Oxford United’s Lifestyle Approach to New Digital Fan Experience

Positioning themselves not only as a club for fans to be proud to support, but also as an attractive brand to partner with, Oxford United have taken the bold step to re-imagine their vision for the club’s brand.

Clare Burke spoke to Adam Benson, Chief Commercial & Marketing Officer at the Club, as well as our Creative Director, Matt Emmins to understand what the Club are trying to achieve with their brand identity and how we’re helping them to realise their vision.

CB: Adam, the new website looks so different from what we’d usually expect from a football club. It feels like it could be a fashion brand or perhaps a sports lifestyle brand. I’m interested to understand what is driving this new approach?

AB: So for a bit of context I came to the Club 2 years ago, having previously worked at other football clubs as well as Premiership Rugby clubs. Since joining Oxford United I’ve been working on not only the new digital strategy but also the plans for the new stadium. With everything we’re doing at the moment we want to retain the essence and heritage of the club whilst also being forward-thinking and positioning ourselves for the future. This is something that I, and the rest of my team, are fully bought into so we’re setting about making that happen.

The vision for the new stadium is to create a sustainable sports, entertainment, and lifestyle landmark that is locally loved and internationally recognised. The vision for the digital fan experience mirrors this – it should engage the current fanbase but also draw in new audiences.

CB: You mention drawing in new audiences, while football clubs usually tend to focus initially on better engaging current audiences. We see great results from improved design and UX, but how is your approach different?

AB: To be progressive on the pitch and have ambition as a Club we need to invest in facilities and staff but also in the brand. Content is part of it but this is more about how we portray ourselves, and it’s not just about the audiences; it’s about the partnerships we want to create.

If we’re not investing in the brand, and really doing things differently, then we’re not going to attract new fans, sponsors, or partners. We see emerging sports growing more quickly than football clubs and we’re taking notice of the lifestyle brands that are more engaging.

Clubs have always been lifestyle brands but we don’t capture that enough. We’re a lifestyle, entertainment, and community brand that also happens to play football.

As all clubs do, we have some fans who come to every game and buy every piece of merchandise; there’s an element of a halo effect making us a brand that people engage with. We want to take that further and create content that not only interests a fan but also, potentially, someone who’s not previously been interested in Oxford United. We know we’re only going to achieve that if we push as a Club and think about being in a whole different realm – to be a health and wellness brand, an influencer, etc.

Footballers themselves are using their status and influence off the pitch, in fashion, arts, charity, and clubs can do the same. The premise of the new digital experience is to present ourselves not just as another club but to look at what’s working outside of football. We’ve been looking at what the biggest fashion and lifestyle brands are doing to capture audiences’ attention and we see them doing it brilliantly. Our aim is to bring this to what we do; to be able to engage with brands who give back and who want to engage with us.

CB: This is a radical change in approach so how have you gone about considering the needs of the existing fanbase?

AB: It’s a very considered approach that we’ve put a lot of thought into. It’s also one that everyone at the Club, and that we’re working with outside of the Club, is behind and bought into. You see this in the content that we produce – some of the best content is the stuff that the person creating it has really enjoyed doing.

The key content that our existing, loyal fanbase has always come to find on our digital channels is still there. We will continue to create the content that the longstanding supporters want to see but that can’t be the only content. Our marketing campaigns are aimed at existing fans as well as those we’re trying to attract. When you first visit the website you might not notice, straight away, that it’s a football club’s website. As well as delivering a comprehensive resource for the dedicated fan we also want it to be an intriguing place for the casual fan to go and explore.

Change isn’t going to be easily accepted by some. What we have done though is to make some sensible and quick adjustments to ensure that the current audience is catered for and has what they need. Nothing will ever be final. We knew that after launch we would need to iterate, based on feedback, and we will continually be making adjustments.

Everything we’ve done has been on the premise of ensuring a future-ready football club that will thrive in the long term. We can’t moan about not attracting new audiences if we do what we always do and stay the same. So we test and learn and try different things.

CB: So Matt this must have been an exciting project to get stuck into the design of; where did you start?

ME: It’s been a great project to work on. The visual direction has been influenced by Oxford United’s comprehensive research into what they are trying to emulate visually, with a collection of reference sites to help us to understand this. This allowed us to confidently define how the site should look and feel, the interactions etc.

Typically lifestyle sites, ecommerce sites, tend to have a more stripped back interface, free of adornments and led by strong imagery where photography takes a lead, and a bold use of typography. The site becomes more of a frame for the content and imagery. Less clutter means that the imagery drives the perceived lifestyle brand direction.

For Oxford United, we’ve led with a strong image space on the homepage that is a statement piece when you first land on the site.

CB: Does this mean then that how the site looks now is very dependent on the imagery produced by the Club?

ME: Yes there is an emphasis on the Club to produce quality imagery and content to achieve the desired effect. There needs to be consistently high quality and they have done a great job with this. Retail have approached the images as if it were a lifestyle brand photoshoot; they have really leaned into this approach, with an emphasis on theming, or location in relation to the product and it’s working fantastically well.

CB: So tell us a bit more about the design and what else you’ve done to achieve this lifestyle feel to the site?

ME: We’ve embraced white space a lot more than you’d typically see on a football club website. Clubs often tend to fill every bit of real estate with content or commercial elements. We’ve purposefully created alternative layouts so that the content stands out more. This gives supporters, visitors, more of a free-flowing visual experience. The content is all there, the fixtures, results, league tables, latest news, but it’s presented with a different feel.

Latest news, in fact, is presented as “stories” – a deliberate move to subconsciously support the lifestyle approach and represent the coverage of the club from all angles.

There is then the introduction of a new typeface and colour palette. These were updated recently by Oxford United and we’ve worked with these to achieve the desired result. The display font works really well with the image-led approach. During the initial onboarding of the club, we identified that the body font was going to incur a substantial licence fee to use digitally (something that we find is often overlooked by both internal design teams and branding agencies, focused on the real world physical applications). We supported the club and their branding agency in identifying this limitation and sourcing an alternative that still worked with the design direction but that would not then land the Club with a hefty charge.

We validated the new colour palette from an accessibility point of view. For example the yellow doesn’t work well on white and so we have to carefully consider how we use the club colours whilst being mindful of the new direction. With the increased use of strong imagery we wanted to make sure not to over-use this signature club colour but to add balance with pops of yellow – for example in the image thumbnails and in the hover states.

CB: I’ve noticed that the hover states show the club crests on the fixtures, rather than seeing the classic football club appearance of a lot of crests on the homepage to announce the forthcoming fixtures. Was this another deliberate design decision?

ME: Yes, it’s leaning into that idea of this not necessarily looking immediately like a football club website when you first land on it. All the fixtures are there and a simple hover or click furnishes the user with all the details, but we don’t have competing graphical elements. Less is more here when you’re presenting yourself as a lifestyle brand.

There are a number of well considered touches that we’ve designed in. The hover state and opening of the burger menu icon is a small touch that helps to bring the site to life. The statement ticker underneath the merchandising component gives the Club flexibility to change the messaging. Nothing is over-engineered but, rather, is refined.

This is something that we pride ourselves on at Other Media – having a really comprehensive and robust fan experience platform, Clubcast, that powers all of our websites and apps, and then designing the visual interface to really represent the club. All the content and functionality components that you’d expect from a football club are there, but they are designed to deliver a different experience. We’re so pleased with how this new digital experience has turned out and is developing. Oxford United have been really fantastic to work with and that’s played a big part in the successful outcomes.

AB: Something we really wanted from this project was a partnership and it’s really important to us that the Other Media team have really listened to us and have bought into our vision. There’s a lot of excitement from the whole team at Oxford United about this new approach and we feel that from Other Media too.

CB: Well thank you for talking with me Adam, and Matt, and I’m looking forward to seeing everything that’s to come for the U’s.

Take a look at the new oufc.co.uk and see how the Club are evolving their brand visually, through content, and with new developments like the United Run Dept.