First came the name ‘Lamberts Lions’ when Paul Lambert was appointed Aston Villa manager. A tagline the club could use in all marketing from merchandise to social media announcements. ‘Lambert’s Lions, ‘to those Villa fans in their 30’s, sounded a little too much like Jossy’s Giants. The kids show set in Geordie land (currently ruled by Alan Pardew), where Jossy takes over a local kids teams and fashions a bunch of hapless losers into a team of Roy of the Rovers proportions. Actually…a little bit like Alan Pardew did with Newcastle United, last season.
Back in the days of Jossy Giants, nicknames and terms of endearment for managers or players, normally came organically from supporters. In present-day football, a club’s marketing machine serves them up ready-made and enforces them on fans before the fans have actually embraced them. Can you imagine Villa’s marketing team coming up with ‘Big Fat Ron’s Claret and Blue Army?’ If only twitter had been around in the early 90’s – #BigFatRon
Fast-forward a few weeks after Lambert’s appointment and the club had a midnight unveiling of the new home and away kits by Italian shirt manufacturer Macron. Breaking with the club’s traditional colours, the luminescent green away kit was of particular interest to Villa fans. Days later the Lambert-related tagline referring to it went from the ridiculous to the sublime.
Suddenly every tweet/facebook message coming out of Aston Villa was tagged with #LambertLimes
With the fans coming up with a potential chant, ‘We glow in the dark, we glow in the dark, we’re Aston Villa we glow in the dark’, it fuelled the fire. The chant hadn’t even be sung once by fans, and the marketing team jumped all over it, seeing the potential of making a bit of green from the lime, all under the contrived illusion of fan fun.
But who ultimately would come up with something as lame as ‘Lamberts Limes’? A term that with a run of patchy Villa away form could soon transform into ”Lambert’s Slimes’. Errrr…well the first recorded tweet of #LambertsLimes is by this fellow below… with even the instructions of what to use the hashtag for.
Proof that either MOMS should maybe call it a night before midnight or has a place in the Villa marketing team. Apologies if any Villa fans have since taken offence to such a slogan… it was just meant as a throw-away joke!
As for the club, any acknowledgment from them? Any thanks for MOMS’ Mad Men-like advertising tag-line prowess? No. What would we like? Well, for starters, it would be a nice gesture if they sent one of those lovely lime green away tops (size XL), as a thank you. Then we could officially follow our own advice and join Lambert’s Limes.
Also see: Release Lambert’s Lime Lions for more Lime insights.
‘A Venglos View’- – is the new column title for a look at happenings at Villa in a more offbeat manner.
Håvard – I actually think the lime kit is ok too (the sentiment of this article is more on a satirical tip).
Good spot and advice Craig! It used to be advice’ but for some reason it was flagged in spell check and I just auto-corrected it, without double-checking. Good job you triple-checked it!
Funny but please note you should be using ‘advice’ and not ‘advise’.
I like the lime kit 😀