How do you deliver data-driven insights in a way that is the most digestible, informational, and valuable to your target audience? For many, it’s a fully designed report with an interesting narrative.
Translating data to narrative and design
Playfly Sports is a sports media, marketing, and technology business that focuses on the fans. The company’s data-driven approach allows them to reach, engage, monetize, and measure fandom to provide an advantageous view for their property and brand partners.
LONDONmiddlebury was referred to Playfly Sports by another data-driven client. The Playfly Insights Team wanted us to create and distribute marketing collateral throughout the year, based on the active college and professional sports seasons. Through our collaboration, the concept of the Playfly Fan Score Report was formed— ”the first actionable and insightful sports ranking index geared to marketers and sports business leaders.” We got to work uncovering the narrative the data developed and designing the reports from head to toe.
Tying copywriting and design together with a bow
The purpose of the Playfly Fan Score Reports was to help partners understand the value of fans based on three factors: their passion, receptivity, and marketplace. Specifically, they wanted to support marketers and business leaders in the industry to encourage investing in capturing the most valuable sports audiences, which Playfly classified as the “Forever Fan.”
We created four editions of the reports for several sports and leagues: The 2023 MLB Edition, 2023 College Football Edition, 2024 NBA Edition, and 2024 NHL Edition. For each of these reports, Playfly delivered the raw data, but we needed a strong story and design for it to make the impact we knew it could. We took an analytical approach, paired with a marketing lens, to understand what the numbers were saying and worked collaboratively with their team to develop a strong and accurate data story that would most resonate with the advertisers and leaders in the sports industry.
While the copy was in development, our graphic design team members focused on the visualization of the report. We determined how to best incorporate Playfly’s branding while acquiring images and developing graphics that would make the report as captivating as possible. The most important graphic elements were the charts, infographics, and maps intuitively integrated throughout the report. We collaborated with the Playfly team to develop a variety of visualizations, from radar charts and bar graphs to tables and scatter plots, in tandem with the copywriting to create a cohesive narrative. This also helped us select intriguing and applicable images to go throughout the report, including photos of real fans to add to its authenticity.
Impact: beautifully designed and well-received reports
For each Fan Score, we delivered a cohesive and informative report, the narrative and design coming together to tell an effective story to Playfly’s target audience. The reports opened the doors to opportunities to have conversations about sports advertising with leaders in the industry, including the Commissioner of Baseball, who was very interested in the MLB Fan Score’s data. The Fan Scores were cited in multiple publications, including an article from sports publication On3 and two articles in Sports Business Journal— one for the NHL Fan Score and the other for the NBA Fan Score.
Forbes appreciated these reports and their narrative, titling an article “Groundbreaking Report On MLB Shows Baseball’s Incredible Value For Advertisers.” Reporter Maury Brown shared in the article: “The Playfly Sports report, working with Vision Insights, is a valuable view into the under told story of Major League Baseball as valuable advertising sports property.” These reports quickly became strong resources for industry leaders to better understand sports fans and their behaviors.