Project Overview
Wishing to diversify their offering and appeal to the more casual bettor, Smarkets created the mobile-only app SBK. The goal here was to create a product and a brand that felt inviting to the casual bettor, something that tied more into the social side of betting and the communities that already existed for that. We felt this was not possible by simply spinning an offshoot on the existing well-established brand of Smarkets. However, we did wish to leverage this and create a subtle call back to its older sibling.
After some exploration, we settled on using similar colour palettes and styling for the logo. We felt that we could create a subtle subconscious connection between the two brands by having similarities in these areas. We were allowing those familiar with Smarkets to easily connect the new brand with our values and provide easy entry to those encountering it for the first time.
The App
We built the SBK app on top of the structure utilised by Smarkets' existing betting exchange. Doing this allowed us several advantages not only for building but from a business perspective as well. It allowed us to give users' better returns, connected accounts and stability when using the app.
Taking this approach and our decision to keep the brands so connected allowed us to efficiently utilise components and features used in the Smarkets app when designing and building SBK, focusing on new features that would set us apart from the competition. Features like our in-app tipping, bet building and community leaderboards. All elements were core to the SBK brand.
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