England Athletics
Project:
RunTogether
Work:
Brand, Strategy, Design, Development
Results:
70,000+ registered users
500,000+ group bookings
1,700+ new running groups created nationwide
Visit:
runtogether.co.uk
Injecting fresh energy into a national running project by creating an inclusive new brand and relaunching the website as a digital community hub.
RunTogether now has over 1,000 groups using the new website platform and tools that have been designed to make it easier for volunteers. It's really rewarding to see something have a positive influence on the wider community.
All campaigns have objectives – those that want to make a real difference just set their aim a little higher. The Run England project, led by England Athletics, had the ambitious goal of getting the nation to experience the benefits of running, irrespective of age, fitness level, background or location. But with the campaign’s performance not fully delivering on those expectations, it was clear that something needed to change.
As a brand, Run England had achieved some awareness since launch but hadn’t gained real momentum as a hub for introducing people to running on a regular basis.
Fundamentally, it needed to transform into something different. It needed to become less about competitive sport and more about the recreational and social benefits of running. It needed to be more fun, engaging and accessible, inspiring reluctant runners and appealing to more experienced runners to get involved as RunTogether Group Leaders.
Developing a new brand identity
To get a real understanding of the community and its aims, the Yoyo team immersed themselves in the project, taking part in runs, attending events and speaking with runners and Group Leaders. This helped us quickly establish four core values that encapsulated the spirit of a new brand - one that would resonate more deeply with the target audience. It had to be fun, friendly, inclusive and supportive.
The brand that has emerged truly belongs to this community of runners and Group Leaders. The core values were brought to life in the design work: the friendly, welcoming nature of the RunTogether experience was distilled into a colour palette of bright, bold colours while handwriting from people involved with the project was used to forge a bespoke new typeface, underlining the project’s sense of community and shared ownership. This was further reinforced through photography, where real people of mixed ages and abilities were shown together in parks, towns and cities – nothing staged, just people having fun and feeling good about running.
In addition to the new brand, we also created a range of marketing materials to support the relaunch, including banners, t-shirts, posters and stationery. As well as central, brand-level collateral, Group Leaders were also given tools to create tailored collateral that includes information and meet-up detail for individual running groups.
A digital hub for the RunTogether community
In tandem with the new brand, we supported England Athletics with the creation of a new website, designed to be both a promotional tool and a co-ordination point, where run groups can be set up and managed. Through a series of discovery workshops, planning sessions and prototype deliveries, we prioritised the key functionality required for a minimum viable product at launch, with phased implementation of additional functionality.
Despite the need to deliver a simple user-experience aligned with the brand’s accessible nature, the core technical requirements were notably complex, incorporating geo-spatial search, single sign-on, multi-faceted free text site search, and cross-platform user-generated content. It was achieved with an Umbraco CMS providing the necessary framework to underpin a further layer of highly bespoke .NET code for surfacing content and managing user data between the two systems.
