“NYT IAFF”
Product Design, Based on Predictive Consumer Behavior
SOLO DELIVERABLE FOR CO-FOUNDED STARTUP
LIMITED EDITION CARTOON - homage to Simon Brodkin “Lee Nelson” infamously showering FIFA’s then-president, Sep Blatter, in fake dollar bills in 2015 at a FIFA conference
In my time as CMO of FORTYTWO CO, an experimental design company I co-founded as a freshman with two Stanford CS majors, we generated over $488,000 in revenue ($166,000 pure profit). These numbers are a direct translation of my marketing strategy, execution, and management.
As CMO for FORTYTWO CO, I had the freedom to build out our company’s brand identity as expansively as I wanted.
Since in the FOOTYTWO Capsule we were selling knit soccer jerseys, I researched everything I could about the world of FIFA and found some very interesting source material, such as the public shaming stunt that Simon Brodkin pulled at the 2015 FIFA conference. That is the reference for the NYTimes cartoon I made above.
We wanted to see just how high-definition we could make our customers’ experience when shopping with us. We marketed our brand as an alternate universe that satirized real-world events to engage with our base on a higher-yield level. This was paramount as a young company with no pre-existing consumer trust: who would buy from a small company over a big one, unless the smaller one was putting in maximum effort to offer something unique? It was my job to see to it that our marketing campaigns communicated exactly that to our base.
We made fake magazines, lore zines, stickers, custom boxes, and more to include in each order, at no extra cost to our customers. This was all in pursuit of building a dense, fictional narrative to make our products that-much-more high reward. I spearheaded the creation and curation of this narrative, and saw immediate positive feedback from customers who were excited to see a brand so dedicated to intricate world-building. As outlined in other FORTYTWO CO sections, my goal as CMO was to garner company-consumer reciprocal loyalty, and in the 14 months that I was active in that role, I achieved that to a large degree.
I took every opportunity to plant an easter-egg: reshuffling the word FIFA to create IAFF, which stands for International Association of Fixed Football, referencing infamous football history moments such as the Suarez Bites and the Zidane Headbutt in promotional materials, and even writing an entire fake newspaper about the match outcomes of the fictional future “2042 World Cup” which we designed our brand narrative around.