Johannes Bühler | Buehler Creative

Johannes has had a highly successful career going from his hometown club to playing in the Bundesliga, Europa League, and for the German National team from U17-U19. He came to us for help with his transition to life beyond footy, while making the most of his personal footy brand.

Photo of Johannes Buehler controlling the ball during a match between Hoffenheim and Ludogoretz in the Europa League.

The Reality

Frustratingly, his career has experienced plenty of setbacks, due to poor representation, and he has chosen to build up his post footy career as a web designer. Have you ever had concerns about your agent not being entirely truthful? Wondered whether or not there was more that could be done by your marketing team, or thought that your club wasn’t truly thinking about what is best for you?

You can trust the wrong people like I did, or end up getting injured in the wrong moments like I unfortunately was. Mentally sometimes it broke me and if there were someone like Stevie through that time, who helped me with all the things we walked through, I wouldn’t have had to worry about my future like I did.
– Johannes Buehler

Photo of Johannes Buehler injured during a game for Germany vs. England, being consoled by a trainer and teammate.

During this new phase of his professional life he cultivated a new passion and drive for digital design work, and now wants to make sure the experience and value he gained in the football environment is not wasted, and gets communicated in his new brand, Buehler Creative.

Services

Brand Strategy Training Camp
Change/transition management
Brand Perception Study
Brand Audit
On-going Consultation

Impact

Increase in design opportunities
Clarity & direction in messaging
New position in market
10 Year Strategy
Updates to imagery
Sales & marketing assets
Improved value proposition for clients

The Process

Our journey started with Johannes’s personal origin story of how he got involved in Fußbal in his hometown of Alsfeld, Germany. We used his story to uncover aspects of himself, his values and unique characteristics, that would be carried throughout his footy career and on in to his professional life afterwards. Some of the qualities we identified were his loyalty, attention to detail, independence, a love for high quality, a high standard of excellence, dealing with setbacks and high stress environments and performing at a level that would be considered above average in everyday society, among others.

The first step from here was to create his purpose, mission and vision statements, and set down his brand goals. He immediately put these into action by adding them to his sales materials and landed the first client he approached with these updated materials!

The Research

With plenty of data already available to us thanks to Johannes’s wisdom in gathering this information from the start of his business, we kept our research phase focused on an audit of his brand, Buehler Creative, and the relationship it had to his personal brand, in terms of the values, beliefs, and potentially shared audience.

The goal here was to help him gather all the puzzle pieces and help him incorporate his professional soccer career into his messaging. Very quickly we identified an eye for top quality and a high standard.

In order to take this a step further we included a competitive analysis, which was some research done on other web design agencies that he is competing with. Our goal was to discover ways that he can separate himself from those competitors and stand out to his potential clients.

This research resulted in new ways he can get ahead of his competition, be clearer in his messaging, improve in google search results, and update his website. From the research we were able to redefine his positioning statement, which again he went right ahead and implemented in his marketing, this time on his web homepage.

The Results

Like I said earlier, Johannes was not waiting around. Immediately he has added his mission, vision and purpose statements, and a clearly defined brand persona to his sales process, which has resulted in closing more deals and landing more clients at a higher value than before.

Our game-plan focused on three transformations over the next 10 years, with the intention to realize them much earlier than expected. These three transformations were:

From Footballer to Designer
From Designer to CEO/Web Designer
From CEO/Web Designer to Top Design Agency within the hospitality industry

During, and immediately following, the training camp Johannes was updating his sales process with potential clients that he was communicating with. Further transformation continues as he creates new business photos, updates his website, communicates his first transition more clearly through his social media channels and finalizes his business presence on Google, among other improvements.

Stay tuned for some exciting updates before the end of 2023!

I really wish I would have talked to Stevie 4-5 years ago at my highest value as a soccer player. It would’ve really helped me through my career to not only rely on agents, coaches and other people. I would have been more confident in training and matches, because I would know that I can build a brand with what I have.
– Johannes Buehler

The Conclusion

At this point we continue forward with Johannes to help him navigate this transformation in his brand, and monitor the response from his target audience. There ultimately isn’t a formula for how these gaps are filled, which is why we like to encourage the adoption of a humble postur of learning, so that along the way we can adjust and adapt when the context does.

As we continue in this present transformation we are also aware of the next transformation phases he desires in his business — from media designer to web designer, and from web designer to a design agency for top brands within the hospitality industry. By keeping the end goal in mind we can find ways to seamlessly fit it into the message from the beginning which could eliminate the need for a transition entirely and realize his goals a lot quicker than he imagined.

Have you ever thought about what you’ll do once your footy career is done?

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In His Words

Thank you Johannes! We are right there with you on this journey!

The Update

Photo of Johannes Buehler and Stevie Ewashko on a Zoom call.

Following the training camp, Johannes really hit the ground running, making updates to his capabilities deck and proposal deck, which were the materials he was using to try and land some graphic design clients. At the same time he got right into the redesign of his website with this newfound clarity in his brands look and feel, messaging, and target audience.

Speaking of his target audience, as he continued looking for potential clients he ended up landing one in the sports physiotherapy realm, and that gave him even more clarity into who he might want to serve outside of the hospitality industry. Sometimes we really don’t know who we are meant to serve until we actually start getting to work.

He landed this client thanks to his continued effort, his talents in graphic design, and his updated sales materials with the work that we did together. The project has since been completed, along with his newly updated website, and you can go check it all out here: https://www.buehlercreative.com

Screenshot of the Buehler Creative website 2024.

Don’t speak German? Tap the “Sprache” button in the navigation menu and switch it to English!

2024 is already off to a great start and looking like it’s going to be a great year in Johannes’s transition into his graphic design persona and beyond.