Creative / Marketing Director
CoachUp
At CoachUp, a VC-backed 2-sided marketplace connecting coaches and athletes across 30+ sports for 1-on-1 or group sessions, I led a full brand overhaul and two website (and mobile-app) redesigns.
I grew the creative/marketing team from 1 (myself) to 10 members, managed marketing's collaboration with engineering, and oversaw all aspects of our celebrity athlete relationships, including those with Steph Curry and Julian Edelman.
Logo Redesign
Our initial logo was created prior to my tenure. Like many startups, the emphasis was on speed and establishing a foundational brand presence.
As Creative Director, I collaborated with both in-house and outsourced creative teams to craft a logo and tagline lockup with an athletic feel. The design incorporated clever elements, such as an upward-pointing arrow, and the chosen typeface evoked a sense of familiarity akin to ESPN or Sports Illustrated.
Color Palette
The color palette was created with the intention of evoking an All-American athlete vibe. These colors were used consistently across all assets including email, apparel, and landing pages.
Steph Curry + Julian Edelman Videos
As Creative Director and Producer for both spots, I orchestrated the readings of the pre-draft scouting reports by our two star spokesmen. Despite being viewed as undersized underdogs with less-than-flattering pre-draft reports, Steph and Julian demonstrated their resilience and work ethic. Through these videos, we aimed to showcase how their dedication to proper training, including private coaching, propelled them to success, proving their doubters wrong. The two spots combined for over 5m views across all platforms.
Athlete Showcase Videos
Working as creative director and producer - we identified star athletes/coaches that were using the platform - and traveled from Boston to LA to tell their stories. Fun fact - Tara Davis from our track video went on to compete in the 2020 olympics.
Website Redesigns
Before my arrival and their fundraising efforts, the team developed an MVP website to validate the concept, attract early customers and coaches, and demonstrate functionality to potential investors and accelerators. While the site served its purpose, I was later tasked with reimagining the homepage and generating new assets to replace stock images for further development.
Click to view full image
Click to view full image
In our third iteration, we introduced a looping video background in the header, showcasing real coaches and athletes across 12 sports, captured by my team and I. In response to user testing, we refined the text treatment to be more appealing to parents and less overtly sporty. We also implemented auto-detection of the customer's location and shifted the focus towards building trust, emphasizing ease of use and our guarantee instead of a 'how it works' section. This design I made in 2016 is still being used on the site today.
In our initial redesign iteration, we elevated the search functionality to the top section of the page, featuring a celebrity athlete as the hero image with an overlay for added legitimacy. Additionally, we provided a concise explanation of CoachUp's functionality based on feedback from user testing.
CoachUp Nation Shoot
During our shoot session with Steph Curry, we had him take a shot gesturing around him. Upon our return, we lined up 10 athlete/coach pairs to showcase the breadth of our sport offerings and humanize our coaches. We edited the crew together and utilized this image as the header for our CoachUp Nation content site, as well as for landing pages and digital ads
