Pillow Talk // Part.2

After this weeks lecture in looking further into Marketing Tools our next task involving Pillow Talk was to come up with rough advertisement that would be used in a appropriate environment which would effectively promote the product. 


We decided our target market were at busy working couples who live long distances apart and aimed to place the Ad in mainly public transport areas and in magazines such as metro and aeroplane on-flight magazines. 


The next step was to come up with an answer to "Why would you buy Pillow Talk?". . . 


Using the tools we learnt in this weeks lecture we thought of the "What's and Why's (irrational&rational)" of Pillow Talk. . . . .  


What - A tech pillow product with a ring , speaker , sensor, lights and a smartphone app. 
Irrational - Makes you feel closer, desire to communicate with your loved one, appear open to try out new tecnoglogy , look like a loving person. 
Rational - Able to contact your partner in long distant circumstances. 


Answer - A mode of communication which means that you can have a long distance emotional and innovative relationship. So you can look like a caring and loving Partner. 


With our poster we wanted to reflect the idea of long distance and the way in which the product actually works, showing the thought provoking idea of Pillow Talk. The main idea of my take of the poster was portraying the feelings you receive when lying on the pillow, a pulsing heartbeat from a distant lover. . . 


Here is my quick idea for the poster. . . 

LITTLE RIOT!* - Pillow Talk

Last week our class met Jo Montgomery, an former Digital Interaction Student at DOJ. She came in to tell us bout her company "Little Riot" and her current project "Pillow Talk" which consisted of two pillows, a ring which isconnected through a smartphone APP that could detect your pulse beat and then each others heartbeat and play it through a speaker inside your bed pillow. The aim of her product was to connect long distance lovers in a more emotional and intimate way.

Personally, when i first heard the idea of the product i thought it had its limitations because at the end of the day all heartbeats sound the same and the its lack of customisation and individual personality meant maybe the products life cycle would be rather small. However, its target audience isn't aimed at people like me, a single student who lives only a 2 hour bus journey away from his mummy in Glasgow. So, i can't fully understand its point and connection with a partner. 

This opinion would be the basis of my next task given to me after hearing Jo talk about her product. 

The first task was to again use Marketing Tools to find the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and market threats of her product. All of the groups pitched their ideas to Jo, most of them suggesting the different environments in which her products could be used and the different ways in which the product could be personalised to suit the relationship .                                           

I enjoyed this task as it put me in a real design situation that i could face in the future and hopefully as a class provided Jo with a few more ideas that will help her success. 

Week 1 - MARKETING TOOLS

The two main questions that you need to understand before learning the tools of marketing are: "What is a brand ?" and "What is advertising?". A brand consists of a mix between functional and emotional strengths that when combined provide an experience. However, advertising is the difference between you and someone else. It's subtle and isn't obvious, a good brand will advertise in such a way you will not realise and not noticing "plant a seed" that will change the way you buy.

"A brand is a promise & ads communicate that promise"

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This week i was given the task to develop a new proposal for one company out of the 3 choices ( DUSA, CATINA, V&A Dundee). In order to do this we had to use the recently learnt "marketing tools" which were: SWOT, Perception Maps&Positioning, "the 4 P's" (Price, Place, Product & Promotion) or "The Ansoff Matrix". 

My team decided to look at the DUSA. . . . .Our first step was to fire out initial individual thoughts through a brainstorm, using post stick notes. This was to gain a basic understanding of the general opinion of what we thought about the DUSA. After this  we sorted these opinions into a S.W.O.T (Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities & Threats) map. We found it hard to find many threats and weaknesses about the DUSA as it was already was obviously already well tailored to suit the needs of it's target audience, students. However, after acknowledging this we understood that students ages range from the young to mature. So, the next obvious step would be a Perception map. We made four of these maps ( Y axis - Young/Old , X axis - Femine/Mature) and did one for each of the 4 most important aspects of any student Union. 


The final proposal, was to make the DUSA more welcoming to mature students and generally more of a comfortable place to be during the day. We found the services during the day put a lot of mature students off due to the noise and a lack promotion towards a comfortable environment to relax and eat. Our solution was to simply make the entrance more obvious with outside menus or Ads around the campus with more information on what food they serve rather than how cheap the booze is. Perhaps, even having another smaller union built on another part of the campus which focused more on a calm environment with even themed nights and a more pub / restaurant feel to it.