Jögel

Market and audience research and design support for the Russian national team’s kit supplier

Context

Jögel approached us for ongoing social media support at a time when the sports brand market was changing dramatically. The company already had a strong product and a prominent position in the category, but lacked a clear identity and a coherent communication logic. Before starting continuous production, we therefore first needed to understand the brand, market and audience—and redefine what Jögel says to its audience and how.

What we did

We researched the brand, audience, market and competitors. We examined how the category had changed after international brands left and what Jögel could build its own positioning around.
Based on the research, we defined the brand’s “Strength Within” territory and the principles that would guide its communications.
We translated the ideas we found into a visual system and created rules and templates for regular work across different formats.
We scaled the system into ongoing design production, built a working Figma library and handed it over to the client’s team after six months of support.

Outcome

The “Strength Within” concept and the visual system built around it became the foundation for Jögel’s subsequent communications.
The client received a working Figma infrastructure for regular content production, which we handed over to the in-house team after six months of support.
We rolled out the visual system offline and used it to design a branded Jögel zone at the ISPO Munich Special exhibition in Germany.
During the support period, social audiences grew organically: +1,387 followers on Instagram and +1,019 on Telegram.

Research

The project coincided with global brands leaving the Russian market. We examined the sports equipment market, Jögel’s direct competitors and the global brands the audience was accustomed to. We also looked at where people bought equipment: brand stores, multi-brand retailers, marketplaces and alternative channels that became relevant after major brands left.

Research showed that the audience did not automatically switch to local manufacturers. Amateur athletes focused more on price, range, reviews and availability. Professionals and elite athletes cared more about quality, specifications and regularly updating their equipment. Yet every segment retained an emotional attachment to familiar global brands. Some continued to buy them through parallel imports or search for remaining stock. Jögel therefore could not be presented as a forced substitute for the brands that had left. It had to stand as an independent choice—a local sports brand with its own product, teams, ambassadors and community.

Strength Within

In 2022, the concept grew from the question “What is strength?”—a reference to Brother 2 familiar to the audience. This gave rise to “Strength Within.” Rather than presenting Jögel as a local alternative to international brands, we focused on the inherent strength of its product, athletes, teams and the people around the brand. The concept became the overarching framework for subsequent communications and visual language.

Visual system

The brand’s materials had previously used different colours, making the feed look fragmented and less cohesive. We based the system on black and white to focus attention on the product, athletes and team photography.

For typography, we chose a heavy character that supports dense layouts and looks tough and athletic. Instead of polished studio gloss, we added a distressed texture to the backgrounds. Sport is wear, sweat and friction. The texture gave the visuals the right authenticity and helped move away from the feel of an artificial advertising image.

In addition, we built a pack of branded stickers for quickly customising layouts and responding to different content occasions.

Design production and team handoff

We scaled the visual system into ongoing design production and packaged the rules into a working tool. In Figma, we built a working library for the social media team. It included covers, avatars, graphics, textures, and templates for posts, stories, and product cards. This allowed the team to create new materials faster while maintaining a consistent visual style. After six months of support, we handed the production library over to Jögel’s in-house team.