Head held high - Departing Harris-Lau pleased with legacy left at JFF

As the year 2019 comes to a close, so, too, does Sophia Harris-Lau’s tenure as the Jamaica Football Federation’s (JFF) director of marketing and business development.

Harris-Lau spends her final day in office today, as the federation closes its doors to the public for the rest of the year afterwards. She walks away from the role on December, feeling a sense of pride in the legacy she left behind at the JFF.

Harris-Lau spearheaded a campaign of garnering much-needed sponsorship for a cash-strapped federation and also creating a profile for the body as a commercial brand. As such, she set to work over a period of months to launch JFF Live, the online face of the federation. With this project, the federation now had a more viable social-media presence in a time when global trends and a younger audience which consumes information largely online demanded this.

JFF Live not only meant a fresher social-media presence for the JFF, but also a new website and a YouTube page which not only allowed for live streaming of the national teams’ matches, but also archiving them infinitely. It also allowed the creation of an online shop which became a new avenue for income, with President Michael Ricketts’ mandate of cost cutting and generating new streams of revenue after taking office in September 2017.

LEADING DIGITAL SPACE

“We were seen as leading the region in terms of being in the digital space and our digital interface, and of that I’m extremely proud,” she said. “When you can put up a match on YouTube and get 240,000 views and you’ve just started that page, you’ve captured the attention of so many people across the globe. When you have sponsors asking for analytics (to study viewership and other related trends) from your page, you’re speaking their language. I absolutely love that I took them into that space and I brought in a lot of young, amazing, creative talent to be a part of that organisation.”

Harris-Lau’s stint at the JFF began in June 2017 in what she describes as “surreal circumstances”. She stepped into her role just a day before former president Captain Horace Burrell passed after a lengthy period of illness. Burrell had taken time away from active duty at the JFF to get treatment, meaning he and Harris-Lau never actually had a face-to-face meeting, although he approved her hiring.

“We were never introduced, because he was very ill at the time and I was actually looking forward to meeting him,” she said. “When you enter an organisation during a period of mourning, it was quite a challenging few months, at least.”

But she says that this did not hamper plans she had in mind to “hit the ground running” as she says she immediately did a data audit of the Federation. This included what she says was a period of observing and examining the existing sponsors and clauses in their contracts.

“By October (2017), I had prepared a marketing plan and that was presented to the board and the then general secretary Raymond Grant,” she said.

“I told them, if you’re aware of current global trends, if you’re not in the digital space, you’re gonna be left behind.”

Harris-Lau also enlisted the service of local reggae artist Teflon Zincfence to create tracks for new promotional content on JFF Live, a move which added even more colour to the website and social media pages. Separate logos were also created for the men’s and women’s teams.

“Let’s take a look at the Facebook, the Instagram, the YouTube pages, along with the website and see if we can come up with a uniform comprehensive look and feel that goes with the sound that matches, at the time, based on my observations, what Jamaican football was supposed to be like,” she said.

The rebranding also meant trademarking the names ‘Reggae Boyz’ and ‘Reggae Girlz’ to earn from their intellectual properties.

Harris-Lau is also proud of securing of a four-year deal with British kit and equipment maker Umbro. This was the national teams’ first major kit brand since the golden generation when the teams were outfitted with Kappa gear.

She believes that the JFF can continue building on the foundation she laid, especially in its media presence and she hopes that one of her ultimate aims will still be fulfilled despite her departure.

“I really hope that they continue on that digital platform and try to find a way to commercialise the content, because we created so much,” she said. “We filmed so many games. We have a plethora of content and content is king! I hope they’ll find a way to launch a JFF TV channel, which was the ultimate goal.”

Recommendation

She has recommended, however, that those in charge at the JFF improve their communication with the public and other stakeholders to prevent more unwanted controversies such as those that have affected the body over the last two years.

“If you know that you’re dealing with a major event or major potential problem, get out in front of it and communicate because the public are your stakeholders,” she said. “You have an obligation to let them know what you’re doing and I think a lack of communication in a consistent, transparent, proactive manner led to a lot of what took place, but I think that they are taking steps to correct that.”

While she believes that the JFF is always readily available to speak on various controversies, she says that it is usually just a reaction to existing issues.

“If a proper statement went out before they would answer questions in impromptu interviews, you wouldn’t have a lot of the concerns they do about communication issues. It’s not that they are wrong, but they should not be put in that position.”

rachid.parchment@gleanerjm.com