Inside Arsenal’s supporter-first creative strategy
The north London-based club has gone all in on fan co-creation, building one of football’s most authentic and distinctive brands in the process
Football is obsessed with authenticity. Every club wants to feel closer to its community. Every sponsor wants to tap into fan culture. Every campaign promises to capture the passion of supporters. Yet most football content is still made more or less the same way: ideas are hatched inside a marketing department, developed by agencies and in-house teams, then presented back to supporters as a finished product to be consumed.
Arsenal has spent the past few years trying something different. The culmination of its approach came at the end of May during the club’s title-winning celebrations. But the origins can be traced back to one of the bleakest periods in its modern history. At the end of the 2020/21 season, having finished eighth for the second year in a row, the relationship between Arsenal and its supporters was broken. Covid had emptied the stadium, while the European Super League debacle had eroded trust across the football landscape.
The club realised it needed to act. “We’d reached a very low point in the history of Arsenal Football Club,” says chief communications officer Kate Laurens, who previously worked at the club during the Invincibles era and the move from Highbury to Emirates Stadium. “The challenge was, how do we rebuild our connection with supporters? And it wasn’t just supporters. It was our local and global community, our partners, each other.”
