Project:
Sports Organisation Branding
Client:
Beyond the White Line
Location:
Season:
2021-2022
Sports Organisation Branding for Beyond the White Line
About the Brand
Beyond The White Line (BTWL) is a not-for-profit organisation that seeks to affect change within the professional sports industry for athletes and stakeholders alike.
The founder and CEO of Beyond the White Line, James Chiffi, is a social impact entrepreneur, but also (and most importantly), a husband and father.
James set up Beyond the White Line with the mission of putting people before profit and performance in sport with the iconic message of #HumanFirst leading their campaign.
JAX Branding’s values align with BTWL, so it was a natural choice to collaborate with them and prepare young men and women for life away from the sport to ensure that athletes become happier and mentally healthier people during and after their careers.
Services provided:
Brand Workshop
Creative Direction
Business Consultancy
Presentation Design
Logo Design
Graphic Design
Copywriting
Categories:
Business Brand Design
Business Branding
Football Branding
Business Design
Football Design
Sports Organisation Branding
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The Challenge
To create a positive change within the sports industry through raising the brand awareness of Beyond the White Line’s vision and portraying it through effective strategy, impactful messaging, and a punchy visual identity built around the existing logo.
Outcome
With the right look and feel, Beyond the White Line has become a trustworthy partner within the global landscape of professional sport. BTWL is currently partnered with Swansea City AFC, Oxford City FC, Shrewsbury Town FC, Leeds Tykes RUFC, Katarina Johnson-Thomspon and many more.
An indirect result of the collaboration was BTWL’s appearance on SkySports and James’ interview on BBC Radio.
Client Testimonial
⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
Scope of the Project
Brand Workshop
Art Direction
Business Consultancy
Content Strategy
Copywriting
Design
The Story
Right from the beginning, BTWL’s transparency and enthusiasm shone through, making the whole branding process a delight. During the brand workshop and multiple brainstorming sessions, we agreed on the importance of mental health within the sport and how important it is to champion the human element of it. At the end of the day, athletes are human beings and not commodities for entertainment. With solid foundations, we focused on sending the right message and building brand awareness.
Mission Statement
To provide support and resources athletes and stakeholders might need via a dedicated team. No matter what stage, sport, club, country or continent, Beyond The White Line wants to be side by side with athletes.
Vision Statement
To ensure that generations of athletes and those within the ecosystem of sport have a sustainable future, within an environment that is #HumanFirst.
Brand attributes
Passionate
Game changing
Impactful
Human
Brand Discovery
JAX Branding focused on discovering BTWL’s ideal service beneficiaries and defining their user journey. These steps have their own purpose and are extremely important for any brand because they help understand human behaviour, define the process people go through and allow the brand to provide value at each stage of interacting with a product or service.
During the brand workshops, we developed an actionable strategy, which allowed BTWL to achieve the goals of introducing a positive change in the sports industry.
The action plan included:
• Collaborating with football clubs and sports organisations.
• Appearing on national television and radio.
• Campaigning with famous brands.
Time has shown that all of the above actions have been successfully achieved. It wasn’t necessarily because of any fancy graphics, but because the problem of mental health in sports is real, and the message was impossible to ignore.
Brand style for sports organisation
A step in the process that JAX Branding’s clients love is our style boarding process. It starts with establishing a style based on the strategy, brand voice and the values you want to convey to your customers. We present an art direction that leads to creating a visual identity in line with your values, mission and vision. For BTWL, we focused on imagery and typography that will deliver the message clearly and will fit in well in the world of sport.
To spread the message even further, this style board was used to promote the brand via the One Minute Brief project, where a creative community from all over the world could visually express themselves and create social media ads in response to the BTWL entry.
Messaging
The guiding voice of BTWL is to show respect and understanding to sportspeople and the pressure they face. In addition to competing, the athletes are also mums, dads, partners, sons and daughters. They face mental challenges just like everyone else. People involved in sports are constantly criticised and this criticism is not always justified. Communicating the importance of humanity in sport and doing the right thing was an inspiration to create an impactful brand messaging.
Football Stadium signage
As an official partner of Oxford City, BTWL asked JAX Branding to design stadium signs that would appear on TV broadcasts during matches.
Design
The final step in the process was to provide BTWL with sufficient resources to create a website, presentations for potential ambassadors and strategic relationships, and social media content.
