With the club already forward planning for 2008, we really wanted to integrate and reward our members and supporters in every major Lions activity. So when the designers from Creative Plantation brainstormed with the Lions about our branding for next year, the brief was pretty clear.
We wanted to show the team behind the team – our thousands of loyal members and supporters who stick by the mighty Brisbane Lions Football Club no matter what. Our membership brochures and posters are for the members so let’s feature the members.
A week later the design team came back with four options, including two standouts – a section of the Gabba crowd holding up placards showing the lion logo or the supporters themselves forming a giant lion emblem on the field.
The rest is history. The Grassads company sorted the logistics of how big, how much paint, how many people and how much time to paint the lion outline. The Major Sports Facilities Authority organised the curious curator’s permission and the photographer’s and director’s entry onto the stadium’s catwalk gantry. The marketing department handled the rest with Gabba 3,000 invites on the website, in the AFL Record programme and with the scoreboard and ground announcer crew.
A 10pm ‘recce’ high up on the catwalk after the Lions’ win over the Demons – with all parties involved holding mudmaps and taking test shots (while braving winter’s night-time winds) – and it was all systems go for the following Sunday afternoon.
The two biggest presumed risk factors:
- Carlton beating the Lions and leaving us with too few happy campers staying behind for the lion emblem photo shoot.
SOLVED: Browny boots a club record 10 goals as the Lions belt the Blues 25.13.163 to 6.10.46. - Organising 3,000 members, 22 players and 20 club officials to create the correct shape at ground level without the necessary birds’ eye view to make corrections.
SOLVED: A reliable mobile phone connection between the catwalk crew and the Gabba ground team backed up by Richard ‘Champs’ Champion on the mic.
So on Sunday 22 July at 4.20pm precisely (after the traditional Gabba kick-to-kick) the fully pre-programmed Grassads mini robot buggy was laser guided into place with surveying equipment then it painted the whole lion emblem outline in 30 minutes flat. The only cliffhanger being when a curious onlooker almost walked between the guiding laser beam and the robot which would’ve meant re-starting the whole image from scratch.
When the 3,000 future Lions celebrities steadily filed into place, two actual risk factors emerged:
- Grassads had probably been over-polite to the curator and his lawn with an overly thin and dark blue painted outline making it difficult to track the overall shape.
- When 22 Lions players joined the flanks of the lion emblem all the blood (so to speak) drained right out of the lion’s head and straight into its, well, you know, ‘rear bits’ (talk about the players’ pulling power).
We suddenly had a light-headed but strangely overweight lion on our hands till some ground-based landmarks like Champs and Bernie ‘Gabba’ Vegas got into the deadzone and refilled the glaring vacancies.
The catwalk crew gave the thumbs up and with some classic countdowns, the shots were taken. The only task left now – handing out 3,000 king-sized Cadbury Crunchies, Flakes, Picnics and Cherry Ripes to our departing ‘lion shapers’.
From the Brisbane Lions Football Club – a sincere thank you to all our Gabba 3,000 and we look forward to working with you again next year for 2009’s massive member creation.
Gabba Lion 3,000 - large (5.12 MB)
Gabba Lion 3,000 - medium (1.88 MB)
Gabba Lion 3,000 - small (629 KB)
