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 started around 2012 and has been consistently growing by word of mouth and a great product.

As the company reflected on its consumer, iterated its product, and evolved their vision, they realized there was an opportunity to improve their communications and brand. They wanted to powerfully communicate what they do and articulate how they do it differently to potential users. And the wanted to level up the brand.

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Approach

Talking with the new CMO about brand strategy revealed that they needed a deeper understanding of their four users and their mindsets and needs. We conducted qualitative research to give the startup a clearer picture of who they serve and to create a brand strategy that resonates them them all.

We got an internal team together to tackle recruiting, logistics, surveys, ethnographies, field visits, video interviews, and synthesis. Although the CMO and I led the charge, it was a true team effort.

Stakeholder Interviews

I interviewed the founders and their core team—the people who’d been at the startup for years. This allowed me to understand the pillars of the brand, company and product, why it’s different, and how they talk about it (and why), from technology, product, marketing, and customer service perspectives.

Audience Research

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.

Overall, we spoke to 35 people about the recruiting process, product experience, and branding & messaging.

Synthesis & GROUP FEEDBACK

The internal team knew so much about their users from years of phone calls, demos, customer service, and just overall love for sports.

To add their expertise and bring them into the process I put my learnings up as post its. I shared my thoughts, asked them what was interesting or new to them, and took groups through the story while it was still in draft form (as post-its and presentation slides). This dramatically helped synthesis, internal buy in, and the final list of actionable insights.

Outcome

BRAND STRATEGY

The brand strategy guide started with a new mission statement, vision and purpose, as well as the value proposition that would resonate with all 5 users and the mindsets within each.

Those were supported by the company’s unique beliefs/values and the benefits of the product. We turned values into belief statements 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 insights report was presented to the whole startup. It covered insights and opportunities across the three sections of the research: 1. recruiting process, 2. product experience, and 3. brand and messaging.

The report packaged up the audience insights by creating personas for each of their five users and the different mindsets within each. For example there were four mindsets for athletes and three mindsets for parents.

LOGO BRIEF

We didn’t make insights just for the sake of having them. 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.