A disruptive sports recruiting platform wanted to refresh its identity and understand their users

Problem

FieldLevel is a digital platform that helps high school athletes get recruited to play college sports. The startup had been consistently growing by word of mouth and for its great product since 2012.

As the company iterated its product and evolved their vision, they realized there was an opportunity to clarify their communications and level up their brand.

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Approach

Conversations with the new CMO revealed they needed more than a rebrand. They needed a deeper understanding of their users.

Stakeholder Interviews

Founder and their core team interviews revealed the pillars of the brand, company and product, why it’s different, and how they talk about it (and why). We touched on technology, product, marketing, and customer service.

ETHNOGRAPHIC Research

After conducting a survey, we spoke to 35 people about the recruiting process, product experience, and branding & messaging. From NY to LA and SD, we drove to schools, gyms, parks, and homes. We spoke to parents, athletes, high school coaches, club coaches, and college coaches. We expanded our reach by complementing ethnographies with video interviews across the country.

Synthesis & GROUP FEEDBACK

The internal team knew so much about their users so we created a open kitchen process. My learnings were shared in raw form: as post its in the CEOs office. Sharing, discussing and debating dramatically helped synthesis, internal buy in, and the final list of actionable insights.

Outcome

BRAND STRATEGY

We developed the brand foundation that would resonate with users and the vision of the company.

We strengthen the foundation by turning values into belief statements. We wanted to push values a step further, to be a real, unique point of view on the world. For example:

Integrity > We fail without integrity, effort and passion
Right fit > We prioritize mutual fit over status

AUDIENCE SEGMENTATION

The research evolved 4 users into 5 and developed mindsets and personas.

It covered insights and opportunities across the three sections: 1. recruiting process, 2. product experience, and 3. brand and messaging.

LOGO BRIEF

It all translated into developing a brief to succinctly described what FieldLevel was and what it stood for so a designer could design a new interactive, logo, visual world, and eventually a website and app experience.