• Sprite x NBA collaboration by Analogue transforms limited-edition cans into bold, collectible packaging celebrating team pride across 17 cities.
• Custom typography, iconic team graphics, and signature color palettes layered over Sprite green create high-impact shelf presence and brand synergy.
• The scalable design system works across multiple formats and retail touchpoints, blending sports culture, self-expression, and strong visual branding.

Some collaborations go beyond a logo swap and actually build a universe you want to step into. For this Sprite and NBA rollout, Analogue transformed the can by turning everyday packaging into a high-impact celebration of team pride and self-expression. 

The typography borrows directly from each franchise’s visual language, layering iconic wordmarks, custom letterforms, and graphic textures over Sprite’s green base, creating a dynamic clash of brand codes that somehow feels perfectly in sync.

Color plays a central role, with each team’s signature palette popping against the bright Sprite green, amplifying contrast. Illustrative elements such as hawks in mid-flight, lightning bolts, spurs, and basketball court diagrams are treated in a punchy, contemporary graphic style. The result is a system that works seamlessly across 17 cities, multiple pack formats, and touchpoints from retail to arena, all while keeping the product itself front and center.

This work feels current and culturally tuned in, not taking away from Sprite or the NBA team, but rather partnering them seamlessly. 

The Brief: Build an Engaging Basketball Universe Around Sprite

Sprite challenged us to create more than launch a campaign. They asked us to build a world. A product-first, through-the-line movement that considered every consumer touchpoint and used the product itself as the hero, from fridge to arena floor.

The ambition was significant. Sprite wanted to transform its long-standing relationship with basketball into a powerhouse identity that could engage consumers emotionally, increase rate of sale, and recruit new consumers. This needed to work across 17 cities, integrate three powerful brand forces, Sprite, the NBA, and individual team brands, and flex across multiple SKUs, channels, and environments including retail, digital, OOH, social, and in-venue experiences.

The brief called for a high-impact limited-time offer that could deliver a new brand identity, drive awareness, clearly communicate the NBA partnership, fuel new customer acquisition, encourage repeat purchase, and increase consideration. Crucially, it also had to become a creative platform with the flexibility to scale across all leagues and competitions, from the NBA and WNBA to the emerging Unrivaled league, without losing consistency or cultural relevance.

In short, Sprite wasn’t looking for a campaign. They were looking for a product-led movement.

The Insights: Capturing the Undaunted Thriver

To move the needle, we had to show up authentically in the spaces our audience actually cares about. That meant identifying a sub-section of consumers we knew we could deeply engage.

We focused on the “Undaunted Thrivers”, 18–24-year-olds who value elevated expressionism and actively experiment with culture. For them, basketball isn’t just a sport. It’s the ultimate intersection of fashion, music, attitude, and identity.

Sprite was already part of their world, but we saw an opportunity to elevate the Original Taste variant from a default choice to a high-value cultural artefact. In a landscape saturated with digital noise, we recognised the disproportionate power of a physical object. We wanted every can and multipack to feel like a moment, something you don’t just consume, but own. A must-have cultural signal that lived beyond the fridge.

The Strategy: Collectability

In highly commoditised, competitive, and transient on-the-go retail environments, brands are not chosen through logic, but through instinct. The shelf is not a place of persuasion, it’s a moment of recognition. Most launches treat this as a communications problem. In reality, it’s a cultural one. People don’t respond to claims, they respond to systems of meaning.

A collectable design system transforms packaging from a passive container into an active cultural signal. It borrows from behaviours already embedded in everyday life, collecting, completing, displaying, belonging. When a product presents itself as part of a set, it triggers an innate human impulse: not simply to buy, but to participate. Ownership becomes progress. Repetition becomes purpose. The product stops being a one-off transaction and becomes part of an ongoing relationship.

This works because the brain is wired to resolve unfinished systems. Incomplete sets linger in the mind. Missing pieces create desire. What appears playful on the surface is, in fact, behavioural strategy, converting frequency into fulfilment and loyalty into identity. Consumers no longer ask whether they need the product, but which one they have, which one they want next, and what completing the set says about them.

Designing the system around specific cities amplified this effect at a local level. Cities carry their own codes, pride, and emotional gravity. When a product reflects a place, it becomes more than a SKU,  it becomes a badge of belonging. Local editions made collectability personal and scarcity geographical. Fans didn’t just collect the range, they collected their city, then sought out others. What began as local relevance quickly scaled into a broader cultural chase.

For a product-first launch, this reframes value entirely. Competition and price sensitivity softened because purchase is no longer transactional,  it is accumulative. Variants gained narrative roles. Scarcity gained meaning. The product itself carries the story, reducing reliance on inflated media and allowing the shelf, the unboxing, and the collection to do the talking. People don’t share products, they share progress and proof of belonging.

The Creative Platform: Sprite Hoops

The first task was to create a system and identity that could house the idea and provide clarity, navigation, and longevity.

We introduced Sprite Hoops,  a dedicated brand mark designed to anchor the entire campaign. An ownable icon that acts as an umbrella for all basketball activations, now and in the future. With campaign effectiveness and efficiency in mind, the goal was to move beyond one-off designs and build a repeatable, flexible, and future-proof framework.

At the heart of the system sat the Fractured Court. A modular visual language inspired by basketball court markings. This fractured grid allowed us to layer bold team logos, intrinsic city elements and landmarks, and instantly recognisable icons and textures, while always keeping Sprite green at the core. It delivered consistency without uniformity.

To reinforce collectability, we introduced a visual language inspired by trading cards, subtle graphic details that elevated each can from beverage to trophy.

The Execution: A Through-The-Line Takeover

Sprite Hoops lives everywhere.

We launched 17 bespoke NBA cans and multipacks that have come together as a cohesive set on-shelf. Retail environments were transformed with giant hero cans designed for photo-ops and illuminated displays inspired by the fractured court grid.

Out-of-home and in-venue executions scaled seamlessly, from 96-sheet posters to stadium jumbotrons, ensuring the brand world felt immersive and unavoidable. Digitally, the design system lived inside interactive apps and social content, engaging fans where they already spend their time.

Beyond packaging, the graphics have evolved into merchandise from jerseys and hats to duffel bags, turning Sprite Hoops into a lifestyle brand fans could wear, not just drink.