WePlay
Deliverables
Brand Strategy
Brand Identity
Web Design
Brand Guidelines
Brand Communications
Project Partners
Brand Strategy
hensleypartners
Growth partner.
The Brief
WePlay are a multi-award winning performance-led Digital Marketing Agency who have deep relationships with some of the world’s leading sports and entertainment brands, creating media-rich, data analytics-led creative campaigns for organisations such as FIFA, Umbro, Red Bull, ESPN, UEFA, AC Milan and Utah Jazz. After 10 years of growth, they felt their original brand strategy and visual identity was no longer differentiating nor as vibrant and exciting as their work.
The brief was to create a new brand identity that would support the relaunch of the business in 2022 to prepare them for the next stage of growth – to visibly demonstrate WePlay moving into a new era of business, and to get people to look at them differently. WePlay wanted to look fresher and give greater differentiation from the competition, while still clearly looking part of the Sports industry. They required a balance of creativity, data analytics and the scientific approach to their work, together with WePlay’s human touch. They also wanted to ensure simplicity, professionalism and add more personality together with a set of brand guidelines to obtain consistency and efficiency internally across all communications. The key output was the design and build of a new website, showcasing the new identity and their outstanding client portfolio!
Our Approach
We developed an understanding of WePlay's target audiences, who include sports teams, leagues and federations, as well as sports businesses and sponsors, presenting this in management team workshops to define a brand positioning of ‘Growth Partner’. This highlighted that their existing visual identity did not align with the future ambitions and vision of the company, nor did it align with the chosen brand positioning.
We worked collaboratively on a series of creative concepts showcasing the WePlay visual identity in different lights, underpinned by the core idea of ‘Growth Partner’ and the new brand values. These ranged from a significant evolution of the existing identity to more revolutionary routes, including concepts that explored playfulness, trajectory, connectivity and sports iconography.
The winning route was firmly based around a clear sense of direction, positive growth and collaboration through partnership and togetherness. This utilised the circle device from the previous WePlay logo, an intentional seamless segue from the brand of the past to the present. The result being a series of circles that grow, together in partnership, to form the ‘W’ of WePlay. This device then becomes the purpose-driven distinctive symbol behind the WePlay brand. The new brand symbol was then paired with the ‘WePlay’ name, using a rounded sans-serif typeface, and set in a competitively differentiating black and yellow colour palette.
The chosen route included a flexible design framework system that utilised a tightly cropped curve to hold key brand information in order to create uniformity across branded materials and also become a distinctive feature of the WePlay visual identity.
The circles from the W symbol were further adapted to create stand-out graphics, where repeat patterns of growing circles intersected with photography to visually showcase how WePlay weave themselves into sports through partnerships to generate Growth. The circles were also used to create brand icons and diagrams that demonstrated WePlay’s scientific, analytical and human approach to their work.
We applied the fresh WePlay look and feel to the design of a new responsive website and separate launch campaign website, which utilised a modern digital UX-led interface incorporating sophisticated animation, transitions and stand-out graphics to bring brand content to life. The main website design is media-centric showcasing brand showreels and client digital projects to create an immersive, visual experience. We used a mix of photography, icons and analytical diagrams, together with a supporting human script typeface, to create a sport-science look and feel, with a sense of pace and flow among the layout and pages of the sites.
We also supported with direction to internal teams on key launch deliverables.
The Results
The result is a sports-led, media-centric and innovative approach – consistently applied and positively received by staff and clients, propelling the business forwards into it’s next stage of growth. Described by their CEO as ‘a fresh look and a new purpose driven approach’, the new brand has transformed the way WePlay present themselves to existing and prospective clients.
Since rebranding in 2022 WePlay have:
+ Partnered with a number of new exciting organisations
+ Achieved their most impressive partner retention rate yet
+ Formed two new platform partnerships - TikTok and Reddit
+ Experienced a 20% increase in employees
+ Moved to a new head office
+ Launched two new departments
We establish continually evolving, long-standing relationships.
"
The new WePlay visual identity has elevated our brand offering with a more mature, stylised and sophisticated look – now positioned and designed around our services. With access to a more premium high-net-worth audience, we are better aligned around the brands we want to work with. Since rebranding, all inbound enquiries, pitches and tenders, have been related to our core offering with high calibre content-led, digital creative campaign projects – we looked less creative before and struggled to reach these projects. Our website delivers a great story with a cutting-edge design to showcase our creative content approach. Internally, people are proud and our team have clear design guidelines which have stopped inconsistencies with output. At the pinnacle of exponential growth, our new brand has allowed us to really step up our game. We have since seen a sharp increase in revenue and on-target with growth plans.
"
Luca Massaro
CEO
WePlay
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