were usually referred to as the England Women’s team (the men were always just England) and this extra word seemed to act as a caveat, making the team feel lesser.
At first, the Lionesses was more a name than a brand, but that changed when the FA commissioned Matta to look at the identity for the women’s team. The brief called for a unique brand that the women’s team could own. Matta’s strategists pointed out they already had one – they just needed to build on it.
The brand grew, through the 2015 World Cup, the 2017 Euros, and the 2019 World Cup, where Nike weaved the name into the England kit for the first time, which Moore has called “a tipping point.”
That’s when, he says, the media started using it automatically when referring to the team.
Then came the COVID-delayed 2021 Euros, played in 2022, with the Lionesses winning the trophy on home soil.
Chloe Kelly whipping off her shirt to celebrate the winning goal at Wembley; the heroically hungover team karaoke-ing through a victory party in Trafalgar Square; and among many other plaudits, the decision to name the Lioness Line.
Like all great brands, its success seems inevitable in hindsight. But of course it wasn’t.
Some players worried it was gimmicky and childish. But most embraced it, and Moore persuaded the doubters by pointing out how well respected sporting brands like the All Blacks and the Springboks are.
And like all great brands, the messaging and the product go hand-in-hand. The team’s success has galvanised the brand, imbuing it with cachet and credibility.
Now it’s much more than a name; it’s multi-dimensional.
A brand built on every interaction
Speaking on the Uncensored CMO podcast last week, Kraft Heinz CMO Todd Kaplan compared branding to pointillism, the artistic style where small daubs of paint cohere into a picture when you stand the right distance away.
“Every time someone has a brand interaction, it puts a little point in someone’s brain,” Kaplan explained. And when “those points cluster over time,” it creates brand perception.
That’s how I feel about the Lionesses brand. It’s not just every kit launch or social media graphic. It’s every press conference and post-match interview, every visual, verbal and mental cue. It’s every dot.
When the Lionesses win, there is a tendency in some quarters to use their success as a stick to beat the men’s team. Unflattering comparisons are drawn, based on performance and personality.
This overlooks the huge strides made in recent years recasting the England men’s team, particularly under Gareth Southgate’s intelligent and empathetic leadership.
But forget the men’s team for a moment. The Lioness brand is one of the great creative success stories of the past 20 years.
It has navigated two challenges we write about a lot on Design Week – the need for older brands to marry past, present and future, and the need for brands which have a strong associated brand to differentiate itself, without abandoning all of the shared DNA.
But it has also succeeded in a very specific context. It’s created a brand of England and Englishness which feels modern, inclusive and exciting, at a time when living in England, and being English, can sometimes feel anything but.