Stockport County Away Kit Launch.

First In. Last Out.

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Client:: Stockport County FC / GROFU
Campaign:: 2026/27 Away Kit
Creative & Production:: GROFU
Services:: Creative concept · Direction · Storyboarding · Production · Editing · After Effects VFX · Colour grade · Sound design · Bespoke music production
Turnaround:: Approx. one week

The Brief.

After launching Stockport County’s home kit, we had no interest in doing the same thing twice. Each shirt needed an identity of its own, with the creative shaped around the kit rather than squeezed into a campaign formula.

And the away kit gave us a very different canvas.

Black with raised silver detailing, it was darker, sharper and bolder than the home shirt. We wanted a film that carried that same energy.

Our idea focused on the work nobody sees. The extra hours. The empty training ground. Being first there and last to leave. One young footballer, one ball and a floodlit pitch long after everyone else had gone home.

A simple story about drive and dedication gave us the perfect setting for the shirt. Black disappearing into the night. Silver details catching under the floodlights. Every frame built to make the kit hit.

The shirt had attitude and the film needed it too.

The Challenge.

We knew exactly how we wanted the film to look. High contrast. Monochromatic. Grainy. Textured. Raw in all the right places, but controlled down to the frame.

Getting it there meant leaving very little to chance.

We cast a young footballer, Keone Depasois-Mike, who could give the film the presence and authenticity it needed, then storyboarded the entire shoot and built a pre-visualisation before stepping onto the pitch.

Good job, really. We had one night to shoot it. And “night” was doing some heavy lifting.

We were filming at the height of summer, so darkness didn’t arrive until around 10pm. Once the light dropped, we had a tight window to capture everything we needed.

There was no time to turn up and figure it out.

The storyboard became our blueprint. Shot selection, movement, pacing and performance had already been mapped out, giving our small production team the freedom to focus on execution. The finished film follows that storyboard almost shot-for-shot.

Post-production was just as deliberate.

Our home kit film used AI to solve a very specific production problem. The away film didn’t need it, so we didn’t use it.

Editing, colour grading, sound design and bespoke After Effects VFX gave us everything we needed. We manipulated elements including the movement and trajectory of the football, built out the compositing and pushed the finishing work to create the heightened visual world we’d planned from the start.

That sums up our approach pretty well. The idea dictates the tools. Never the other way around.

Sound was built with the same level of intent. Instead of dropping a stock track over the finished edit, we produced the soundtrack in-house specifically for the film.

Music, sound design, picture and edit were developed together. Every beat could respond to the player’s movement. Every shift in pace could follow the cut. We’d already started building that relationship during pre-vis, long before the final edit existed.

Then there was the turnaround.

Around one week covered creative development, storyboarding, production, edit, VFX, grade, sound design, bespoke music and final delivery.

Fast? Absolutely.

Rushed? Not a chance.

We knew what we were making before we arrived on set, which meant every hour could go into making it better.

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The Result.

The away kit gave us permission to push the Stockport County partnership somewhere completely different.

Darker. Harder. More cinematic.

We created a film driven by the personality of the shirt, with its own visual language, soundtrack and creative identity. No repeat of the home campaign. No recycled formula. Just an idea built specifically around the kit in front of us.

And people noticed. The campaign caught the attention of the wider team at Stockport County, leading to the club working directly with GROFU on the creative and production of the third and final kit campaign.

A sponsorship activation had opened the door to something bigger.

GROFU wasn’t only appearing on the shirt. We were helping shape how it was introduced to the world.