Nesta Part 3 - Choosing your Path

Design in the Market presentation- Recoat Gallery

Today we presented to our module assessors our presentation for the Recoat Gallery. This week we created slideshow to go with our presentation and split our presentation between the five group members. the five main themes were-

• Introduction and History
• Progression after University and job offers
• The opening of the gallery and collaborators
• Endorsements from outside companies 
• Expansion and plans for the future.

Our presentation went well. We had had a good presentation to go with it full of pictures we'd found on their twitter and pictures we'd taken ourselves. The boy visited the gallery a few weeks ago at one of their exhibitions and took photos of the event just to get an understanding of how these events work. We needed to understand the magnitude of these events so we knew how to perform the interview. we listened to the interview afterwards, it had been recorded on an iPhone, and noted down some of the important features. The interview went on for almost an hour and a half but they didn't mind as it was all very interesting stuff. 

Mock up of a cover for a graze package.

f 5.6

Merckx

So Flaky 

So Stupid

Dads Favourite

Frank

Berg mini printer

Laggan / Fortwilliam October 2011

Tekkers

Recoat Gallery

Recoat were set up in 2007 by a couple who studied in Dundee in illustration and graphics. They both exhibited at D&AD and were offered jobs but they declined the offer to start work in scotland. After slow progress they decided to start up a gallery. They now host shows several times a year inviting special guests such as Insa, Crash and Daze and Mark Mignanelli.

We chose to interview this gallery because its relevant to the subjects we're studying now. We all have a keen interest in urban art and enjoy seeing big companies like red bull sponsoring galleries like this. 

Famous Graff artist Insa Painting in Birmingham. This piece is huge! He has exhibited at the recoat gallery in glasgow before.

http://recoatdesign.com/ We'll be interviewing these guys for a module project very soon :)

The Final Presentation

1. Feel Good is a company that was created in 2002. Three people who were originally  working for coca cola left the company and started up business on their own. Their idea was to create healthy drinks that tasted good. This brands image is fun, fruity and healthy and boasts their attitude of ‘no added sugar’. 

Nine years on and the company is successfully selling one Feel Good drink every two seconds. But with the aim to be selling more, two briefs have been created to work on Feel Good advertising. 

2. So to discover what the strategic issues are we worked on a few market research tools to pin point what needs tackled. We created a Perception map to view where the product stood on the market and work out why it wasn’t where Feel Good wants. This is where we found Feel Good to sit on the map (point to powerpoint) and this is where we want to reposition it...

3.This showed us that the problem lies in awareness and availablitity. The product is not sold in many shops and customers don’t know where to go to purchase it. We'd like the product to still be the same but literally just move it along the awareness line.  

4. To learn more about the target market we handed out questionnaires to see how the public felt about the product and to see who our ideal buyers would be. After this we made up three profile personas to narrow down who we wanted this campaign to target. So with this research done and after reading the briefs we decided to combine brief one and two. To create a campaign that raised awareness and also informed the customer that these Feel Good drinks contain no added sugar. 

5. Our solution is based around a Feel Good App. We decided to take different approach to the previous advertising as we felt it was not working. A change from tv adverts and wanting to keep up to date with recent technology we created a smart phone app. This app is made up of addictive games that would get people talking, spreading the word and playing. Part of this app is that once levels on the game are completed, you can claim rewards and discounts for Feel Good Drinks.

6. The campaigns process. Our campaign would kick off with a series of leaflets being handed out that advertised our app but also has a sample of juice inside. (HAND OUT JUICES) The sample would be similar to what you are trying now. Feel Good juices are tasty and healthy but not well known. These samples would be enough to let the public try the product and love it. The samples would be handed out in shopping malls, student unions and supermarkets. This would make the public want to know more about Feel Good drinks and find out where to purchase. 

7. Along with the leaflets we have made up a series of business cards. (HAND OUT CARDS) Little cards that are in the shape of the 400ml bottles advertising the brand image and what the bottles look like. The main point of these little cards is to advertise and interest people in the app. On the back will have a QR code which can be scanned on a smart phone to receive a 20p discount of the app which will be retailing at 79p. This will encourage people to buy the app which in return will have people buying more bottles of Feel Good when they complete the gaming levels and receive their offer. 

8. The App is made up of three parts, two are games and one interactive activity. The first one shown here is our interactive activity called Fruit Shake. This allows you to pick all your favourite fruits, pull them into the Feel Good bottle, shake and then the bottle will reveal the Feel Good flavour suited to you. Then through a GPS function will tell you where the nearest retailer of the juice is So no more wondering the streets looking for your favourite juice. 

9. This is the first game (Fruit fall) designed taking inspiration from older classic online games creating a nostalgic feeling. The idea is to control the bottle at the bottom of the screen sliding from left to right and to try and catch the falling fruit. Not only will fruit be falling out of the sky but so will evil sugar cubes which must be avoided. If a sugar cube lands in the bottle, your bottle will spill all over the screen and you will need to start again. This is to highlight that Feel Good drinks have no added sugar and to show that they are only packed full of fruit. 

10. The second game (Fruit Smash) is similar to popular games such as angry birds. You will be given four fruits of your choice to ping into walls of sugar cubes. Again highlighting sugar in a bad way. The fruits will smash into the sugar which will knock the walls down and will complete the level when all sugar is gone.

11. To receive the awards you need to collect 'apples'. Apples are awarded when levels are completed on the two games. In fruit fall for every bottle filled correctly 2 apples will be awarded and saved in your cyber basket. In Fruit Smash apples will be awarded depending on how many fruits it takes for you to knock down the sugar wall. Once 30 apples are collected in your basket you will receive a QR code to be scanned at tills to redeem 50p off 400ml bottles. 

12. This campaign will gain the awareness needed to raise Feel Good's sales. The sample leaflets and business cards will let people taste the goodness themselves and the business cards encourage app buyers. The App will be able to travel virally causing talk and encouragement of playing games to receive benefits. We believe this is what it will take to make Feel Good sales rise dramatically. 

Collett Dickenson Pearce Magazine Layout

This is the start of my layout for a magazine article. Most of the photography is my own and I've themed it around baseline magazine to answer the brief.

BLOCK 2 RESEARCH-Edward Bernays: Engineering of Consent

Ive just been reading an essay today by Bernays from the nineteen fiftys. It was called 'The engineering of consent'. It focused on public relations at the start of the twentieth century. Edward Bernays is known for being the founder of public relations as we know it. For his whole career he critically evaluated the publics views on advertising, propaganda and social patterns and pioneered public relations as a subject to be taught at universities. 

His essay evaluates the expansion of communication due to progression in the ways ideas could be broadcast. By the fifties everybody had a radio. newspapers were easily available and advertising space was much more available. 'The United States has become a small room where every whisper is magnified thousands of times' 


At the start of the essay Bernays talks about how the world is connected by a web of communication. 'This web of communications, some- times duplicating, crisscrossing, and overlapping, is a condition of fact, not theory. We must recognize the significance of modern communications not only as a highly organized mechanical web but as a potent force for social good or possible evil. We can determine whether this network shall be employed to its greatest extent for sound social ends.' I find this very interesting for it comes from a man fifty years ago who has described the internet of today 'social good or possible evil'.

I also read another journal of his which is titled 'propaganda' the parts i looked at talked about the regimentation of public opinion. Bernays states that it is impossible for man to make ethical, political and economical decisions by himself.

'In theory, everybody buys the best and cheapest commodities offered him on the market. In practice, if every one went around pricing, and chemically tasting before purchasing, the dozens of soaps or fabrics or brands of bread which are for sale, economic life would be hopelessly jammed. To avoid such confusion, society consents to have its choice narrowed to ideas and objects brought to it attention through propaganda of all kinds. There is consequently a vast and continuous effort going on to capture our minds in the interest of some policy or commodity or idea'

Bernays' claims that propaganda is not as demonising as it was at the height of world war two. 'Propaganda makes the world safe for democracy' Propaganda is advertising to a group with the same stance in a community. Even though Propaganda was seen as a weapon in World war two for its manipulative and jingoistic capabilities, it is in its original use, neutral. It has, right up to the modern day been used as a tool for public health reccomendations  and to encourage people to participate in census. Even today political parties use forms of propaganda for public manipulation. does this necessarily mean its demonising?

The One Day Brief.

this week we did a project in large groups and the brief was to create a campaign that encouraged woman to send men to the doctors more often, even for minor symptoms of problems.  This was the first time we worked in groups of more than four people. We infact had around twenty people in this group to complete the brief. the idea was to work in smaller teams within the group to gather different information on the subject. I decided to make a team that set questions to ask the public. We made a set of questions so that we could interview people. They were leant towards men and asked such things as- 'how often do you visit the doctor?' and 'when was the last time you visited the doctor?'  These sorts of questions proved very hard to ask. I found it difficult to ask the public, especially men of my age, about their views on the doctors. I found that asking men to complete  the questions as a survey on paper was easier for me and it gave more time for the men to answer the questions. we interviewed forty groups of people and after around an hour and a half took our research back to the 'table'. We presented our findings but i found that it seemed to be overpowered by the work of the researchers who had found out the hard facts online about men visiting the doctors.

The day before this project we were lectured on the importance of splitting large groups into more manageable groups of people because this is how advertising agencies work. They start with bosses, researchers, developers and creatives. I feel this structure definitely wasn't visible amongst our large group. We seemed to have about five people in the group who were very good at coming up with ideas but not very good at refining them. A couple of girls took the ideas and gave them direction but never really had the power over the large noisy group to put the ideas on paper. if i had to be honest i played a roll in disagreeing with most of the ideas. I wasn't really given the opportunity to say why though. When it came to presenting our ideas we had a campaign that used superheroes to portray men and the superheroes had to be forced or captured to go to the doctors by their super hero wives. My favourite campaign from the whole day was so simple though- a crap picture of batman with the tagline underneath saying be a hero check your balls. keeping it simple.

Rebranding 'Smash': Module 2

Module 2 seen us propose a rebrand  for a popular dehydrated potato product Smash. The project was done in groups again and we were asked to use interview tools from semester one to gather information on the product. We started  to gather information on the university campus. One of my teammates had set questions to ask the interviwees ranging from- 'what was your favourite childhood meal?' to 'would you ever consider buying smash?' We interviewed roughly six groups of people in a half hour period and noticed that almost all of them were students between the ages of 18-25. For this reason we decided we had to look at a broader range of people within Smashes target market and interview elsewhere. We took our investigation into town an targeted older people who we thought may have tried the product. The people we asked said they had tried smash in an era were ready meals, fast food and instant snack food had become more available and cheaper than fresh produce. slightly of track i know, but, I went to see the comedian Sean Lock last year. One of his jokes was about the kind of rubbish he ate as he was growing up in the seventies. He joked that he lived off a strict diet of mince and orange squash. So he always ran around hyper fuelled by the e numbers in his squash for the first ten years of his life. I kind of got this image from the older people i asked- 'oh.. smash used to taste so much better in the old days; probably because of all the crap it was made with'. Sean Lock was right then. 

So after we'd asked another 15 groups of people in town I headed home and made up my sachet of smash then abruptly binned it; a horrible gloopy mess i did not enjoy eating. I still persisted after lunch and we sat down to discuss the kind of people who were intrested in the product. We had to create model personas; a kind of persona that summarised the kind of people we had interviewed. We made three personas. we felt our best one was based on a woman called 'Brenda' she was retired and used smash as an ingredient for other recipes and occasionally as a side for main meals. we couldn't really see, from the information we'd gathered, smash being a product you'd buy solely to eat on it own.

Providing a beat to help you sleep.

Today we all met up in our tutor group to rebrand the product pillow talk. pillow talk is the product we learned about last week that lets couples listen in to each others heartbeats through a speaker you put in your pillow. the company as of now doesn't have any specific brand. Its still at its development stage and I get the feeling that the creator needs to decide on her target market. We discussed the product and decided that the target market would probably be a professional couple who are earning between 25-35k a year. They would obviously be working away from home and have the money to spend on such products. We call these people innovators because they're keen to be introduced to new things. To decide the kind of market we wanted to advertise to we looked at the rational reasons for buying the product and the irrational reasons. Rationally the product should provide comfort to a couple. The product is functional in that it brings couples closer. The product could be seen as an irrational buy because it gives the impression of needing a product because its the 'in' thing. It may be seen as something you might only use once aswell.

we went on to discuss what the consumer would appreciate in advertisement. we ended up doing wee sketchy things on paper that made us think about pillow talk; like a sort of illustrative brainstorm. After looking at some of the girls doodles we realised that they would be ideal for an advert. They were playful spontaneous and dare i say it cute to look at; all words i'd associate with pillow talk. We decided on a final solution for the assignment

Advertising and Marketing: Module One

Today was the first module of the new semester. We met up in our groups for the first assignment and collaborated with another group to make teams of eight. Our first task was to create a development objective for companies or institutes in our surrounding area. We were given the Victoria and Albert museum to investigate. The V&A have plans to build a new museum on the water front of dundee to expand on there existing museums around the country. Our strategy led us to make a plan on how to provide dundee residents with information on the new build and an insight into the positives the museum will bring to the city and its surrounding areas. We discussed the effects on the local economy; the boost on tourism and hospitality and pitched it to our class to conclude our findings for the module.

In the afternoon we were given a second project to look into. A woman, who was a graduate from dundee university, came in to the class to pitch a product to us that was in its prototype stages. Jo had created a product that allowed couples to interact through the sound of their heartbeats if they lived away from each other or where in a long distance relationship. the product consisted of two sets of speakers the users placed in there pillows at night and two rings that went on the fingers of the users. They could then hear each others heartbeats as they slept at night. I thought this product was lovely. It is a simple concept that has the ability to do so well in a large market. So for the second part of the day we were asked to create another objective to name some of the flaws to this company and how the company could improve. We suggested that the product should be improved in pice and aesthetic appeal. The product was in early stages and quite clinical looking.

Overall, today i felt working in a team very refreshing and useful; especially when trying to address problems like these ones where everyones point addresses the bigger picture.

Assignment 5: Proposal.

Collaborative consumption is a method of trading and bartering that we should all adopt soon. The world is overrun with large corporations who rely on custom and new products for their growth. Collaborative consumerism is the term used to describe companies that rely on people and social networks to function. These companies are usually non profit and focus more on the consumers than the business itself so all money goes back into making the business work better. These kind of organisations are on course to work well because they function well in today's economic climate because people still want to buy new things without really having to spend allot of money or any money at all. We cannot all have cars on the roads, we can't all have massive amounts of land in the cities and we can't keep cutting down trees or using fossil fuel reserves to produce the materials the western world desires. We can however make do with the things we own by sharing them or trading them for other things. Rachel Botsman, who wrote the book: The Rise Of Collaborative Consumerism, talked about her friend having a couch she wanted to get rid of in her flat. She couldn't budge it and one day she bumped into the neighbour from the flat downstairs who had purchased a new couch that was more expensive and of lower quality than the one the Girl up the stairs was trying to sell. If these people had known each other they may have been more aware of the situation. This happens all over the world and it needs to change. More small businesses should be shaped and people should start spending their money again on things they can trust We all have facebook these days and other forms of social interaction; we all connect but are we actually all connected?

  I propose to contribute to the rise of collaborative consumption. It is important to me because I am young and I do not want to be hindered by the recession for the rest of my life. Young people are amongst the largest group of consumers in todays society. Young people are also the best connected people. They are the people who use social networks the most. 17,000,000 people between the ages of 18-25 use facebook, a group almost twice the size of its runner up. I think this audience would benefit from collaboration because they are so well connected. I would use my skills that I have learned in semester two as an entography primer. My idea is very broad and requires allot of refining. The idea for this proposal came from my original investigation six months ago where I looked at a book written by Rachel Botsman a woman who speaks about her ideas for the progression of collaborative consumption. If I was investigating this too I would consider speaking to people about collaborative consumption in there community and ask them how it would affect them in their day to day lives. I have already begun visiting places where I think collaborative consumption could work. I live in a rural environment that relies on sense of community to keep businesses going. I have spoken to farmers who collaborate when they move there livestock from farm to farm during seasons; a way of providing an honest service to another farmer who may struggle for land space to graze his livestock. Collaboration works here. Could it make a diffrence in other places? Is it practical? At the other end of the spectrum I recently visited Barcelona where I was very impressed by how well the city functioned compared to other cities. I could see that population where quite well educated on the importance of working together for better. Cars hardly exist here; people travel on rented mopeds or by cycle schemes. The city is a much cleaner and more productive place to live. Visiting and taking note of these places is a skill I learned in semester two when we were asked to visit places to record social situations.

 Initially I would speak to an audience about the main topics of the introduction. The audience will be exactly the kind of people who use the internet and social networking sites but feel that they could do more to connect as a community. These people must be minded the same as me; there is no point in introducing this idea to people who aren't going to put anything back into the process. Obviously this method would require allot of understanding by the audience.

 I would like to make a difference to our University. Universities are organisations that rely on communities for their growth and progression. Universitys are more than just educational institutes but a main source of contribution and innovation in all of today's industries and professions.  I would host and tell the audience they have been targeted because they are key innovators in this field and I feel that  talk then ask the audience to brainstorm their ideas I would have given them examples of the types of collaborative services available around them and how they could help them. At the end of the talk the findings would be recorded from the groups to see what their ideas were on the subject. I would then take the subject that the audience would find most useful for example a ride to work scheme where you could jump on a bike, cycle it to uni, then leave it at a designated place on campus, then progress it into making a questionnaire to ask members of the public more questions on the refined subject. I would have to ask a cross-section of students of differing ages respectively to address an outcome. Visiting the kinds of places the students had discussed would be important too. Location is of great importance for this proposal. In the end I would have designed a service that worked for students I had targeted. I would have to make sure everybody's views were heard because this is about a proposal that requires collaboration thus I don't think the method of interviewing would be suitable for this proposal because interviews happen in small parties and don't allow for collaboration. 

 Overall, this idea is quite important for it is design with a real function. I'd like to step out from graphic design and into design things that make a difference. Design has to work and this is a challenging idea to construct successfully but would make a huge difference to a small community if it was executed correctly. 

These guys, their kit and that bike are my biggest inspiration at the moment.
http://athertonracing.co.uk/