Club 305 / Miami Marlins
Professional Work : Branding & Collateral
Creative Direction: Taylor Bolles / Design: Rachel Suding / Photography: Joe Guzy & Nick Vega
In 2021, the Miami Marlins launched a completely reimagined kids club for fans aged 14 & younger. I was tasked with creating the new identity for the club formerly known as “Billy’s Bunch” with the goal of making the club look “cool” for ages 6-13, as kids look up to teenagers for trends. Because of this major boundary was set with the direction to leave our mascot, Billy the Marlin, out of the creative—many of the existing kids clubs in MLB appear to gear more toward younger children with mascot illustrations.
After we pitched different logo concepts and names, the marketing team agreed on Club 305 as the official name. The way the club works is simple—parents can sign up their kids for free, and each child receives a prize passport that enables them to collect a new prize for each of five home games they attend in a season.
logo
The logo needed to be timeless to avoid frequent rebranding, but it also needed to stand out specifically to kids and fall in line with other things that attract their eye. One thing came to mind that has really stood the test of time—kids love collecting stickers. Taking inspiration from the wide, tape-like Zumiez stickers I liked to grab at the mall when I was in middle school, the Club 305 logo below was born. The wide shape allowed for a horizontal presenting partner logo to easily be added beneath the mark.
look & feel
Supporting collateral was inspired by the bright colors and funky shapes utilized inside the video game Fortnite. I created custom illustrations for each prize in 2021 and 2022 to use across all types of creative—not only did this serve as a teaser for what kids would actually receive when they scanned their prize passports at the game, but it was also helpful for pre-promotion when we were still waiting for the prizes to be delivered by our vendors.
Overall, the look is unique from other Marlins campaigns but still holds enough brand integrity to work seamlessly alongside those campaigns, and it has plenty of room to evolve with each year.
Fullscreen graphic for Bally Sports Florida in-game marketing drops.
Motion asset that was inserted into the pregame marketing loop displayed on the main scoreboard prior to first pitch.
prizes
Our prize offerings were selected with careful research from our Marketing team.
It was up to Creative Services to put a Marlins spin on each item.
2021 (left) & 2022 prize passports. For each game attended and prize redeemed, Club 305 members receive a corresponding sticker on their passport—making it another keepsake item.
Bluetooth headphones (left) from the 2021 prize lineup and “surprise” sneaker keychains from 2022. Both were produced by vendors and modeled after mockups I created.
2021 (left) and 2022 t-shirt prizes. 2021’s design was a baseball spin on three popular Fortnite dances and 2022 was a Minecraft-style Billy the Marlin—both illustrated by me.