24HOUR BRIEF.

Last week we had a one day brief which required us to team up with 3 other teams of 4, making the task a bit more challenging but required us to work faster , rattling out a lot more ideas. Our aim was to create a campaign which would get men to look after their health and visit the doctors more often. However, it was targeted at female's who had any relation to a male that could possibly help improve this.


The night before we all individually brainstormed some ideas and carried out some initial research, looking at basic facts about men and woman visiting the doctors. The kind of information we found out was expected: Men have higher rates of death than woman, most men kid themselves on and pretend they are fine but are actually not well and when they actually do go they are reluctantly force due to the nagging of his Mother , Girlfriend , Sister etc.


It was important to remember however that not all good ideas come from good research and sometimes that first wee initial idea from what your opinions were already could actually be a winner.


The next stage of our research was to ask random females and males to fill out a mini-survey based from a combination of team-members  development ideas from the night before. 


The first part had an outline drawing of a males body and was to get females to indicate whereabouts they thought males would be most concerned about if he were to face any health problems. 


On the next sheet, we had questions that were meant only for men regarding a females role in their medical life. For example :
" Who would they take medical advice from?"
"Who would be most likely to convince them to see a doctor ? " 

After this we gathered up all of our data and was time to draw up some conclusions and start thinking of effective ways we could advertise. Our main thoughts were that actually embarrassing the male and constantly pressuring them will make them go. We compared this to experiences when we were young when our Mothers would deliberately embarrass us knowing that you will do what she says unless the embarrassment will happen again. To expand our ideas we split into 3 teams and drew up multiple storyboards. 

Adding up all of the teams ideas we came to a final soloution which would mostly be advertised during nighttime soap programmes and in cheap woman gossip magazine e.g "Now" & "OK!". This would mean gaining the biggest possible audience and at a cheaper price because of choosing lower-quality magazines. 

We decided to focus on the idea of subtly getting the females to constantly remind the man to care about his health, staying away from "nagging" as this would just annoy him and make him more stubborn. It will also contain scenes of embarrassment for the male e.g the billboard scene. The feature will go through a mans day as he gradually gets more ill. Throughout this, messages from his girlfriend will appear at different locations that get more exaggerated as the day goes on. The man doesn't really take notice of the messages until he finally sneezes into the bathroom mirror at the end of the day which finally makes the message clearer. 

Here is our final Ad storyboard: 

1 - Wakes up to see a post-stick next to him.

2 - Steamed up mirror after shower.

3 - Bus stop advertisement but man doesn't take notice

4 - Billboard out of office window.

5- Sneeze in mirror makes him see the message.

"Eventually hell get the message"

6 - Campaign poster / Advertisement will appear on screen. 

(Doctor appointment cards with notes from Girlfriend on it)

We felt this idea would be the best approach out of all our ideas. It relates to our target audience as it takes everyday scenarios and shows the constant pressure a woman should apply to a man until he finally does get the message. We also thought that  our poster (scene 6) had a serious effect to it because it used a mixture of  personal emotional messages (using "do it for me" as a subtle  emotional bribery) and the reality of using important medical names like the NHS to show that his illness could actually be more serious than expected.  Overall, i think we did a good job on the advertisement . Our main fault though was perhaps actually not showing a female in the Ad, as it could be unclear to who is actually making these messages. 

PERSONAS & SMASH

Last week we received a brief that required us to carry out research based on different personas that could help to increase sales on the product "Smash", an instant mash potato.

My team decided to build a questionnaire which was constructed in a way that would allow us to create a picture ,  gain insight into their personal traits and an overall attitude of the kind of person we were asking. For example using generative tools like getting people to draw out their favourite meal in a designated circle (plate)  alongside the questions. 

We printed out 12 questionnaires and went off each with four copies to find random volunteers. Our aim was not just  to ask students but people at different age groups and professions so at the next stage we could split people into different categories and then would be easier to target different general personas. 

After analysing all 12 of our results we split them into 3 groups and thought of situations when they each use smash :

Students : All of the meals they described when answering the question "what typical meal do you cook?" were quick easy meals which meant obviously most students are lazy when it comes to making dinner. They also have little money to spend on meals and have other typical student life priorities e.g doing work and going out which seemed more important that spending time making food. We also found out that students rarely buy foods that will go off because of the risk of wasting money on food you will not use. This means buying unhealthy cheap foods, unlike Smash which is cheap , low in calories and nutritious.  The kitchen restrictions you have from sharing with a group of messy flatmates also meant wanting to spend little time in the kitchen. We found most of students favourite meals had a nostalgic homely aspect to it mainly being the stereotypical "sunday dinner" , with mash potato being a common side food in these kind of homely meals. With all factors considered, Smash would be an ideal option for a student meal. 

Young Professionals : We found a lot of similarities between them and students. Mainly the whole aspect of having little time to cook but for different reasons. One of them being due to having young families. However, they did show interest in cooking with signs of their typical meals sometimes being healthy but still admitting to wasting money on food that goes out of date quickly. This portrays that maybe their intentions are good but the reality is that they just don't have the time. So, Smash being a good alternative that fits their all around needs. A good point to consider when  aiming Smash advertising at young professionals would be to show Ad's mainly during the week days. This is because a lot of their favourite meals compared students were more foreign and adventurous  and would not involve something like Smash showing that perhaps they are "weekend cookers" because this is mainly when they do not work and have the time. 

Health Concious : They appeared to have a lot more time than the other 2 groups which meant marketing Smash at them would be more difficult. Their typical and favourite meals are cooked from scratch with most of them involving healthy foods that require time and effort to cook. However, based from the question "What is your favourite childhood meal?" it was shown that  homely factors linking back to the "Grannys Sunday Dinner"  were popular which means Smash could bring a nostalgic aspect to their meal. Most obviously it would be important to make clearer that Smash is actually a healthy nutritious food source that would be quick and suitable for them to have. 

Personally, i would find i fit in-between the common student and health conscious groups. Therefore, i do believe Smash need to stress its health values and not just its time benefits because before i carried out this brief i thought Smash was just an un-healthy cheap way eating mash potatoes with a mad Robot on the packet. I think also they should think about the name of the product. Personally when i think of the word "Smash" in terms of food it sounds like it should be a cheap candy powder that crackles in your mouth. . . . However, now knowing what Smash is really like, i have recently tried it with a meal and enjoyed it!