Precedent works on Welsh Athletics digital drive

The consultancy was tasked with ’echoing the reform and modernisation’ of Welsh Athletics and demonstrating the organisation’s development objectives.

Welsh Athletics is the official governing body for athletes in Wales, with 6000 registered athletes and 70 associated clubs. It aims to ’inspire the young’, attract support and develop grassroots athletics through a strong club network. The ’real-life hopes and dreams of all aspiring and practising athletes’ will be uploaded through social media feeds, to ’emphasise their ongoing involvement in the community’, says Jo Goodwin,Precedent’s lead consultant on the project.

’Welsh Athletics has already got a fantastic Flickr page, so we brought that through to the home page,’ adds Goodwin, who says that YouTube and RSS feeds will drive traffic to the site and make the most of existing content. Clutter was a problem on the old site, says Goodwin, but the new site aims to present a ’crisp, clean and professional’ look, using a navigation banner on the home page to organise content.

Welsh Athletics aims to use the site to ’maximise opportunity’ ahead of the 2012 Olympic and 2014 Commonwealth Games. The site is expected to launch on 13 April. Precedent’s work draws on a new Welsh Athletics identity, which was designed by Welsh consultancy Black sheep and launched in September 2008.

This design replaced a traditional Welsh ’three feathers’ marque with a symbol developing the feathers into ’the three lanes of a track or the steps of a podium’, says Black Sheep creative director Neil Asher. ’We wanted to show patriotism, pride and heritage with a modern slant,’ says Asher, whose consultancy lost out to Precedent in the website pitch.

A spokesperson for Welsh Athletics confirms that Cardiff-based Sugar, Hampshirebased Pixel Scene and Northamptonshire-based Nemisys were also involved in the pitch.