Tuesday 11 October 2011

Adverising and Branding week 1

Our first advertising and branding lecture and back to Mr Baldwins lectures, fantastic!!
So what is  a brand exactly? i certainly asked myself that question and  initially thought'Logo' or a 'company name,' eg Apple or Starbucks. These are just the visions of what we see. 'A brand is a collection of functional and emotional values that together promise an experience.'


The diagram shows parts of the elements that make up a brand

The top diagram shows  what people see such as uniforms, packaging and logo.  Basically anything that is visible to the eye, but behind all this is all relevant and promises to provide.



The positioning of these relate to the organisation and what it represents to customer and the competition it has.
The culture of the organisation is everything from the manner it communicates to the customer, or even how they behave are they easy to use? do they arrive on time?

Throughout this module we will be focusing on the production of the visible, by concentrating on the intangibles and looking at how important they are in advertising and branding.

The next day we had our first workshop day,  using the ' the key concept tools' which we learnt yesterday which consist of .


The Marketing mix (the four P's )


The Swat Analysis





Mapping and positioning





  
The product life Circle
 




The Ansoff Matrix

We were paired into groups and different teams Team 5 being us and team 6, both had  a variant mix of disciplines.  
Our first task was to choose between one of  three local enterprises and use these tool and strategies to provide a better service that what originally exists, these being The V&A, Canteena in DOJ and the students Union.
My group chose the Catina in Duncan of Jordan Stone, i think cause we know it well and many of us use the existing service daily.  
We initially began by brain storming the strengths and weaknesses of the Canteena and indicate whether these were to do with the service or it's Environment.  From there it gave us an idea of the areas that needed to be improved.




...........next we done perception map to identify the competition that was area already there and plotted them according to the price and quality of food.  The canteen appeared to fall into the low priced and low quality quadrant. (not looking so good really)  So to further our research we used the strengths and weakness to do a SWOT Analysis and created a lists of opportunities and threats.




From these results we came up with two final objectives.


1. This was in relation to the aesthetics of the current Environment and general design of the Space.  We decided a larger scale would be better and by making it more flexible and adaptable to the customers different needs it would increase the volume of customers to the space.  The aims we came up with would be to re open the kitchen and have a healthier variety of different hot and cold foods available to the students.  By dividing the Area into different zones and sections to create a more stimulating and productive Environment.  These zones would have different functions, such as hot desks for people to work around different times.  Also a self service station would case less unnecessary queuing, a area for informal group meetings and many more.  
considering it is art students that use the facilities there is no exhibitions shown or current work from the current students at all, which seems crazy!!!!!!




2.  Was more focused on the current service and improve the turn over it currently receives.  We looked at improving the staff's experience by giving them the relevant training and opportunities to furthermore improve their skills within the service including appraisals and awards in return, this would improve the productivity and input in running the Canteena.  


With both these objectives considered it would provide to a more stimulating and enjoyable experience for both the customers and the staff.


But many groups came up with different objectives which were quite interesting to hear.


In the afternoon it all fell into place what we were doing this for, as it was just a exercise to practise using the tools in place for our next task.   A current upcoming designer, fellow student from DOJ Joanne Montgomery and creater of 'Pillow Talk.'  An innovative product that enables couples mostly in long distance relationships, to fall alsep listening to their partners heartbeat.  This device consist of two components, a flat pannel containing a orb of light and a small device which emits the hearts sound and wraps around the pillow.  The second being a ring, which when worn transmits a signal through wifi to the other persons pillow.  causing it to start glowing and beating.  Joannes aim through her company called http://www.littleriot.co.uk/  aim is to make long distance relationships less screen based eg through skype or facebook, but more intimate.  'Pillow talk'  is all about connecting with your partner in more emotional interactive way.








Soo then we were told to come up with different marketing startegies for this product.  We began by brainstorming and used key concept tool of the 4p's, product, price, place and promotion.  This seemed to be an effective way to identify key markets and strategies and also got us to get to understand how different people worked  in the groups.