nBL STORE
NBL26 JERSEY LAUNCH CAMPAIGN
the brief
The biggest event in the calendar for our flagship NBL Store, the Jersey launch is our first campaign to kick off the season calendar.
Coming into the NBL26 season, our physical Jersey product was revamped from the ground up, as for the first time ever we were introducing heat transferred appliques for club wordmarks, knitted fabric on the sleeves and neck for a finer textured ribbing, and a heavier weight of jersey fabric for a more premium feel.
NBL wanted the communications for this campaign to not only highlight the exciting new designs across all 10 clubs, but also educate the audience on what these new changes were.
The PROBLEM
The number 1 touchpoint for selling Jerseys online is the product page, and our existing 3D renders did not have the flexibility to accurately communicate our exciting new upgrades.
As the NBL Store is purely an online marketplace, customers don't have the opportunity to physically touch or wear our new jerseys prior to purchase.
In addition to this, the campaign needed to visually draw the attention of fans who were gearing up for other key sporting moments occurring at the same time - the start of the Premier League season, AFL Finals, and the US Open.
DESIGN INTENT
Like the Jerseys themselves, I wanted the marketing campaign to visually stand-apart from our previous season campaigns. Normally we opt for a 3D hyper-realistic style for these launches, so I wanted the look and feel to feel like a visual leap, not a visual departure.
Thankfully the NBL had just completed a fresh rebrand for the season, so incorporating their new style guide would be a key must to help visually discern the communications for this launch from last season for fans that have been following the league.
For the product imagery itself, I wanted to change how we frame our product visually. Having always used 3D renders with an orthogonal view of the front & back, we needed a different layout.
The INSIGHT
Nothing conveys real, than texture. As I was thinking through the key jersey updates, the main method of perceiving how they're different is through capturing their textures, so I pitched to the team that we should be photographing these Jerseys as flat-lays in order to capture their true textures.
To highlight this further I thought a great new addition would be a detail shot - taking an angled front-on close up of every Jersey, this allowed fans to zoom in and comprehend the individual details all at play.
Taking that importance of texture to the marketing campaign, we could replicate that emphasis on texture through utilizing a grungy aesthetic full of rough details to really drive home the importance of texture.
THE OUTCOME
The Jerseys sold like hot cakes, while factoring an increased price point to match similar product from competing sports, they still outperformed the revenue of the NBL25 Jersey Launch Campaign.
Not only was the campaign a huge success from the marketing design execution, the use of the photoshoot meant that we could actually provide a better purchasing experience for the customer. One of the big issues with e-commerce that we often battle with, is that specifically in sports merchandise - colour accuracy is king. As our Jerseys are essentially the flagship brand representation of each club, we found that the photography was able to more accurately represent the physical Jersey than the 3D renders, as it was an actual image of the actual product.
This learning gave us the proof to continue shooting all of the specialty round jerseys for the rest of the season, which lead to an improved performance in overall Jersey sales for the NBL26 season compared to the NBL25 season.
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