Great Brand Stories: Arsenal Winning Together: The Story of the Arsenal Brand; John Simmons & Matt Simmons

Who is this aimed at? Any book, especially one as brief as this, needs a focus, but it is difficult to see whether it is targeted at the football follower who would like to know a bit about marketing and branding, or the student of the latter who would like to know something about football. On the face of it, football clubs seem to be the epitome of branding style outweighing football (or any other) substance: 60,000 people fill Arsenal's new stadium to watch a team full of players who have no connection with Britain (leave alone north London) perform in a strip radically changed from last year. The only link with the past that keeps them coming is the brand name, Arsenal. If there are beneficiaries of this brand loyalty, they appear to be the players, in terms of their salaries, rather than the club or its fans. The merchandising opportunities offered by a successful brand appear huge, and can encourage a Malcolm Glazer to spend--or borrow--hundreds of millions to acquire Manchester United, yet an accountant can estimate the value of most football brands, in terms of enhancement to net income streams, as zero. What is going on here? The authors begin their answer with a potted history of Arsenal Football Club. Unfortunately this contains the sort of avoidable and checkable errors (for example the length of Frank McLintock's career and captaincy at the club, and the Cup Winners' Cup Final defeat of 1980) that undermine confidence. Elsewhere in the book there are contradictions that appear to betray the dual authorship of the book, and which better editing might have tidied up. The biggest disappointment, however, is that by the end, one is little wiser about how important 'brand image' is to football clubs in general, or how that of Arsenal is distinct from those of any other clubs. Most of the book is top-heavy on opinion and assertion and light on critical analysis, not only of Arsenal (both the authors are self-confessed fans) but also of football generally--for example, discussion of the Rangers and Celtic 'brands' manages to avoid any mention of religious sectarianism. There is no index, and no references or bibliography. In consequence, not only are there no pointers for the would-be student of branding (or football), but it is also impossible to judge whether some of the more startling and sweeping assertions the book makes represent the authors' own opinions, a wider consensus or the outcome of research. There is, for example, the assumption that success on the pitch is vital; while this might be true for generating revenue from TV and for prize money, it is not obvious that this applies to the brand image or customer base. The popularity of Manchester United grew rather than waned in the 26 years in which the club failed to win the League (and they recorded the highest attendances in the country while in the old Second Division); Newcastle United continued to attract huge gates when it had not won the Cup since the 1950s or the League since 1927. …