Rally the Champs. It’s time for Camp!
Brand strategy, visual identity, narrative and taglines for a sports camp where kids play all day.
The Characters
Remember summers when you were a kid playing catch with your neighbors in your backyard until the sun went down? Or that first memory running through the sprinklers playing tag with your friends, arms outstretched as you felt the wind in your face? What made you run as fast as you could? Was it to prove you were the fastest kid in the neighborhood? Your answer might be yes, which means you were born a competitor. But we bet for most people, you ran around for a different reason: because it was fun.
A Winning Game Plan
This summer amid a global pandemic and social unrest, Knight Eady launched a youth sports camp for kids ages 6-12. The idea was simple. We believed that there was a large segment of parents who were genuinely concerned about the social and mental well-being of their children in the absence of traditional summer structure and activity. We created Rally to provide social, mental and physical engagement for children through the platform of sports. We also created Rally to positively reinforce the notion that sports speak a universal language. No matter your background, income level or education status, when you gather a group of children on a field or a court, natural bonding and sharing of experience will occur. We created a structure that fostered that emphasis of play
The moment when a lot of us first fell in love with sports was because it was a chance to play. Playing sports was part of being a kid. It was a chance to cheer each other on, feel accepted and be a part of a team. It was going to get chicken fingers with friends after games or being red-faced from deliriously playing “Keep Away” or “Jackpot” in the hot sun. At Rally, our goal is to tap into the essence of sports: play. Sports are not just the winning touchdown, the 4th quarter buzzer-beater or the walk-off home run. When we were kids, sports was a universal desire to get outside and have fun with your friends.
.
Building a Brand that Moves
Knight Eady developed a camp name inspired by the idea of teamwork and camaraderie. Our creative team tapped into the nostalgia of rallying the neighborhood kids together to play a pickup game or riding a bike over to your best friend’s house to jump rope in the front yard. We wanted to create a playful brand with an ode to the athleticism that would emerge after a week of team building and skills training. No competition, just kids being kids.
The branding uses vibrant colors, playful icon illustrations, and lively messaging to resonate emotionally with the target audience: parents and their children. Appealing to parents for the homage for a simpler time and to their children for the thought of merely being outside all day every day, Rally brings together everything we love about playing all day.
When selecting a color palette for Rally, our creative team tapped into the vibrant hues of a bright summer day: blues, greens, and yellows. The Rally R mimics the familiar track lines that circle the field and mark the start for a race. Knight Eady incorporated a series of visual icons to represent camp activities, team mascots, and other camp-related announcements. The brand system creates a visual language that invites the viewer to become an active participant in the brand itself.
We built a brand that moves with you.
Getting the Win
At a time when kids become competitors at an increasingly younger age, we wanted to bring the value of sports back to its roots – being active, working together and having fun. That is what Rally is all about. Throughout the week, Rally campers played sports like flag football, basketball, wiffle ball, and soccer while also participating in other fun team activities and friendly competitions.
Our inaugural year of Rally Sports camp was an overall success. We lived out the brand we created, and the numbers show for it. In a little over 4 weeks from our first announcement of the camp until the day we kicked it off we recruited over 140 kids to register. Nearly 20 percent of the registered kids attended on scholarships committed to Knight Eady from Birmingham’s generous corporate community, who partnered with us in our belief that sports can more than adequately provide a platform to help children better understand the world through a diverse lens. To facilitate a safe and positive camp experience, we recruited team captains to help us efficiently move children from each station to maximize the three hours they spent at Rally each morning. Due to Rally’s success, we plan to recreate this camp with different versions of both single-day events and multi-day day camps in the future.
