How it came 2B: How HP found its place in the Wrexham story

“Well…,” I said, “We may just have had something to do with that.”

That was all the encouragement Reuben needed. He pulled the story out of me there and then and has been badgering me ever since to tell it properly for The Drum. So here goes…

WHERE IT STARTED

Like a lot of people, we had been watching Welcome to Wrexham and thinking there was something bigger going on here than a football documentary. It had all the ingredients of a great modern brand story: momentum, jeopardy, community, and two owners who know a thing or two about building an audience.

At the time, HP was a client of ours and we were looking at ways to bring its SMB story to life in a more interesting, human way. In a strategy meeting the conversation veered into one about Welcome to Wrexham. The football club was one of the world’s most famous challenger brands at the time. The SMB of the footballing world if you will. Suddenly everything clicked. Before we knew it, we were on the phone to the club’s advisors, brokering a meeting with Ryan Reynolds at Wrexham’s next home game.

Wrexham was clearly on the fast track to bigger things, and HP felt like a brand that could genuinely support that trajectory. The challenge was that B2B brands are not exactly famous for stepping into entertainment and culture in a way that feels natural. This was not going to work if it felt bolted on.

LOOKING BEYOND B2B

Transmission knew what to avoid. Slapping HP’s logo on Wrexham’s football kits and plastering collateral all over the stadium would have been the obvious thing to do. But this was a chance to make much more of the exposure that comes with a global cultural hit. You can’t walk into a meeting with Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, two men who have made careers out of telling stories that grip audiences, armed with a set of logos and ads and expect that to be enough.

So, we started thinking beyond sponsorship in the traditional sense and more about how HP could meaningfully become part of the story. As with any good brand partnership, it began with the simple question of how the brand could support the club’s mission and values. It is one thing to land a big sponsorship opportunity. It is another to bring it to life in a way that feels authentic to everyone involved.

BRAND STORYTELLING BEFORE IT WAS REALLY A THING

At its simplest, we treated it as a brand storytelling challenge. What role could HP play in a story people were already emotionally invested in? Once we framed it like that, the possibilities opened up quickly. There was a narrative arc that stretched from pitch-side visibility to support for wider rejuvenation projects in Wrexham itself.

We had meetings with the council and the town’s mayor to understand where HP’s technology could play a useful role in supporting the local community and its businesses. That was what made it interesting. This was never just about a badge on a sleeve. It was about whether HP could show up in a way that was credible to the club, helpful to the wider story and relevant to the kind of growing businesses it wanted to speak to.

Vanessa Cheal, our Head of Strategy, put it well. 

“We decided to treat Wrexham AFC like any other SMB client on the up. The club was a challenger in every sense of the word, and Rob and Ryan recognised that success – on the pitch and in Wrexham – involved the community. The narrative almost wrote itself. HP wanted to appeal to B2B SMBs. And what better way to showcase how it can support the needs of growing businesses than by quite literally making itself part of Wrexham’s growth story.”

Vanessa Cheal, Head of Brand Strategy, Transmission

By early 2023, all parties had nailed down the legal Ts and agreed to the Cs, and the partnership launched. From there, the story found its key beats: the HP sponsorship itself, support for hybrid work at the club, helping bring Wrexham to the world, a fan gaming zone that reflected the connection between fans and team, and a partnership with Stats Perform and Opta to strengthen the club’s player data capabilities as it pushed on up the pyramid.

Since then, Wrexham’s rise has only made the original instinct feel more right. The club has continued its climb, the fanbase has blossomed internationally and HP has been there almost every step of the way.

What I still like about it is what it says about B2B brand building more broadly. It proved there is a real business case for taking a different approach. Not just showing up where attention already exists, but finding a role in a story that matters and making the brand part of it in a way that feels real.

In a content-cluttered, attention-light world, brands need more interesting ways to tell their story. The ones that invest for the long term and back brave ideas are usually the ones people remember. This was one of those ideas.