HELPING A SPORTS SCIENCE COMPANY BECOME A MAINSTREAM SPORTS BRAND
Success Story: Fuel BMC x S2 Cognition Brand Identity & Go-to-Market Strategy
Fuel BMC partnered with S2 Cognition to transform a highly technical sports performance platform into a recognizable consumer-facing brand. Through brand development, strategic marketing, and go-to-market execution, Fuel helped position S2 for widespread adoption across the sports industry.
SUMMARY
What started as a short-term branding initiative blossomed into a long-term, collaborative marketing partnership between Fuel BMC and S2 Cognition. Collaborating closely with S2 Cognition’s internal team, Fuel BMC helped S2 Cognition forge its brand identity, position its revolutionary sports cognition testing platform, develop messaging to effectively educate their target market, increase brand awareness and reach on their website and social media platforms, and execute their go-to-market strategy to increase their market penetration in the sports testing space. Through these efforts, and with a little bit of luck and timing, S2 Cognition was able to achieve mainstream national media recognition across outlets like ESPN, Sporting News, The Athletic, NFL Network’s Good Morning Football, The Pat McAfee Show, and Sports Illustrated ahead of the 2023 NFL Draft.
RESULTS DURING OUR COLLABORATIVE PARTNERSHIP
Fuel BMC does not claim direct responsibility for the above results, as S2 Cognition’s talented internal team, their collaborative efforts, and their revolutionary product played a major role in the success they achieved. However, we’re confident that our work on brand identity, go-to-market strategy, web design, and creative assets had a significant positive impact on the growth of their business between 2020 and 2023.
ABOUT S2 COGNITION
S2 Cognition is a Nashville-based sports cognition company and creator of the S2 Eval, the first assessment designed to quantify how an athlete's brain processes information and makes split-second decisions under pressure. Founded in 2015 by Brandon Ally, Ph.D., and Scott Wylie, Ph.D., S2 has helped pioneer a new category of athlete evaluation and development by providing organizations with objective insights into cognitive performance. Today, S2 partners with organizations across the NFL, NHL, MLB, NBA, NCAA, youth sports, NASCAR, the military, and law enforcement to support evaluation, training, and performance initiatives.
THE CHALLENGE
The S2 Eval was an unprecedented product that did not exist anywhere in the world of sports when S2 Cognition launched in 2015. Emerging from the research and laboratory space, the company faced the challenge of introducing an entirely new category of sports performance technology to athletes, coaches, scouts, player development professionals, and organizations that had never encountered anything like it before. The challenge was not the product itself—it was creating a brand identity, message, and go-to-market strategy capable of translating complex cognitive science into a compelling story that mainstream sports audiences could immediately understand and embrace. At the same time, S2 needed to establish credibility, educate the market, and demonstrate how cognition could influence talent evaluation, player development, training, and performance across multiple sports.
THE
SOLUTION
Fuel BMC served as an extension of S2 Cognition's leadership team, supporting initiatives across branding, sales, marketing, partnerships, product education, and business development. Our work included developing the company's website, investor presentations, sales enablement tools, product explainer content, social media strategy, podcast branding and launch support, and ongoing marketing campaigns. Beyond traditional marketing initiatives, Fuel helped support S2's expansion efforts by contributing to the development of mobile testing environments, retail testing concepts, partner acquisition materials, and audience-specific communication strategies designed to accelerate adoption across sports organizations, athletes, coaches, scouts, and player development personnel.
OUR ROLE
Fuel BMC worked in close collaboration with S2 Cognition’s internal team to understand their product, their business model, and the challenges they face in going to market.
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Using our six-step “Business Minded Creative” process, we collaborated to integrate our creative vision with the strategic plan to help S2 Cognition establish its brand, create brand awareness, and help them increase their revenue from partnerships, licensing fees, and test administration. From branding and visual design to web design, UX design, and helping develop their B2B sales funnel, we provided comprehensive creative and marketing solutions across all of S2’s channels to help them increase market penetration, break into new verticals, and establish a name for themselves in the world of sports.
BRAND IDENTITY
Establish positioning, brand guidelines, visual identity, and messaging
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WEB DESIGN
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Establish and iteratively improve S2’s web presence based on A/B testing
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PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT & UX DESIGN
Enhance customer experience for the S2 Eval, training program, and testing facilities
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GO-TO-MARKET STRATEGY
Help formulate and execute S2’s go-to-market strategy for increasing market penetration
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VIDEO PRODUCTION
Create video content for hype videos, investor videos, and how it works videos
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SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
Kickstart social media presence, design, and strategy
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B2B SALES ENABLEMENT
Design sales & marketing collateral to enable S2 pursue new partnership opportunities
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THE S2
PODCAST​
Pitch & develop branding for the S2 Podcast as well as proposed guest list and topics to cover
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Use the arrows below to see a limited selection of creative samples...
BRAND IDENTITY & GUIDELINES
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Fuel BMC created Brand Guidelines for S2 Cognition – providing updates to their logo design and guidelines for Tagline, Color, Iconography, Patterns, Typography, and more that would be applied to S2’s core customer-facing sales tools.
TESTIMONIAL
"Everything about the crew at FUEL is top-notch and personable. Their humble confidence coupled with a genuine commitment to building a trusting, collaborative relationship makes for a rewarding partnership. Add to that a tenacious work ethic, unparalleled integrity, and timeliness of deliverables, FUEL has removed all trepidation and uncertainty about this key piece of our business. As business owners and scientists, our expectations for output and quality are very high. To be quite candid, our impression is that FUEL demands more of their efforts and quality than even we do. They consistently exceed our expectations. S2 Cognition couldn’t be more pleased and enthusiastic about our FUEL partnership. We endorse them with the utmost confidence."
Scott Wylie, PhD
Founder & Chief Operating Officer, S2 Cognition
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