Dare Drop
Dare Drop is a influencer marketing platform that nests in the game industry. They deliver absurdly amazing influencer marketing campaigns by engaging creators with cool challenges or “Dares” to make viral gaming content come alive.
I had the amazing privilege of working in Dare Drop as a Brand Manager organizing their awesomeness into interactive content to empower sales, marketing and leadership to show and tell what makes Dare Drop unbeatable.
PHASE 1: I Dare Ya to Organize this Brand!
All Dare Drop Functions in 1 Graphic Image
Dare Drop was in a very unique and very special position to already have GOOD CORE BRANDING baked into many good ideas and content types.
However, those existing elements could not be translated easily into design content that can set capitalize on what sets Dare Drop apart OUTWARDS to clients and creators.
My role at Dare Drop became to learn its intricacies, become one with the product and implement a brand content strategy and library to capture new sales leads and creator’s attention.
To achieve this, I needed to unify all the branding materials together, see what works, what is missing and what needed to be shined to make it sparkly and cool.
The core logos, colors etc. were easy, however to understand Dare Drop, I needed to delve into the processes that make it tick. How the sales cycle operates, how do accounts communicate with clients visually and what creators need to get excited about a new Drop.
With direct communication with C Suite members, I took note of key processes and as my role was a new addition to the company, I wanted to understand the biggest pains to craft the best solutions for them.
The sales team needed key content like Case Studies, Guidebooks, and One Pagers to reduce their communication wordiness and increase the potential client’s chance to set up a meeting.
The Accounts team needed to update their proposals visually to better communicate key information in a branded manner.
Marketing required to up their content fidelity to increase clicks, promote multiple ongoing, distinct initiatives and be on top of socials.
With only a part time commitment and a dream, I set out establish both to myself and the team, a stable rules driven process to drive great content creation practices.
I went on to absorb any key branding materials that I could find, consult with teammates to what direction to take the branding, resulting in this lo-fi neon gamer look that utilized only simple shapes and striking user generated content to spike action.
PHASE 2: I Double Dare Ya to Make This Case Study!
There was a lot responsibility involved this project. From handling a year’s worth of viewership data, maintaining focus (hehe) on key aspects that interest new clients and solidifying brand language, there were many conversations, meetings and debates on how this should take shape. This piece needed to align with key strategic elements of the company, encouraging brand repeat engagement to fuel better campaigns.
Besides all the data analysis required, from a design standpoint , I focused on these key pillars:
I want to use the materials I gathered and maintain key brand identity on every page.
Create new graphical elements to organize information besides text boxes.
Leverage the brand power of the IPs engaged to draw viewers in to read more.
With this massive cross team collaboration, I was able to collect, synthesize and formulate a way to showcase this content in a way that all departments were satisfied with.
By specifically targeting this kind of content piece, I was able to define majority of Dare Drop’s key branding rules for example:
How to handle headings and body text.
How to highlight content over other content on the page.
How to handle images and overlays in different contexts.
How to begin formulate a Brand Voice for all writing.
What key stats do sales and clients find important. (And yes the stats are REAL!)
Once the basics were out of the way, it was time to experiment and break things. In this fast paced environment, it was imperative that content was created, fast! So in order to satisfy immediate needs while creating the frameworks for future assets at the same time, I suggested undergoing the biggest pain point first as a initial experimental project to satisfy all content types moving forward, like a trunk of a tall tree.
With Dare Drop, this was explaining their ongoing year long strategic partnership with Focus Entertainment. Dare Drop works on amazing projects on the regular with some of the industry’s biggest names. For Focus specifically over 2023, Dare Drop has completed 14+ campaigns! With no precedent to the scale of engagement as well as how, where and what to present that data, I set out with the sales team into the unknown, hunting for watch minutes and views.
THE FINAL SPREAD
Here is a gallery of links to both web hosted case studies and other document style guidebooks that I worked to create, including all web and document layouts, graphics, data analysis, copy and other media.
SOME OF THE GREATEST HITS
PHASE 3: A Dare Devil in Me
Every good brand needs a mascot! With Dare Drop, the original Dare Devil was a symbol of the company’s ambassador program with the same name.
The character was only featured on a single graphic which these creator ambassadors put on their Twitch page. However, I saw potential in that little guy to be a cornerstone of the brand on the creator side, which love the silly and chaotic nature of it.
After a brief visual overhaul inspired by Spongebob and the Minions, I was able to vectorize the Dare Devil model which made it much more malleable to any graphic needs. Its simple shape, lack of excess detail and charming smile made it easy to contort him to suit any shape I needed it to, and I had big plans. buhahaha.
Once this was complete, I set to work to make some key graphics to accomplish some goals:
Use the Dare Devil as means to promote the Dare Drop Brand Identity in a highly repeatable way.
Round off the media kit with some extra resources for ambassadors to share the Dare Drop name around.
Use the learnings from those graphics to create more Dare Drop branded marketing material in the future!
Some Creator posts that were shared on socials!
And a collection of emotes to round off the collection absolute mayhem:
Afterwards, marketing materials continued to roll out with ease! Pitch decks, proposals, event attendance announcements on LinkedIn and more were just the tip of the iceberg of what was created!
PHASE 4: Bringing the Advocacy Online!
A brand rarely stands out if it does not have a presence. Before me, everyone that knew Dare Drop were from cold emails and outreach. Which was successful!
BUT! in a shifting industry landscape it is important to become leaders. In a highly competitive field like influencer marketing even more so. So it was time to go to LinkedIn and make some magic happen.
Catching up on two years of silence is not easy but to provide great content, we needed to teach. Marketing in games can be sustainable! And by analyzing, gathering data and creating robust strategies, Dare Drop can stand apart from the rest. I took to make highly adjustable content templates and branding to make most of all our successful campaigns.
Breaking down stats, seeing what worked for others and sharing it caught on to many online. Pairing that with my strong LinkedIn network, we could become exports.
Some post highlights to share:
PHASE 5: OUTCOMES AND LEARNINGS
This job has been a dream. It was the first time I was really plunged into the deep end of multiteam communication and being the graphics liaison of a very carefully branded company. Working with all the different teams, incorporating their perspectives and creating something everyone is proud of has been a difficult but rewarding challenge. I learned much about high functioning, high revenue companies operate and how I fit in these types of environment. This role gave me years worth of knowledge that increased both my understanding of the industry and how brands function within it.