EA Sports FC with Nils Leonard

This episode of a change of brand is brought to you by Brandpat, the new standard for brands from guidelines to roll out. It's time visual identities found a proper format to live in. Keep listening to learn how you can save on your next subscription with Brandpat. Hey, also this podcast is produced by Matchstick, the brand identity house for leaders taking bold steps towards a radically relevant brand. There are either smash it briefs or don't fuck it up briefs. My fear was it was a don't fuck it up brief by that I mean a lot of clients when they enter into something as big as this they'll just be like let's just make it happen. Just making it happen the success. And it was like no no no in our terms is not. You know when you get to divorce FIFA and you get to reestablish what you stand for and how you look and feel and the voice you have and the energy you have you can either do that with an attempt to invisibility or you can do that to smash it and be referred to. Hey everybody welcome to a change of brand a show featuring behind the scene stories of rebrand glory drama or disaster. I'm your host Blake Power. I am so pumped for today's episode we get to nerd out about two topics I love branding and soccer or football if you're anywhere in the world other than the US. We also get to look into a rare story involving a name change and a licensing dispute and I sort of stumbled across this story. Many of my fellow brand nerds out there might remember when serious XM rebranded but when they did I reached out to uncommon the agency responsible for that work and I was curious if we could maybe cover that story this season. Well I got connected to nils Leonard one of the partners and on our call I explained more about this show and the types of stories we like to tell. He quickly redirected me away from series XM and towards EA Sports FC 24 and I knew right away that that was the story to tell. Originally named EA Sports FIFA this classic video soccer game is one of the best selling game franchises of all time in a personal favorite of mine. And it was kind of a big deal when EA Sports announced that it was dropping its affiliation with FIFA, the governing body for international soccer, over money. Reportedly FIFA wanted to double their fee for allowing EA Sports to use their namesake on their popular game and for just a mere 300 million those four little letters FIFA could appear on the cover. At least that's how EA Sports CEO Andrew Wilson thought about it. He among others at EA felt like they needed to step out of FIFA's shadow and gain a greater sense of freedom. After 30 successful years together EA and FIFA were divorced and EA FC 24 was born. Now FC stands for football club and with this new name came a brand identity. But would this be a play it safe type of rebrand? I mean who could blame them for after all of the drama with the FIFA split? Or would those at EA really want to a. For more backstory on EA FC and what led up to their 2023 change of brand, let's go to co-host Tracy Clark for our briefing. Modern soccer known to most of the world as football began in England in 1863. But as football gained popularity across the globe it was clear there needed to be a single body overseeing the blossoming sport. So in 1904 the Federation on International De Football Association was founded. Don't stress about that pronunciation like I did it's more commonly referred to as its acronym FIFA. For this day it serves as the International Governing Body of Association Football, Beach Soccer and Footsell. But depending on who you are when you hear FIFA you either think of the FIFA World Cup that happens every four years or you think of the video game. FIFA International Soccer was the first game in franchise history released in 1993 by EA or Electronic Arts an American video game company. The new installment has been released every year since its launch. As of 2021 the FIFA franchise has sold more than 325 million copies making it the most commercially successful sports video game. What drew fans to the game was the ultimate access to football licenses meaning you could build a team of your favorite real life players along with accurate uniforms, stadiums and other elements that made the game feel like a close second to reality. After 30 years of releasing a new game year after year relations between EA and FIFA began a sour. As their vision for the future differed with EA wanting opportunities to expand outside of gaming and FIFA wanting more money the two entities failed to reach an agreement on terms in officially parted ways in 2022. EA knew they needed a crucial change of brand that didn't involve FIFA if they were going to move forward and upward. With this new brand EA looked to honor the game's 30 year legacy while creating another brand that can thrive for 30 years. Did they score the game winning goal or did they get boot off the field? Stay tuned to find out how this match ends. The previous version of the EA sports FIFA game would have been simply called FIFA 23. From a visual perspective it's almost nonexistent, kind of invisible really which I don't think is a bad thing. The EA sports logo is in a black dot and it sits next to an all caps, Sans Air, FIFA 23. The real visual weight is carried by the soccer superstars on the cover of the game and on all of the key art. In 2023 it was French national striker, Killian and Bappe and Sam Kerr, the first woman ever featured on the cover of a sports game. The brand is entirely wrapped up in the FIFA name. It is literally called FIFA 22 or FIFA 23. Kids and adults all over the world for the last 30 years have been saying hey do you want to go play FIFA? That is why the 2024 version of the game was all the more shocking. EA sports FC 24 or just FC for short. They viewed with a slightly more distinct visual identity. The FIFA less version of the brand launched with a logo inspired by a triangle, a fundamental shape in football culture and a key feature in the video game. For more background the triangle is a basic shape for many tactics in the sport. It's used to teach passing with players on each ends of the shape. It's used in defensive formations and it teaches the basics on how to stay spread out avoiding what my dad always called in Little League Soccer Magnetball. On the video game side ever since the original game in 1993 the one player of the 10 on the pitch that you have selected during gameplay is highlighted with a little red triangle above the head. It's an easy and quick symbol for you to find who you're actually playing with or controlling. So inside the triangle shape of this new logo are the letters F and C with an EA sports banner across the top. The brand overhaul also introduces two custom typefaces, football themed color palettes and some really fun motion design. Uncommon a studio based in London led the project partnering with Buck Design for the motion. Be sure to see the change of brand for yourself at changeorbrand.com. Okay, so my name is Nils Leonard. I'm one of the founders of Uncommon Creative Studio. Apparently I'm the creative one. You can be the judge after this podcast. Yeah, and my role on the E.A.F.C. project was to lead the project. Nils grew up in London where football is just a way of life. Tracy Clark and I had the chance to interview him to get his take on this massive change story. Yeah, I am a football fan. I'm also a massive gaming fan. I mean, I love gaming obsessed with it, you know, and on a real one, even when I was a kid I was obsessed with a crew called the Bitmap Brothers. I don't know if you remember me, a couple of games, them two speedball, gods, magic pockets. These guys were like the first kind of gaming celebs. They'd been great games, but no one knew who made them and the Bitmap Brothers almost came from out of there. So I've been obsessed with it for as long as I can remember and always harbored a kind of want to play in that world. So this was a dream on this game. So when E.A. came knocking, I'd heard a few things, good and bad actually being candid about E.A. sports, about what they were like to work with. You know, obviously I was immediately like, oh my god, this is funny, awesome. Then was also a bit like I'd spoken to a couple of people and they were like, oh, I'm going to be careful, you know, the big organisation, the very slow, the very safe. You know, those are the things I'd heard, you know, right or wrong. And so we entered into it with a bit of trepidation, but we sort of said to ourselves that let's see what this is all about. And we originally thought they'd go in touch for a brand advertising brief and actually realized it was for a design brief. They were sort of like, there's a project we might do and there's some sort of change happening and we persisted in the studio. I don't know how much you know as, I mean, built for brands in a moment of change, that's sort of what we like to do. And we realized it's the sort of sweet spot for us and the type of work we want to make. We're not really who you go to for a slightly different shade of blue. And they sort of came along and said, no, we're really in a moment change and that first meeting they were like, well, look, you know, yeah, we might be moving away from Veefram whatever. And of course, literally, I think that was in well, it felt like it was three weeks after that guy threw a load of cash or whatever. Do you remember that event? And we were like, okay, fuck, this is great because actually it had all the energy and all the incendiary good stuff that we'd love in a brief. The incident Nils is referring to is when UK comedian and prankster Lee Nelson interrupted a press conference by FIFA president, CEP, bladder and threw a stack of cash in his face to call out his corruption. Uncommon was close to winning the project. However, first Nils had to have a frank conversation with EA Sports VP of brand David Jackson, who goes by DJ. DJ, I think, was very rare in that I think he sought us out and understood our work and then sought us out for more of the same. And the nature of the relationship we entered into was incredibly candid from day one, which is actually how we like it. And he was pretty punchy. You know, and he was like, look, I've heard you're good, but I don't know if you are and are you up for it? And this is a big deal for us. And we did that thing where I went to tell a little bit, I was like, all right, right back at you, I've heard you guys guff on and don't do anything. So, you know, is this a, we're going to do it, brief? Truthfully, the way I phrased it was, I think I said something like, there are either smash it, briefs or don't fuck it up, briefs. And my fear was it was a don't fuck it up, brief by that. I mean, a lot of clients when they enter into something as big as this, they'll just be like, let's just make it happen. And it was like, no, no, no, in our terms, it's not, you know, when you get to divorce FIFA and you get to reestablish what you stand for and how you look and feel and the voice you have and the energy you have, you can either do that with an attempt to invisibility or you can do that to smash it and be referred to. And so this language of reference points and that sort of stuff was something we talked about a lot from the start. So there was this ridiculous little alpha off, I think, from day one that we had, but it was very healthy, I think, you know, because it was like, you saw a came and arguably asked for the best from us and us to say, we spent a month or so suspicious, basically, that they didn't mean it. You know, I mean, it's a common thing, which is if you want people who perotiously care about what they do, have a personal investment in it, well, of course you're going to say, it's a smash it brief, but if by smash it, you mean don't offend my stakeholders, that's very, very different. So there was a bit of suspicion there, which was okay, well, let's just put our money where I'm out is and I think our first foray into it to be candid guys, we did a lot of work and we were slightly hedging our bets and he kind of came back and went, what's all this, it's a bit crappy, you're going to bring it or not. And we were like, okay, now that's both volumes to me because that told me that he really came to us for what we do. It was a great little slap, but it was also a massive motorbacer because I was like, okay, if I come back and we bring it now, I can then hold this guy to account. And that was a miss, DJ1 and Bold and timeless, not really trendy for Transake, but something immortal. Most of the time, a studio and a client will have a different list and the client will have a list that says, please my FD, complete rebranding projects on time, don't miss game, air day, blah. And we'll have a list saying, you know, create massive public sculpture. And often those two things don't really meet and actually that's where the bad stuff happens. And actually I think our list was pretty similar quite early, we established that we wanted this moment to be something that was referred to. We wanted to have made the best of it. We definitely wanted a narrative that told the fans of the game, probably the biggest game on the planet by the way, that they were for them. So it wasn't a design project in many ways in that it was like, you know, it was popping up on it to nice that with, do we all like this color? It was like, this is going to be discussed in the public forum in a way that nothing else we've ever worked on will. Their competitors aren't really other video games as much as absolutely everything else. And like everything else in the world, you know, if you think about the biggest video game in the world, 150 million players daily, it was something crazy. And you look at it and you go, okay, well, we're competing with popular culture, we're competing with Netflix, we're competing with Spotify, we're competing with YouTube, we're you know. And so at that point, you go, well, our research as far as FIFA is concerned, 100% you know, in its history. But really, we looked into football writ large and what that might mean, where is football culture now, where people are removing sponsors cans from the front of a press conference or where people are pulling up their shirt to make statements, or where clubs are refusing sponsors. All of this started to really sort of give us clues that actually the role of a football club and what a club might mean is an incredibly special thing. So that's really the conversation we started to have is what is the biggest football club in the world? Yeah, we looked at everything from some really beautiful stories within football clubs. If you look at the origin stories of a lot of football clubs, they don't come from football at all, they come from hardship, well, they come from wanting to never to fight something, you know, or they come from not being allowed to do something. So there's always incredible stories and I think so this divorce from FIFA gave them the friction and a moment, I think, to speak to what football in general was really at that. But it's because FIFA is not here. Nils and the uncommon team needed to bring it. Perfectly fine ideas weren't going to cut it. They needed something truly substantial, something authentic to the game, something authentic to football and to the video game. Luckily for them, they found it. We presented something else, I tell you what we did actually, we presented something that was almost so radical in its approach, it didn't offer a system as an alternative because I was like, well, there's no better idea I've got for you, but I do have an approach that might be better, which is actually, imagine we didn't have a graphic logo and we just did everything within a frame, you know, it just approached you very, and it was really good. It was kind of interesting. Was the strategy to present them such a wild other option that it pushes them to an easier option like a triangle because you all love that? I'd like people to say that. No, I just was like, I want to show them something else I'm not ashamed of. So we have this thing which is no passengers. So there's no passenger work. I'll never show a single person work that we wouldn't be proud to make, not one. And if we only get to one piece of work for that meeting, then that's all you get. So we found something that we thought was super interesting. It would have made a really unique canvas, but it just wasn't nowhere near on that level. And we betrayed ourselves like we opened up the meeting and I basically just said, look, I've got the answer, we've got it. No, it might not be perfect, but we've got it. And if you hate it, let me know. And I literally, I think I was a quarter of the way through it and I got a text of DJ games, fucking nailed it or something like that and I was just like, yeah, great. And so from that point, my stomach was then filled with acid and nervousness and I almost shat myself 52 times because essentially I was then worried that this beautiful thing we'd managed to land on was going to get somehow spoiled, sullied, unbought or not made, which is then you spend the next nine months doing that. Different problems. This is exactly right. This is the mark of, I think they're quality, they're real quality at, yeah, you know, P Mart and DJ and all those guys, Ben. I think when you look at what you have to do in an organization like that to make not just this work, but that change happened, okay, to decide to leave FIFA, then to somehow drum up the power and the scale to go and recruit everybody into it anyway, you know, all the clubs, all the partners and then to go and buy a visual with a new story and invest in it completely and not sell it and not compromise it. To me, the triangle idea is what some in the soccer football world would call a golazo. However, Niels knows the game isn't over until the whistle blows. And in many ways, the work was just getting started. Though I choose to chat to him by the lift, do I choose to call a meeting, do I choose to make it official, do I send it on a WhatsApp? These are the decisions that make or break the things that we wish we could make. They are whether we like it or not. Some people talk to us at uncommon level, you guys must have amazing clients. I'm like, no, I client. Yeah, we have really good clients, but the jeopardy remains, the same jeopardy that we all feel remains. You have at some point got to give it over. The other thing to say is, when you meet people, you can ask you the decision makers on all the above, but an organisation like that. You get a new CEO, the whole thing squared. Oh, it's an amazing campaign where suddenly it's come out and, you know, it's a make-pubbete history campaign, it's got a triangle, it's a logo, you're fucked. Just life has a way of throwing these things at you sometime. So I'm well aware of that and I'm constantly, I suppose, pregnant with jeopardy. I think there were moments of jeopardy. I do remember moments where it was we might need to get back to you and do you have an old and what if we downgraded it and we made this slightly louder and of course immediately I'm like the moment you do that, it's just peripheral, it doesn't matter, it's not the thing. But once they were in, they were really in. And then it was like, okay, fuckers, we've got this, how big can we go? If we're deciding this is it, well, let's really decide it's it and it lived the whole way through the game. I mean, I can't imagine what that takes. If you play that game, it is at the heart of it. It's on every referee's shoulder in the print. You know, Ben Zemmer carried it in his teeth on a pen and I'm like, what is that media? You can't buy that media. So massive respect again to them, like, you know, once they're on the bus, they're really on it. Okay, and when we come back from the break, we learn how DJ sells the rebrand throughout EA and how they make the big announcement all that more after the break. Hey while we're taking this quick break, I wanted to say thanks and give a big shout out to brand pad for sponsoring this episode. We love using brand pad here at matchstick where I work. In addition to their beautiful, easy to use online guidelines, brand pad now offers a full scale damn solution. That's D-A-M. I didn't just swear, by the way, that stands for digital asset manager. And with that damn solution, keeping track of countless versions and formats has never been easier. This add-on includes advanced tagging, categorization and search capabilities powered by AI making it faster than traditional dams. Just use the discount code change 15. That's change 15 at brand pad dot IO. Hey listeners, if you like a change of brand, you might also like a book that Blake wrote called Radically Relevant. We have found that brands need to be two things. Be radical and relevant. This book helps CMOs and other brand leaders do just that. It includes an online assessment to find out how radically relevant your brand is currently and how that compares to others in your space. And since our podcast listeners are extra special, we're offering 10% off the book. Let's go to RadicallyRelevant.com and enter Change 10 for your 10% off. Last and certainly not least, come join the conversation over on Instagram. Seen more about today's episode, share with a friend or send us an idea for a future episode at a change of brand on Instagram. Now without further ado, back to the show. Okay, just before the break, we learned how the uncommon team had a massive win. And the triangle logo was in play. DJ, the VP of brand EA sports started to get buy-in from the CEO and other leaders throughout the organization. His task was to remind people what was at stake and why they couldn't just play defense going forward. As the internal socialization and approval process was happening, NILs and the uncommon team continued to refine the logo and other parts of the visual identity. What does this mean for photography? You know, so we had this thing which is 200% football which is we're about bringing people much, much closer to this experience in a visceral way. So how can we do that? You know, if we're the world's game and we're literally the biggest fans of this game, well how can we bring everybody into it in a way they weren't before? You know, if we were about over there, please stay over there. You know, we want it to be almost the opposite. I'll tell you the good thing though, is once you've got an idea like that and there's a few other examples that we've done, but once you've got an idea like that on the wall, you can always drag people back to it. You've got like a compass now. As opposed to I think this slightly sliding and morphous thing that happens through an approval process. Well, this guy over here loves blue and you know, back in the 50s that was our, so can we, and you kind of end up doing this weird, whereas here it was like no, this is the purity of the idea. This has to be the thing that we communicate. You know, how modern is it, how sharp is it, is it too brutal? Those are chats you can have. Tonally, we talked a lot about. Is it friendly or is it scary? Is there a little bit of the military to it or is there a bit of whatever to, you know, we were working hand in glove, which is incredibly fascinating with the actual crew developing the game. We were loads, greens and idle screens, so you know, when you're sat there and you leave the game for a bit and the footballers just sort of limbering up and jiggling their head around and stuff, we were like, well, what happens there? And can we make that richer and more interesting? So it was an incredibly fascinating process, but yes, I spent the entire time basically terrified until it was in the world. DJ was able to get the new EA Sports FC 24 visual identity approved, but the next big challenge was to think through the launch. I mean, we're talking about one of the most popular video games in the world connected to the most popular sport in the world depicting some of the most valuable players and teams in the world. And they just split from their legacy namesake FIFA. So the pressure was on. We were sort of like, well, wouldn't it be amazing to make a design explainer film except that was borderline a brand voice, brand narrative thing? So we made a film with Dave, he's a rapper in the UK where he basically, you know, it's dressed up like it's cool. It's about triangles, but really it's a design guidelines explainer film, I think. And I was like, well, what if we drop that? And then suddenly that drops and we put it on T-Fos around the world in team colours. We stuck it in media. I mean, man, we made crazy stuff. Stubbed stuff didn't make it. We tried to make some Pisk cubes. You know, those things in urinals, they clean the urinal, we wanted to make some of those. Yeah, they didn't quite make the cut. Sadly sorry, DJ. You know, the point was, if we were really in the culture, where would we be? You know, so people got their hair done. We made like grills. It was awesome. You know, there was like a pie shop and it's so actually the roll out was as important as the work. And I don't think enough people think openly about that. I think the design industry are a bit snobby and they kind of go, it was not our job to think about how it makes its way into the world. And I'm like, well, of course it is. The public spectacle, the act of design is a making, is an act of making. And so whether you like it or not, people will respond to it. I've always thought that avoidance so they just irritated me. The game itself, the nature of that video, the nature of social, the relationships they have with influencers and key figures and key footballers, all of that is sacred. Really, if you think about what they've built and they were very, very open to us, not only having ideas about it, but crafting the elements, crafting the scripts, you know, be working on the exact wording of a tweet or a statement or whatever, you know, all working on these decks. If you imagine these decks that go to somebody like David Beckham or Tzadat, how you frame that deck is everything. And it in terms of how they receive it and what to be a part of it and all the above. So they were very, very open about that. And what you'll find with uncommon is the moment that trust is there will crawl over broken glass to make the best of it. You know, and I don't think most clients understand that, which is, you know, no one is trying to meddle or fuck up those relationships quite the opposite. Always sort of trying to do every time is make the best of every single interaction. If every one of those people or every one of those channels is an opportunity or a chance, how do we not just post it there? You're going to need it. There's always something better you can do. It's where the Dave film came from, you know, it's like, we could have just released the logo and gone, hey, what do you think? And apparently the press release said triangle was like, no, no, no, come on. So we had Dave explain here. We had cameos, you know, we had everybody like you saw it, you know, and the other thing to say is it did this really useful thing where the blur between the real world and the gaming world started to meld. So Beckham's post had the triangle above his head the way it would on the game except it was a real shot of Bex, you know, and the Zat Zadam one also. So there was this great kind of arm on board spirit that started to happen by the way that they placed it or embraced it within their world. Were you all super excited and waiting with bearded breath on the light switch moments, right? 100% and truly incredibly privileged man, really, really humbled by it like so. But you basically project, don't you, and innate confidence and belief until something happens. That's the act of creativity is you sort of make something up and then you have to believe it and get everyone else to believe in it and then it becomes real. And this was though one of those ones where I was like really pinching myself and you know, shit, this is actually on. And it's on all the hoarding board and it's in the half time show and it's on the program and it's on the scarves and honestly, I was just on my phone. I was addicted to social for two weeks, you know, and this is what's that group just pinging 24 hours a day with the crew just going, oh my god, have you seen this? Yeah. And the reaction right, hopefully in a really good way was divisive as well. It wasn't unanimous love at all. You know, it was like, what's this and what's it all about? And but ultimately, I think the way it was launched and the way people could find themselves within it and the amount of people that got on board quickly was insane. It was trending and I think on socials within three and a half hours of launch or something. I mean, the BBC referred to it as the biggest entertainment rebranding history. I was like, oh shit. Now, I was like, genuinely, I'm loving that and that's in the case study now, obviously, but I was like, oh, my fucking god, when they say something like that, you're like, yeah, it probably was. We got so deep in it, I was like, noodling around the edge of a triangle. I completely forgotten that point. Reactions, it sounds like we're mostly positive thrilling, excited. Some need sayers, but tell us a little bit more about that. I see what happens. So it was mostly positive. I was like, yeah, fucking cool. But I bet the game shit. You know, yeah, absolutely love it. And, you know, oh my god, this is so fucking cool. You know, you've seen that film with Dave and, ah, it was doing the route. It was like huge. But then the immediate conversation was, I bet they screwed up now. I bet the game was rubbish, or whatever. So anyway, thank god the game was the biggest pre-sold game they've ever done and actually really, really well received. So, you know, honestly, it's not a real one, man. I just, you know, I go downstairs into my son's room and, you know, he's on screen and my logo's on the game. He's playing on my great. That's it. That's pretty cool. Yeah, I don't get to be cool a lot in my house at all. You know, it's worth noting that no one really knew if this change of brand was going to work. Changing the name 30 years in after loads of success is pretty risky. Some people speculated that the FIFA name and brand brought legitimacy and was the distinct advantage for EA Sports over their competitors. However, others claimed the 30 plus years of stellar gameplay and distinct game modes had made the FIFA connection unnecessary. At the end of the day, the consumer was the judge. When the new game launch was successful, they reached 11.3 million players in its first week, beating previous records held by FIFA 23. And in general, players liked the new FC 24. But there was one funny wrinkle just after the launch that really had nothing to do with the name or the brand. A group of users decided to review bomb the game. That's where they post a slew of negative reviews on gaming sites in an attempt to hurt sales overall. In this case, it didn't really slow down the winning efforts of FC 24. From a brand perspective, this was a resounding success. EA now has a product brand that is more independent. FIFA's years of corruption and declining perceptions were a drag more than a boost. They also now have a strong, identifiable symbol to represent that brand. Also Nils and DJ seemed like they were a good match for one another, bringing candor, ambition and skill to the table. But first the uncommon team didn't bring their A-game to an early share of work that almost spelled disaster for the project. And this could have easily spooked DJ as the client. Luckily, the uncommon team responded to the challenge and made a major comeback. Also appreciate Nils and how he pushed his team to produce work that could set the standard for this type of rebrand into the future. I also felt inspired by the beginning of our conversation and how Nils framed up two basic briefs when it comes to new projects. They don't "eff it up" brief or "the smash hit" brief. And he's right, so many brand leaders need credible, safe, trustworthy partners to help them solve the problem with a minimal amount of risk. Often those projects don't allow for much creative courage. Nor perhaps do they need it. But in this case, EA sports needed a smash hit. They weren't hoping for a boring, nil-nil draw. They wanted to play on the front foot attacking, pushing for a big win. And sometimes when you do play aggressive like that you make mistakes. Epic fails are born from ambition. When brands go too hard, gap, tropicala, new coke, you name it. All have been under the guise of courage or going big with their ambition. And I can see an alternate dimension or reality where this does go sideways. Perhaps they push the idea too far or go too abstract, leaving gamers just confused or annoyed where the brand gets in the way of the gaming experience. Or more likely and perhaps worse, would if they'd hyped up this name in logo change only to reveal a game that was lackluster. Luckily for uncommon and EA sports, the game was great and the triangle concept was hard to argue with. However, I find it interesting that on the cover of FC24 or on the loading screen of the game, you see only a type based logo lockup, not the triangle. In fact when you look in other places, you just don't see the triangle too much. It seems like EA sports prefers the word mark over everything else. Nils is obviously proud of this work, but I was curious from his point of view. What made this a smash hit? I just knew it was going to be a big endeavor and if you imagine you spend a year and a half crafting something that looked like just football, the amorphous game of football, I think it would have killed me. You know, I'm Thomas Heatherwicks, a friend of the studio, the architect and designer and he said something really interesting. I was talking about that project and he said, "God knows we work on buildings and you can spend five years working on a building to have it scrapped or worse, you can spend five years working on a building to have them take away the decision making at the end and make it incredibly normal." You know, the idea of investing five years in your life, so I mean it sincerely, which is the life of a studio is finite. You know, we're not going to exist forever with this energy and intensity and all the above and what we spend our time on is everything. You know, it's our output story of uncommon. And if we spend a year and a half making something bland, that's worse than bland, it's a crime for the studio. Hey, that is final time. Thanks for listening and special thanks to Neil's Leonard in Uncommon for giving us the locker room pet talk. Stay tuned next week when we sadly wrap up season five with perhaps our best change story yet, Pepsi. VP of Design Mauro Pochini shares more about his vision for a rebrand 13 years into making. To see more on today's episode or to sign up for our email, go to achangeofbrand.com or follow us on Instagram at a change of brand. Big shout out to our incredible team. Today's episode was edited and scored by Adam Audio. Backed checked and coordinated by Jill Jeffries, produced by Brianna Belcher. Stephanie Kim designed this episode's artwork and special thanks to Tracy Clark for the brief end and for the support on the interview. I'm your host Blake Soccer, who looking to howard, signing off.