Arsenal Football Club has undergone something of an international revolution in recent years, both on and off the field. The club has been a pioneer in the recruitment of foreign players and is now turning increasingly to foreign soil in its recruitment at executive level. One man who has been at the centre of it all in recent years is Arsenal’s UK head of marketing, Angus Kinnear.

January heralded the dawn of a new era at Arsenal Football Club. The English Premier League soccer side appointed Ivan Gazidis, then deputy commissioner of Major League Soccer in the USA, as its new chief executive. The first eight months of Gazidis’ tenure were decidedly low-key. He watched and learned, assisted manager Arsene Wenger in the transfer market, and went quietly about his business in the background. In the last weeks, however, Gazidis has made his move, spelling out a new global vision for the club and making three key appointments: Svenja Geissmar, a former General Counsel at MTV Europe who becomes the club’s first in-house lawyer; the appropriately named Trevor Saving, who comes in as head of people and operations; and, most crucially of all, former NBA, Gatorade and Nike executive Tom Fox, whom Gazidis has brought in as chief commercial officer.

The Arsenal board it seems, though renowned as being one of the most ‘traditional’ in English soccer, is increasingly turning its attention to the arguably more sophisticated world of sports marketing in America. Indeed, the club has undergone something of an American revolution in recent months. There is Gazidis of course – although the former MLS man was born in South Africa and educated in Britain – Fox, and Stan Kroenke, the owner of several American major league franchises and now the majority shareholder at Arsenal.

One man in the thick of the revolution is Arsenal’s UK head of marketing Angus Kinnear. A sports marketing veteran despite his youthful appearance, Kinnear spent some time in the US himself, working as a freelance brand consultant. Having also spent two and a half years at Coca-Cola and four years at Proctor & Gamble, Kinnear arrived at Arsenal in 2004. Speaking just weeks before the Emirates Cup, the airline’s showpiece soccer tournament at Arsenal’s stadium, Kinnear has nothing but praise for Gazidis’ appointment.

“From a personal perspective,” says Kinnear, “I think the board were very judicious in making sure that they appointed somebody who had an absolute understanding of the values of the brand and I think all the fans’ groups would testify that Ivan has demonstrated that straight away.”

Indeed, the Arsenal brand is one of the most valuable in world soccer. Valued by this magazine as the 21st most valuable sports property in the world, the club is rooted in a sense of priceless tradition. As Kinnear explains: “It is sort of known as the Bank of England club. What is very true about our board is that they are great guardians of the Arsenal brand. Previously I used to work at Coke and P&G, so obviously around branding, but the way they define the brand here is ‘the Arsenal way’. And it gets referred to things all the time. So if, for example, we’re dealing with a particular supporter who’s got a grievance, someone will say ‘well, that’s not the Arsenal way’. There’s a great sense of that throughout the club – of doing the right thing. The phrases linked to it are ‘quiet dignity’ and ‘assured judgement’. And everybody likes the fact that that differentiates ourselves from what would be seen as our competition."

Gazidis, it seems, has been quietly entwining himself in ‘the Arsenal way’. Yet, as much as the spirit of the club provides the marketing men with a useful brand to sell, Gazidis has recently expressed his concern that not enough has been done in the past to spread the club’s message internationally. Speaking with popular Arsenal fan site Arseblog.com earlier in the summer, Gazidis said: “I do believe that if we’re looking to develop our value we have to embark on a medium to long-term project of better articulating the values that the club represents. I don't think we have developed our brand as much as we could do, either domestically or internationally. And ultimately, if you do that effectively, the revenues come off the back of that.

“I do believe that Arsenal represents some things that are quite special, particularly in the modern world of football. We need to preserve those whilst articulating them to a wider public.”

Very much on message with his new chief executive, Kinnear echoes Gazidis’ sentiments. “Despite the fact that Arsenal has some very deep-seated traditions and values,” he says, “It’s actually pretty entrepreneurial and we do talk about the club as being ‘tradition with vision’. So it’s about not forgetting our roots. What Ivan has started to do is to set the agenda about what the brand means internationally and how we can grow it, and to think about things rather than in terms of how do you immediately monetise it. It’s more about how do we make connections with people, what does the Arsenal brand stand for?”

There is of course an inherent problem associated with developing the Arsenal brand internationally: unlike their Premier League rivals – Manchester United, Chelsea and Liverpool in particular – Arsenal are reluctant to undertake money-spinning but fatiguing tours to far-flung corners of the world; manager Arsene Wenger preferring yearly low-key pre-season trips to Austria to better prepare his players. “Arsene is focused on the football primarily,” Kinnear explains. “So the club supports his requirement and therefore the team isn’t traipsed around Asia on money-making schemes.”

He continues: “This season we negotiated [pre-season] fixtures in Hanover and Valencia – two away games which are revenue generating, where teams are paying a fee to have Arsenal. The figures for those games are dwarfed by figures if we were to be able to travel to South Africa, the Far East, the United States. What’s more challenging is the brand extension opportunities and the brand expansion, which is about activating that presence and activating it through membership and supporters’ clubs and retail and fan acquisition. And that’s the challenge we face at the moment: how do we grow the brand internationally, knowing that the team is unlikely to have any presence there? And that is a challenge versus Man United and Chelsea.”