El Citadel is a brand new padel club located south of Antwerp. They are challenging other clubs by offering a padel-first experience, as most clubs have added padel to their tennis offering. The founders asked Boil® to create a new brand from scratch that would help them raise a padel community.
Positioning
Challenger narrative
GoToMarket plan
Brand name
Identity design
Photography
Web design
Membership campaigns
Social media ads
Our first task was to invent a suitable name for the club. As Spain is seen as the Mecca of padel, we wanted to create a link to the Spanish culture.
On top of that we discovered one of the founders had Spanish roots, so it became very obvious. We decided to reference to the Spanish rule over Antwerp decades ago.
Their center of power was the citadel, a big fortress in the south of Antwerp. El Citadel was born...
We chose the Jester as the main archetype for this brand, resulting in a fresh and humorous identity. During our creative process, we onboarded a mascot with the name Manuel and started shooting funny pictures together. He became the hero of our brand story surrounded with retro tennis vibes.
Before the club actually opened, the first digital campaign went live on Meta promoting early bird membership packages. When the news dropped we truly felt the enthousiasm of people, resulting in +250 new members the first month alone.
In a second wave we rolled out animated video ads playing into the USP’s of El Citadel, boosting both awareness and engagement. We discovered that our sense of humour was much appreciated and people truly interacted with the posts of Manuel.
The third wave aimed to pull people to an opening event. In total we spent a media budget of around 10k to put the new club on the map, reaching over 500.000 relevant people. As most of our KPI’s were met, the launch campaign was evaluated as a big success.
El Citadel’s launch successfully brought a fresh energy to Antwerp’s padel scene. The vibrant brand identity and playful campaigns captured the community’s attention, building strong early momentum. Through creative storytelling and a targeted digital presence, El Citadel quickly established itself as a standout destination for sport and connection.
