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At A-Level and then onto art college, the big blue plastic folder was an essential part of kit, filled to busting point with sheets galore, materials and god knows what else! You certainly couldn’t blend in to the crowd, you were officially an arty farty. I don’t think it really cost me a thought at the time, although I had to give out a few apologies on Great Victoria street when the mix of wind and A1 sheets of plastic didn’t mix well – I just had to follow or the attempt to get on the packed Friday afternoon bus to Omagh would also have been a challenge. Everyone loved to see the art students getting on board! Thankfully as the years passed, from Foundation to HND and then degree course, the folder got smaller and you progressed to faux leather. You could nearly tell the course you were doing from the folder, blue plastic – Foundation Art, A1 leather – Fine Art or Fashion Degree, A2 leather – Second Year Design, A3 leather – Final Year Design. You had really made it when you progressed to A3 leather!

Laugh as you might but designers of a certain vintage will be in agreement here; that folder was all about you as a designer. Everyone had the college project samples, like an airline re-brand for example, but the holy grail was a real live printed job. These were few and far between, who really in their right mind was going to trust a student designer with a real printed job! There was no such thing as digital print then, no pdfs, you were very very lucky to get a colour A3 print out. Real print cost real money and back then print was very expensive.

If you were lucky enough to graduate it was this black folder that could decide your future. You began the process of trying to get the foot in the door of any design agency and the rejigging of the plastic sleeves started in earnest. For anyone not familiar with these design folders, they opened like a book and metal rings in the inside that held separate plastic sleeves, you could fit your work into these, front and back. The biggest nuisance was that sometimes the plastic holes on the sleeve busted, you couldn’t go to an interview with a sleeve hanging out, so you borrowed, stole or bought new ones. They weren’t cheap you know! Keeping your folder in pristine condition was not easy, it was like looking after a pet and you certainly never lent it out. In fairness no-one would actually would ask – the folder code!

Direct mail, not email was the only way to get a foot in the door with a studio and the more creative the better. We tried everything and now I am thoroughly amazed when I get sent a Word doc looking for an interview or, even worse, a call from a parent or friend of a graduate. It’s an immediate no in our book, you must earn the right to get the foot in the door. This is a competitive industry, the competition starts on day one.

So imagine you got a 30 min slot with a Creative Director, this was the process:
There was the ritual unzipping of the folder after you set it in front of them. They started the flicking process, sometimes with a colleague. Often they didn’t speak, just made noises – you didn’t know if you were supposed to explain the work or wait for questions, the tension was unbearable. The hours and pain that went into that folder and they could flick through it in 5 mins flat. But that’s what it was, they needed to see how creative you were, they wanted to test you, they wanted a reaction from you, they wanted to hear if you were passionate about your work, where your inspiration came from and what design means to you.
Anyone who has made it to Creative Director level is passionate about design and they love looking at good design and they love passionate designers. Believe me, I know.

My graduate portfolio did get me a couple of job offers, I settled for Gallagher Design in Belfast and spent 3 and half years there before starting out on my own in late 1994.

The portfolio then took on a new level of importance. It wasn’t just going to find me a job, it needed to pay me a wage and pay the rent.

There was Graham’s Printers in Omagh but not a design studio. Lairdesign and Illustration was the first. We needed to include Illustration for Ledu purposes, they wouldn’t assist a design business on its own. The calls were made and the doors were knocked, no emails or links to a snazzy online portfolio. Design didn’t really exist in the area, the portfolio would play a major role in informing businesses what I was capable of and how design could help them.

So much has changed since then, like the size and speed of Macs. I was backing up on floppy, zip and jazz disks! Some will know what these are and wonder how we managed. I can’t say it’s been an easy journey, running a business is tough and college in no way prepares you for what’s ahead. Maybe that’s a good thing as you mightn’t risk it if you know too much. The speed at which you have to turn work around now is unbelievable – as we speak I got a late Friday email expecting an animated social piece for Monday some time. That’s the norm, it’s modern day business. We are slaves to the technology but I do find myself starting to rebel. I run from social media, my kids laugh at my lack of interest in the array of social platforms. Some day in the not too distant future I will put it all aside but I have one key piece on the to do list that I have to take care of first – the modern day equivalent of my A3 portfolio.

There’s no doubt to be a successful studio, you need to immerse yourself in your clients and their businesses. A lot of times to the detriment of promoting your own business. That has certainly been the case for ourselves. We’ve lived by the mantra of partners not clients and I’m so thankful for the wonderful businesses we have worked with and the friends we’ve made over the past two and a half decades. I was also very conscious of there being no record of who and what we’ve been doing for those years. On a personal level I wanted to step back a little, slow down, take a breath and just reflect on what we’ve been doing. The portfolio that was so much a part of me and getting the business up and running was virtually non-existent. Why work so hard in a creative industry and be afraid to show it?

To be honest I did become a little obsessed with it. I drove the design team a bit bonkers to the point where I overheard, ‘sure he’ll never be happy’ or ‘why not do it yourself’. Even my wife, our Financial Director, was giving me a hard time.

“You are always busy, why do you need a website” – no one really understood what or why I needed this.

Being totally honest, I have found running a ‘creative business’ very tough. The tension between those two words pretty much sums it up – the creative part I love, the business part I don’t. I would say a lot of creatives would mirror this, our brains may not be wired correctly in terms of the vitally important business functions. I was fortunate enough to marry an accountant, my saviour in so many ways. The portfolio or the website was a reconnection with why I got involved in this in the first place. Do I want to look at a set of brand guidelines or a set of financial accounts – there’s no competition.

Do it right and the portfolio tells anyone looking at it a bit about you or your organisation, we call it our LDNA. We wanted it to be honest and true to who we are. Genuinely a business that was focused on our clients – hence the lack of a real digital presence until now. I believe one that has punched above our weight in terms of size and where we come from. We’re proud of our roots but we’re not afraid to tackle the big projects. Clients seem to like the idea that they’re dealing directly with the person working on their project. They become partners and friends, not clients. We’re not into jargon and awards, we put action above theory and I hope that people see that in our work, be that a prospective client or a young designer. It shows the depth of knowledge we have in our clients from kitchens to the GAA. You need to go this deep to do our job correctly.

I’ve always told my team, you’ll leave here a better designer than you come in. Think about your work as a portfolio piece, will it be something you’ll proud to show to someone else in the future. The first effort might be a good piece of work but take it to another level, that’s what clients have come to expect from us.

We’ve started here with 12 pieces, I had 50 in my original plan but that quickly got sidelined. What is here I’m proud to say has been a team effort at all times. Only 38 more case studies to go!

Walking up Great Victoria street with just a rucksack I could have been any student, but with a blue plastic folder I was an arty farty and proud of it. It’s coming everywhere with me now, virtually.

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Branding can be a delicate process and it takes a number of key elements to work together in tandem to make it a success. Good brand agencies can help guide a business or organisation through the key areas such as communication, people, product and environment. However even with the most careful planning, it’s the end user – the consumers and stakeholders – that ultimately make the decision about a brand.

The greatest brand agency in the world was never going to save Ratner’s Jewellery Chain when the then chairman called some of its products ‘crap’. The company plunged into the red and closed 100s of shops. Clothing store GAP also invested heavily in a new identity, thinking it was a progressive move. I’m sure focus testing would have been a key part of the process, but within a week of launch, public outcry made them revert back to their old design.

So the role of the brand specialist/design team is to manage the key touch points for a new brand across the 4 key areas we’ve already touched on – communication, people, environment and product. If we apply this to a GAA County or club – the Communication is your message, your club or county website, your posters, leaflets, signage, social media, kits, anywhere you talk and communicate; the People are your players, members, supporters coaches, managers, committee members; the Environment is your pitches and club rooms; and the Product, well that’s our games and a fabulous product it is, a vast majority of the time.

To equate this to a commercial brand, we’ve all heard of BMW, one of the world’s leading car brands. You’ve seen, driven or been a passenger in one, you’ve seen the TV ads, the print ads and maybe even visited a showroom. Nothing in that showroom, or that TV/radio/print ad, has been created independently; they’ve all been created to get you into that showroom where the selling phase kicks in. The setting is plush, you get excellent service, the staff quickly know your name and somehow get your details. The product is there waiting for you in all its glory, lights bouncing off every gleaming surface, you have a glossy brochure with your car on a beautiful coast road at sunset. This is communication, environment, people and product all working together to achieve that end goal, a sale. Branding is not just the logo on the bonnet – it goes much much deeper than that.

The product is there waiting for you in all its glory, lights bouncing off every gleaming surface, you have a glossy brochure with your car on a beautiful coast road at sunset.

So applying this to a county, we’d need an unlimited budget, a team of highly skilled brand strategists, identity designers and a full time marketing team. Or foregoing that, a desire to make a change and some like-minded people that see the potential in doing things a little bit differently. Remember we’re talking over two decades ago and, at that time, Tyrone had no national silverware at adult level (one All-Ireland Final and one National League Final had been reached … but both had been lost) and there was certainly no Garvaghey nor even any word of anything like that.

We’ll not dwell on 1995 (Tyrone’s defeat in their second-ever All-Ireland Final) too long, it tends to make Tyrone people a little ill. We’ll move on to 1996, when the same fate awaited, a match earlier and with a bit more brutal of an effect. We were beaten by Meath in that All-Ireland Semi-Final in more ways than just the score. It was a beating too far in the eyes of a few die hard Tyrone fans. That beating awoke a feeling in Tyrone that has played its part in how we perceive Tyrone GAA today. It would be fair to say the modern Tyrone GAA brand emerged from that, though it had been kick-started by the Millennium Initiative in 1995.

Graham Geraghty, Tyrone v Meath, All-Ireland Semi Final Aug 1996. Picture credit: Sportsfile.

The Millennium Initiative was to run to 2000 (hence the name) and was about a structured giving plan for Tyrone fans, aiming to raise £0.50m for the development of the GAA at County level in Tyrone. Fans and businesses agreed to donate to Tyrone GAA over an agreed period with funds going directly to the County Board coffers. It was so successful that it was decided to keep the model going but obviously after 2000 the name would have to change. This was the birth of Club Tyrone. Club Tyrone was the forerunner and has persisted as probably one of the most recognised GAA fundraising initiatives in the country. To date Club Tyrone has directly raised a staggering £5.6m for the development of the GAA and culture in Tyrone and has also levered in another £3.40m from other sources. That’s £9m and rising…

Okay, so where do we and branding fit in?

One of our first landlords as Lairdesign back in the nineties was also one of Millennium Initiative founders, Mark Conway. A man with a love for the GAA and the arts in all its forms. He kindly invited me to one of the meetings after doing some work for the Initiative and also creating the Club Tyrone logo – he felt that design had a role, but we weren’t 100% sure yet what that role would be. The Club Tyrone Committee was and remains the PR and Marketing Sub Committee of Tyrone GAA. In the books officially, I believe 4-5 people, but with some expertise drafted in. The group came from across Tyrone, represented a whole series of backgrounds, brought a batch of different skills to the table but shared the common bond of belief in and commitment to the GAA in our County.

This was a dedicated and single-minded group of Tyrone GAA men and women, with one clear agenda – “We’ll raise the funds, you (Tyrone GAA) then apply those funds to help Tyrone take that final step.”

I can remember my first meeting in the Glenavon Hotel, Cookstown, first Thursday of the month, meeting at 8, tea and sandwiches to be served at 9.30. Yes, an hour and a half GAA meeting! I don’t want to mention all the names, they would be all well known in Tyrone, but I did feel so far out of my depth. The flow of the meeting quickly got under way and one by one the members outlined their target list of people who would pay over £500 per year with basically nothing tangible in return.

Remember when this was? As it came round to me, none of my friends or contacts were going to be in the category, what was I doing there? It was one of those moments. So with a dry mouth and sweaty palms I offered the target figure of 1, myself! How will I explain this to my wife, also my accountant? My target is poor but that’s not really why I am here, I tried to explain in an honest way. I will never be good on the sales front but what I believe I can do is build up the profile of Club Tyrone, tell the story, advise how and where we tell it and in return that makes your jobs that little bit easier. A quarter of a century and over £9.00 m later, we’re still jointly working on that same brief today.

The plan was to use every tool at our disposal as a piece of Tyrone GAA propaganda. We seized all the Tyrone media outlets (well not as dramatic as that, looking at where we could tell our story most effectively and for as little money as possible.

View the full Tyrone GAA brand story at https://ld2.com/work/tyrone-gaa/tyrone-gaa.

The key was communication, keep thanking the current members and work on non-members for not being members.

Like all good campaigns, we had a good story to tell, married with good design and images and an idea of the vehicles that were going to carry it. We took over the web in 2009, so well before the social media world! Our outlet was brochures, targeted sales events, some paid print advertising, annual reports and programmes. We took over the Tyrone National League programmes and the summer camps – basically anywhere we could get our message out. All this laid the foundation for the sales team and the face-to-face call. Potential members knew we were coming, they knew the story, they understood why the finance was needed. The strategy was working.

The summer camps, for example, in the county were not that well attended at the time. There was a county version but some clubs opted for their own as well. After my daughter attended a Samba Soccer School in Omagh, where she got a kit, a bag and a week’s coaching for £80 we thought, why not try that in Tyrone, but cheaper! We pitched the idea to the County Committee and the coaches. We’ll brand and market the camps, arrange kits though O’Neills, ask clubs to buy in and see how it goes. This was before the GAA’s National Summer Camps and the ‘Club Tyrone Summer Camps’ continue to this day as being a great marketing tool, and more importantly, a great outlet for Tyrone kids during the summer months.

In 2002, the year we were knocked out by Sligo in the qualifiers, and with Sam Maguire seemingly destined never to come here, over 4,000 kids in Tyrone attended those summer camps. Proof, if it was needed, that whilst success can help you sell, it’s far from the only factor. A good brand will sell itself.

I didn’t mean to digress into individual campaigns, we are talking about over 20 years here, so we’ll switch back to brand. Tyrone GAA, and Club Tyrone are brands, just like every county and club in the country. People inside and outside Tyrone have a perception about the county, how it conducts its business on and off the field. Perception is all about how you see yourself, how others see you and how you want to be seen. In Tyrone and through Club Tyrone, the ambition was to be seen as best in class in everything we do. And it’s vital to share that at this point, if Tyrone learned that success came from something new, they were willing to share that experience (sorry, for off field experiences only!). Members of the committee, including myself, have traveled to and/or talked with three quarters of the other GAA Counties in Ireland to share the knowledge and the door is always open in Garvaghey. ‘No arm round the homework’ is part of the mantra … part of the Tyrone GAA brand.

Being best in class is one thing for a multi million pound business, but we have to keep reminding ourselves that the GAA is an amateur organisation. And with the best will in the world, every club and county deals with this on a daily basis. Committees are rarely handpicked groups of experts, the reality is that no one might want that post and the usual 80/20 rule is applied – 20% of the Committee are doing 80% of the work. To get a model like Club Tyrone to work however you DO need that elite and special group and I doubt in my lifetime I’ll ever come across a group like them again. I said I didn’t want to mention them by name, one I have mentioned already, Mark Conway, and others would include ‘salesman/recruiters supreme’ Patsy Forbes, Hugh McAleer, Jackie Duffy, Patrick Harte and John Mulgrew, RIP.

This committee was never about individuals, it was about a belief and a goal, the work was relentless and maybe that’s a key part of it, you couldn’t bluff. John sadly passed away last year and the priest at the funeral remarked on John’s favourite six words. The first four, ‘leave that with me’ and then two, ‘that’s sorted’.

What John did for Tyrone GAA may not be on a TG4 Laochra Gael, but his contribution will live long in the memory.

Surround yourself with the right people and you can succeed. The people are a key component of any brand. In a GAA setting this is the officers, the committees, the players of all ages and the general membership. All have a role in shaping a Club or County brand. It’s impossible to control everything but we do have a responsibility within our units to tell anyone belonging to our association how to behave. If they wear our colours in any capacity official or not, they are our brand.

In simple terms and from the highest point of a club or county, explain the importance of everyone’s role and the standards that are required and set the example. People are at the core of any brand and in a lot of cases the first point of contact. Everyone in the GAA has a gateman or steward story, some good, some not so good. If you think about them as a key part of your brand would you think about their role a bit more? We probably don’t tell them enough how important they are and we probably don’t tell them what to say or how to behave. We assume they know. They might benefit from a bit of help and a pat on the back as well. We will all engage with thousands of gatemen and stewards during our GAA lives; only a tiny, tiny percentage of us will ever engage with a GAA President. So where really is the brand’s centre of gravity?

On the subject of the people on the front line, think about the environment. Our club grounds are our home, it’s our place, the hub of any GAA club. So what can we do here from a brand perspective (and something that won’t cost the earth)? Well firstly keep it clean and tidy and put up a welcome sign! You are welcome to St. John’s GAA. How many places do you go to (in everyday life) and the first thing you see is negative? No parking, private land, trespassers prosecuted! Make people feel welcome, show visiting teams where to go, keep the changing rooms clean – all the little things that will last in a visitor’s memory. You might not be so welcoming on the field but how you greeted them when they arrived and the post match hospitality was heartfelt, win or lose.

On communications keep it simple and consistent and in line with GAA guidelines. The GAA have a good resource online: https://docs.google.com/

Put the call out, there are people within your club or county who are into this and they need to see it as a fabulous opportunity to help their career. Look at ourselves, I would never have thought that sport would play such a major role in my working life. This all came from volunteering. There are so many good tools out there if you are struggling with the PR workload. It’s not a one person job anymore and the PRO and IT Officer roles are almost intertwined. Within counties there is a need for a full committee to service these roles. Likewise in a club, get the PRO some help if they need it. Hopefully through Club & County we’ll produce some resources to help in that area. And a bit of a plug for Club & County. A GAA template for club and County websites.

To quote, Sean Dunnion the chair of the National I.T. Committee, Club and County is there to “lessen the burden” – a website solution that can be as simple or complicated as you want to make it.

The final point is on our product – we can’t really do a lot in that area but you will have often heard the term, they play a lovely BRAND of football or hurling. It makes you think, whether you believe it or not, people outside your club or county have a perception about you, how you play, how you conduct your affairs, how you communicate, every aspect associated with your club or county.

As I’ve tried to explain, the good news is that you can do something about that perception, that is if you want to? You don’t need to recruit a branding agency, you just need to be aware that everything you do as a club, your committee, your players, your supporters have an impact on the outside world, an impact on potential sponsors, new members, rival clubs. We all got involved in the GAA because it makes us happy; playing, supporting, volunteering. Be positive about what you want to achieve, there is enough negativity in our normal lives.

Club Tyrone is and will always be a good news story. As we talked about it at the beginning, it was pure GAA propaganda – keep telling the positives and slowly but surely it will sink in.

As a club or county, decide how you want to be seen, write it down and build your efforts around achieving it. Sometime around 2010, Peter Canavan, Michael Dempsey (S&C Coach Kilkenny) and myself were invited to give a talk in a certain county about Club Tyrone, strength and conditioning, youth coaching etc. Nearly 300 were at the event, including a good representative of a certain 1996 team. Little did that Millennium Initiative Committee know in 1996 the effect they would have on the future of Tyrone GAA. Things that are worth doing take time, but if you put in the effort they’ll reap rewards in the future.

There’s a popular Chinese proverb that says: “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.”

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