Role: Lead Designer • Client: DAZN
Celebrating the arrival of college basketball on DAZN with its biggest competition
Building a campaign around NCAA March Madness for existing fans is one thing, but building a campaign that targets audiences who are less familiar with college sports is another challenge entirely. This campaign – which would be primarily for UK, Italy, Greece, UAE and Philippines – needed to not only showcase the product but provide subtle education surrounding what exactly March Madness is, and why it’s a must watch for sports fans.
The campaign sat across various digital outputs, from on platform and DAZN socials to affiliates and CRM.
Whilst the primary campaign assets focus on the men’s side of the competition, the women’s tournament was also given a spotlight. This was done via mixed gender creative, and also women’s only assets.
Mixed Gender Asset
Women's Focus Asset
In terms of the nitty gritty of the design, the inspiration came from collaging and yearbooks, emphasising the college aspect of the tournament. Player cutouts were layered with handwritten style typography, chalk textures, and team logo stickers. The image treatment also leans into this with a “painted” feel to the photography.
CRM Assets
For the latter stages of the competition — known as the ‘Sweet Sixteen’, ‘Elite Eight’ and ‘Final Four’, plus the Championship game — we created round specific creative that harkened back to the original hero but used different coloured backgrounds to represent the changing rounds. This is where the team logo “stickers” came into play.
