Catalina Florea · Design
Worth showing off
A fan should be able to build the thing that represents them before they lose interest in building it.
Case Study 01
Partner
Atlassian Williams F1 Team
Category
Formula 1
Engagement
2021 to present
Scope
- Fan platform
- Website
- App
- Graphic design
Who built it
Four disciplines. One question each.
Mark Mitchell · Product
Free had to earn it
Free had to be worth having on its own, or paying for more would never make sense.
Alex Stopa · Frontend
Made, not loaded
The card had to feel like it was being made, not loaded.
Jon Lazarowicz · Backend
Survive Sunday
A race weekend is the only load test that counts, and it arrives on a schedule.
2021 · The starting point
Williams had a website and an audience. Neither one knew who the other was.
A site built to publish, in a sport people follow so they can belong. Results went up, news went out, and nothing on the page changed depending on who was reading it.
There was no app, and no way to be anything other than a visitor. Nothing on the site carried your name, and nothing brought you back between Sundays.
The part everyone skips
Everyone in the room already knew the answer. A better site, more content, a membership tier at the bottom of the page.
It would have worked for a season. Then it would have done what every fan membership does: emptied out quietly between championships, taking the goodwill with it.
The conventional fix treats a fanbase as an audience to be served more of what it already gets. That was the thing worth arguing with, in a sport that lives in the seventeen seconds between the safety car coming in and the green flag going out.
The idea we brought
Stop selling access to a team. Give every fan a place on it.
Freemium was the mechanism, not the pitch. The argument we took to Williams was that identity is what makes a fan come back, and that a fandom you can join will always out-earn an audience you can only broadcast to. Revenue followed from that, and we kept it there.
What we built
Three things, and the way they talk to each other.
01 · Website + app
The full ecosystem, relaunched at once
We shipped site and app together rather than in sequence, so someone arriving from a race broadcast and someone opening the app on a Tuesday got the same thing.
02 · Badges
Collectible, and more to the point show-off-able
Slytrunk creative direction end to end. We drew every badge to survive a screenshot and a repost somewhere we don't control.
03 · Driver card
Four decisions and your name is on the grid
Initials, number, background, helmet. It's the reason people sign up, and it's the first thing they show anyone.
01/03
The mechanic
Most freemium decays. This compounded instead, because the two things we built need each other.
01 · Sign up
The card is why a fan signs up at all.
Four decisions, ninety seconds, and the result has your name on it. Nothing else on the platform asks so little of a fan.
02 · Collect
The badges give the card somewhere to go.
A card that never changes is a signup. A card that earns marks across a season is a reason to open the app on a Tuesday.
03 · Compound
Which is why the line bends up instead of flattening.
Each badge makes the card worth more, and a card worth more makes the next badge worth chasing. Engagement grew season over season.
The result
Short, because the mechanic already made the argument.
Signups · driver cards built
400K+
Fans who put their own name on the grid
Traffic · monthly
2M
Visits a month across site and app
Commercial · downstream
↑
Merch and sponsorship, both following the fandom
Culture, not audience
The audience didn't get bigger. It joined.
The fans who built a card didn't start watching more Formula 1. They started describing themselves differently: as part of a team that, until 2021, they could only follow.
That's the whole argument. The distance between the team and the people who care about it got smaller.
Contact
Got a fanbase waiting to be let in?
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