Deeds not words: The second shirt swap

Last Saturday marked a huge moment for our partner Scope, as they launched their new brand identity and a renewed focus on their role as a social purpose organisation. Their bold new logo was showcased for the first time on a unique shirt worn by the players of Southampton FC as they took on Leicester FC at St Mary’s Stadium. Virgin Media donating our official shirt sponsorship of the Saints in our second logo swap, for me made perfect sense; it was a way for us to bring our partnership to life at a pivotal moment in their organisation’s history.  

We, alongside Scope, want to encourage everyone to become disability gamechangers and support their ambition of achieving equality for disabled people. It’s been a privilege to witness the growth and evolution of Scope as an organisation since the inception of our partnership back in 2015. We were proud to host this event to celebrate an exciting new chapter in their story, alongside our key, partners, suppliers, employees and customers – we’re all Team Scope!

This also provided a moment for us to pause and reflect on how far we’ve come since the first logo swap in May last year. In this time we’ve embedded a truly strategic partnership and delivering significant impacts across all shared programmes, campaigns and initiatives. The repetition of the logo swap is indicative of the ever increasing focus on disability across Virgin Media. Marketing, Corporate Affairs, Sponsorship and many other teams have pulled together to make the event possible. Looking to the future, we’re confident the growing importance placed on our sustainability agenda in core brand activations will mean collectively we can achieve huge progress, supporting disabled people to achieve the everyday equality they deserve.

My team is constantly looking for new ways to engage our people, our customers and our industry colleagues in our sustainability story. Once again, we’re taking the story to them; from a report PDF to the pitch, our people will witness our goals in action from the stands.

This is a call to action, for us all to come together and become disability gamechangers. I was so proud to watch the Saints march on to the pitch, and to hear the fans cheer them on in their one off strip, knowing we helped to make good things happen.