Rebranding an Aussie Sporting Icon

You could imagine my delight when we won a rebranding project for the South Sydney Rabbitohs way back in 2006. I was a lifetime supporter, the club was the oldest and arguably the proudest in the league but sadly it had been on it's knees financially for sometime. In essence and with all due respect it had actually been a financial basket case. It was only that Russell Crowe and Peter Holmes a Court had somehow managed to convince 75.4% of the voting membership to sell the club to them in a historic EGM on March 19th 2006 at ANZ Stadium. They had needed 75% of the vote for the sale to go through. I was asked to speak on the future of the Rabbitohs brand for the Yes camp at the election that day.

That election win gave the once great club an imprimatur to change and a chance at survival, while then CEO Shane Richardson was able to get the front office and an improved on field team in order we worked tirelessly with Peter, Russell and John Richardson on the branding side of the organisation. One of our very first tasks was the outdated logo. The significant challenge faced here was that staunch Rabbitoh supporters don't really like anything to change, they rightly so embrace heritage. We had to show them how all other club's logos and visual brand identity had evolved over time, we needed to keep certain things off limits like the leaping bunny and the bounding oval and of course the colours which were set in stone within the Club's constitution.

Rather then re-invent the wheel our design team applied polish to the logo, stylising it in a contemporary way with 3D effects and subtle shadowing and highlights. The new logo was embraced by supporters and helped set a solid foundation for their visual branding moving forward. 12 years on we are still a proud creative partner of the South Sydney Rabbitohs.