The Situation
Lockr is a sports technology brand based in what is becoming a hub for sports technology brands - Lincoln, Nebraska. It's also one of the best ideas I've heard in a long time.
Designed specifically for football coaches, Lockr allows users to easily track, organize and measure their own performance. The web application cleans up process, letting coaches trade in piles of notebooks with drills and plays for a digital catalogue. That content can be then easily sorted, viewed and shared with a coaching staff and players, complete with demonstrative videos and photos. A drag-and-drop user interface then allows coaches to schedule practices.
That's not really the cool part.
Lockr is now developing a set of proprietary formulas to measure effectiveness — comparing player specific in-game statistics with player specific preparation regimens. If a runningback fumbles in the game, Lockr will recommend ball control drills. If a receiver consistently struggles to gain yardage after making a catch, Lockr will recommend strength drills. In the very near future, Lockr will take the guessing game out of coaching and replace it with analytics that would make Billy Beane blush.
The Strategy
Coaches are eclectic — each one unique in use of technology, preparation tactics and coaching philosophies. But one thing they seem to all have in common is a desire to win. And most of them will do anything they can to achieve victory.
Our primary campaign objective positions Lockr as an essential tool for winning. As the voiceover in the brand video states, the only true constant in football is evolution. If you're not using Lockr, you are behind. And you will lose. And that is simply unacceptable in coaching at any level.
Besides an obsession with winning, coaches love efficiency. Designed by a former NFL player and current collegiate coach, the UX from this site oozes simplicity. The technology is easy enough to be beneficial to coaches with rudimentary tech skills, and powerful enough to impress the gridiron progressives all the way up to the NFL.
Our secondary campaign objective was to demonstrate three key features of the software: organization, measurement and connection. At the core, these three values make up all the user processes contained within the application. These three spots were developed to help coaches easily visualize themselves utilizing this innovative software by giving them a glimpse at the the most basic components.
The Measurement
For our campaign to be successful, we needed to gain heavy recognition in the football community at-large, specifically hoping to latch onto early tech adopters. Lockr's expert panel concluded that success for this campaign would be less about how many and more about who jumped into the platform. Like many new tech start-ups, the goal is to grow a brand and a service first, then figure out how to monetize later. Additionally, because this is the beta form of the service, primary research will be conducted with those who sign up and use the platform. Users will be incentivized to participate in the research.
