Louder. Playful. Unapologetic. How We Reimagined World Rugby

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Most sports brands are built on the grit of the game. SVNS was built on the magic of the crowd. When World Rugby challenged us to push the identity further, we didn't start in a stadium; we started at a music festival. We saw that the true heart of Sevens was its "party first" atmosphere.

As New York prepares for the rush of SVNS this weekend, Creative Director Lorenzo Di Cola looks back at the work that redefined a series. Our goal was to capture the heat and momentum of the game, turning a world-class sport into a cultural force.

The brief for the Sevens Series wasn’t just about refreshing the brand. What was World Rugby really trying to change?

World Rugby came to us with a brief that felt as exciting as it was unconventional: rebrand the Sevens Series. But don’t make it about rugby.

Sevens has always been something different. It's an elite sport, but the real magic happens in the stands. Costumes, music, dancing crowds, packed stadiums and cities that turn the tournament into a weekend-long celebration. As the client put it early on: “It’s not about rugby. Sevens is undoubtedly party first.”

That insight changed everything.

The brand needed to capture that same energy. So we pushed the identity far beyond the conventions of sports branding, embracing something louder, more playful and unapologetically expressive. Something built not just for fans of rugby, but for anyone drawn to the atmosphere.

When did music festivals become a reference point for the brand?

To truly understand the kind of energy we were aiming for, the team immersed themselves in festival culture, heading to Sónar Festival at the very start of the project.

Experiencing a world-class music festival first-hand helped reframe the challenge entirely. Sevens wasn’t just a tournament.

It was a travelling global party.‍

Once you see Sevens as a travelling festival, how do you translate that into a brand?

That thinking led us to the central idea behind the brand.

The Series moves across the world over seven unforgettable months, following a route through iconic cities and sun-soaked destinations. From that journey came the brand proposition: Chase the Sun. Live the Rush.

The sun became both a symbol and a system, a way to unify the global tournament while celebrating the spirit of each host city. It gave the identity a sense of movement, heat and momentum, capturing the feeling of following the Series around the world.

The result is SVNS, a brand that turns up the expression. Bold, eclectic and full of personality, it leans into the culture that has always defined Sevens: the music, the costumes, the colour and the energy of its fans.

More than a rugby competition, SVNS is now positioned as something bigger, an iconic global festival of sport and entertainment.

Find out more about our work with HSBC SVNS here.