'sportspace'

(Dacorum Sports Trust, Dacorum Borough Council)

A charitable trust-status sports and leisure company, spun out from Dacorum Borough Council to be a commercially independent organisation that runs sports centres and other facilities in the DBC district of Hertfordshire.

The Challenge

To prepare the borough council's sports and leisure department for transition into a commercially based Trust; and to transform their image from a local council based organisation into an appealing local sports and community centre business able to compete with established brands such as Esporta, Fitness First and David Lloyd.

The Solution

We focused managers and staff on how to think differently about their customers, markets and services, and helped them develop their own value proposition and marketing strategy. Together we developed vision, values, core messages and a marketing story for the organisation to communicate online and offline. Having captured the essence of the new enterprise and its market positioning, we moved to implementation which included creating a new name and visual identity, then put it all together to establish the new leisure brand for the community, 'sportspace'.

The Difference

The sportspace team united quickly and successfully behind their new identity to the benefit of the business and the local community. In their first full year they have just (2005) recorded record membership and all key goals have been reached. In this sector they are now seen as the benchmark example of 'doing it right'.

"Achieving the Difference helped us to remain focused on the outcomes we wished to achieve, staff capacity increased and they energised the staff to look forward with excitement and ownership.

A year on, we can fully see the impact and benefit of the strategic branding - everyone loves their sportspace."

– Dave Cove, Managing Director, Dacorum Sports Trust t/a sportspace [Dacorum Borough Council, Herts.]