Putting the final ingredients into our campaign!

Me and Ryan met up at collegiate library today to discuss our campaign. After going through all our initial idea’s the ones we think will fit best with our campaign are:

• Man waiting for kettle, Super de-icer man swoops down de-ices car. 
• Santa frozen to chimney. 
• De-icer man stood next to frozen car and it begins to melt. 
• Boy being run over by car with frozen window. 
• Different vehicles that can be de-iced, also keeps domestic industry going. 

The media’s we have decided on are:

• 9 sheet road side billboard 
• Web Banners 
• 1 sheet road side free standing sign 
• Ad on exterior of bus. 
• 3 piece cartoon strip in newspaper

Horray!! The Campaign mag's has finally arrived!

After waiting a good 3 weeks for this, it finally came a couple days ago! After what Mel has said, it definitely is a great addition to have which gives me a much wider understanding within the advertising industry as well as finding out agencies which created these advertisements as well. The great thing about this subscription as well is the fact I have access to a lot of online content to all the works featured in the magazine which goes into a lot more analytical detail.

John Hegarty - An Advertising Genius

Yesterday, I went to evening talk at Sheffield Hallam called John Hegarty - Turning Intelligence into Magic. He was one of the founders of BBH, which is now the biggest advertising agency in the UK. He is one of the most respected ad gurus in the industry winning countless awards.

Him and his team of people managed to create adverts which changed the way we think forever. A great example of this is the levis stone washed advert in which you can see in the video below. Originally the male was in Y Front brief but the advertising regulators thought this was too rude before the watershed and suggested he wore boxer shorts instead. At the time (1986), it was not seen as an underwear option at all. However after this advert was sown to the world, it changed the fashion habits forever and boxer shorts were seen as the norm.

The one hour talk was brilliant showing some of this finest pieces over his forty year career including Levis, Xbox and Boddingtons. He also gave out some great tips such as;

• Always being aware and open,
• Got to be surrounded by good creatives,
• You've got to be fearless. 

Lights...Camera...Action!

While, were continuing with our deicer ideas for a hero campaign, we were set another task to create a video no longer than a minute relating to the deicer. However, I CANNOT be an ad! Me and Ryan met up on the weekend discussing how this can be done. From the inspiring creative writing tutorial we had a couple weeks ago with Leoni, the thought came to mind of using sounds of the deicer can. We thought it ticked all the boxes and we went ahead recording the sounds on Ryans iPhone. This included rolling the can on the floor, shaking it, popping the lid off as well as the obvious spray. We then went around Sheffield filming various locations of activity to get a sense of feeling.

We were all ready to put the footage of the video and sounds together when we hit a massive technical problem. Ryan’s clips would not sync to his mac, neither would they send my email. The only way was by SMS but this reduced the quality! After an hour of messing about we had to scrap the recordings and re do them using Ryan’s microphone instead. It was a big eye opener to us that you can NEVER rely on technology, no matter how fancy it makes out to be. After re recording the sounds and finally put the clips together we came up with this video;



Personally, I really enjoyed this exercise as it was a very practical hands on approach compared to the usual practice of generating ideas with a marker pen. It also got our creative juices flowing and helped us with how our deicer campaign could be improved and developed. What I love about this video is the backward effects on some of the sounds and no instant assumption on what the product actually is.

After getting back on track, it was time to think of a new strapline! Here are the range we had...

• Hero in a can
• A hero that can 
• Spray the blues away 
• The heroic can 
• Spray that saves the day 
• Ices arch enemy
• Putting ice in a vice 
• One spray creates a day 
• One spray continues the day 
• Tsst. Tsst. Job Done Ice, 
• Not so cool anymore. 

After receiving feedback from Mel, we felt that “Saving the Day” was the best stap line to go for as it ties in with the ideas we have as well as reinforcing the hero aspect.

Feedback from the Tutor...

After me and Ryan built up our superhero campaign and just establishing our “Gone in a Flash” strap line, we felt pretty confident we were on the right lines. After speaking to Mel, she wasn’t as confident that the current campaign was strong enough. She thought the ideas were good but it felt it wasn’t clear enough. The strap line needed changing. This was a bit of a setback for us, but as we will become more aware, the advertising industry has a pattern of getting responsive critical feedback in which ideas might be scrapped. We went back to the drawing board.

Getting Back on the Bandwagon...

After that feedback from Mel, me and Ryan were stuck to a dead end. With both of us having busy weekends, we weren’t able to meet and when it came to showing Mel what we had, it was limited, so again we went away and done a word association with the hero campaign. We also done an idea umbrella Mel suggested to get us back on the right tracks again. This really helped us out establishing some ideas on a different tangent. Here are some of our ideas below…

Developing the Ideas

The next couple of tasks involved us thinking about the ranged of media this can be displayed on as well as developing our ideas. I started to develop on the initial idea of the super hero. Here are my developments;

Me and Ryan then started looking at a range of examples such as the buses and in store point of sales. Ryan drew up these ideas;

At this point we were happy with a strapline “Gone in a Flash” which represented the quickness of the ice going while linking to the superhero “Flash” who is well known for its speed.

The Creative Writing Exercise

The afternoon session we had with Leoni yesterday was a very interesting one looking into the writing skills within advertising. She placed a number of objects on the table and asked us to write down what that person would be like using our imagination. The items were a book,some red paint, a guitar pick, paracetamol and a sea shell. This is what I wrote down..

 “I thought of a guy who’s in his early 20’s with a musical talent who’s part of an indie band. He’s always having a hangover from a lot of partying in his colourful lifestyle so the paracetamol is the handy option. He just completed a gig in Newquay and likes to collect objects with symbolises the place he’s visited. He collected a seashell as one of his items to take back with him. One of his hangover cures is reading a book and going round creating stencils of his signature with the blue paint around the areas he visits.” 

 What I loved about this exercise was the idea of really opening your mind up to create something that didn’t necessarily exist, but made you think about existing situations you apply these objects to. All the stories in the group was read out to everyone and again it was very interesting seeing where there were similarities and vice versa. A lot of people linked paracetamol to the character having a hangover while some people went the other way to say it was a very dark paranoid person who took paracetamol to calm their anxiety.

A Visit to the Workshop...

On the Thursday just gone, the university arranged a trip for us to go visit one of the local creative agencies known as The Workshop.

It was a brilliant and insightful day speaking to 4 people who work within the agency telling us our individual stories. Some of the things I will take back to remember are;

•  Placements are extremely important and useful regardless how short they are! It gives you an insight into a working company as well as picking up invaluable experience compared to someone who hasn’t gone on a placement. 
•  Continue to make a lot of connections as these essentially keeps doors open. 
•  Get involved on twitter! A lot of creative practices these days look on twitter accounts to get a snapshot of someones lifestyle.
•  Do your homework when it comes to the company you’re interested in working for. Getting information wrong about them could be the fundamental point you do not succeed. 
•  If you do not succeed the first time. Keep on trying. Don’t get put off by failure!

The Presentation Roundup

Right so the presentation day was definitely an interesting one! It was really good and inspiring seeing how the other groups conducted their presentations together. The overall audience 4 groups of 5 or 6 people so it was relatively small but still a nerve racking experience when it comes to your group to speak.

A couple of people in my group read off a script word for word which was noted by the tutors, and embarrassingly one of them asked us to wrap up the presentation quickly as we were running over time!

However, when it came to the feedback, it was overall very positive as it was a very direct presentation relating to the changes to flux. When it came to personal feedback, Mel thought my presentation style of images only and strong eye contact was done very well in which I was very pleased with. So a couple things to take on board and think of..

•  Keep to the time limit! 
•  Use more imagery throughout the whole presentation and not just in parts. 
•  Continue using imagery throughout with minimal text as it keeps the audience engaged 
•  If possible, use and create graphs as it gives a much better visual representation.

We've got an idea!

Me and Ryan went to the library to gather up our ideas and what could be created into a campaign. At first it was quite hard to come with a solution but we decided on was to create a superhero campaign. We felt this tied in well with our ideas so far as the super hero figure represented as a can could be seen as the solution to the different scenarios. Here’s Ryan’s first drawing of the proposed “De Icer man”

3rd Group Meetup

We all met up at Collegiate library to again amend the presentation and go through it all as a whole. This was a very interesting exercise as it was the first time I got to see what the rest of the groups presentation skills were. Even though it was just a trial run, it was rather concerning how far we went over time. We reached over 20 minutes and the brief said to keep it to 15. We established a good action plan involving;

•  Ensuring the points said were concise and short. 
•  Make sure we talk within 15 minutes. 
•  Create a small brief personal script to prevent the look of reading off the screen. 

After a couple hours of going through and amending the slides, we feel we are ready for the presentation session on Wednesday! Fingers crossed.

Creating the Brief..

On top of generating ideas for a car deicer campaign, we had to make a brief relating to the product and tasks ahead. This was a good exercise to get our heads around how its done within the industry and make us think more about the dynamics of the product as well. Here were the things we had to consider…

• A background of the product. 
• The proposition Tone of Voice. 
• Target Audience 
• Mandatories 
• Deliverables 

After some discussion with Ryan, here is the brief we came up with..

{Background}
Car Plan deicer is a product which defrosts frozen/frosted surfaces. It’s currently used widely in vehicle windows and the websites states that:

 “CarPlan De Icers Powerful formula melts ice quickly and effectively from car windows even at low temperatures, leaving a clear finish for increased visibility.” 

 The client would like to increase sales within the vehicle industry and possibly venturing out into different markets.

{Proposition}
We would like to show the consumer that this product is the best in the current market. We aim to do this by emphasizing the products strength within frozen conditions as well as the time taken to defrost.

{Tone of Voice}
Based on the current ideas, the campaign would be suited to a more informal pitch with a possible humour while being firm with our message of the product.


{Target Audience} 
The main target audience is vehicle owners. This is a market we want to maintain as well as branching to other markets such as the domestic market.

{Mandatories}
 This product should be kept away from children. It should not be inhaled as this may lead to solvent abuse. Must contain full name of company and product. (Car Plan - BlueStar Deicer)

{Advertising Problems}
It’s a crowded marketplace which makes it important that we emphasize on this products qualities.

{Deliverables}
Create a promotional end of aisle point of sale. This includes a cardboard stand which included the advertising campaign along with the product. The campaign could be backed up by using TV and print resources.

Advertising Task 2 - Blue Star Deicer

After the first Loctite brief, the second one was to create a campaign for a car deicer product known as BlueStar Deicer. The first task was to again work in pairs and draw up 50 ideas in relation to the product. My first thoughts were the associations with the winter which then progressed onto humorous things where the de icer may not be used for example. Me and Ryan came up with a range of ideas and here are our best examples below…

At the end of this exercise, we again had a crit session with the rest of the peers in the group. What I found interesting was the similarities in ideas across the board! For example, the titanic iceberg scene was a common one as well as the kettles. However, there were some insightful tips from Mel such as relating to other everyday phrases or scenarios which gives it a more creative output.

Getting the Advertising Juices flowing...

It was nice to see some faces in which I haven't seen for months and getting straight back into the working mindset. Our tutor Mel, set our first brief creating a quick basic ad campaign with the product Loctite Superglue. We were asked to work in teams of 2 and create a range of ideas with the strapline "Loctite Superglue - Glues almost anything!" Our first task was to get our brains in gear and writing out a list of words relating to glue. Once this was done, we created A5 markups using only plain paper and a marker pen. Here are my results of my favourites.

The great thing about this session was that we presented these to other peers in the group to get some feedback on their thoughts. It was very interesting and eye opening hearing other peoples opinions. Mel liked the planets while the rest of the students liked the Loctite man in the middle. This exercise also helped me understand how quickly you have to draw up and generate ideas. It can be a difficult task at times but jotting down a range of words associated with it can help greatly.

The 2nd Group Meetup

After going away and researching each of our specialisms relating to FLUX, we came back with a lot of good information to condense into a 15 minute presentation. The communication was good, however it was hard at times for all of us to make a firm decision in what should go where. The order and style of the presentation was changed a couple of times until we were happy with it. There was also an issue of one of the team members not being there after communicating with them a few times and getting no answer. This is one of the annoying things about working in a group as it doesn't help you progress as well as you can be. Group work is always an interesting experience, and in this year, it is being brought to the table in a very strong manner.

Stumbled across this viral Win..

In the past few years, Carlsberg has been known for creating some memorable adverts in a range of different media. I came across this simple but brilliantly done Carlsberg ad on YouTube where they use the general public, a group of bikers and hidden cameras. Watch the video below.





What I love about this advert are the range of the victims reaction and the surprise element it ends with. It is well edited and emphasizes unity within one product regardless of what type of person and where you are. The use of not using actors within the ad aren't as common these days in television but this unscripted approach from the setup gives it that edge. Very well done Carlsberg!

The 1st group meetup..

After establishing who each of the members were. I done the rational thing in what any student my age would do... add them on Facebook. As you can see from the photo in the previous post, a group message was made which made communications a breeze. We then met up and discussed the topic and understanding everyones viewpoints.

In the end after getting to know each other, we decided to go and gather information from each of our specialisms relating to the design changes within the 4 categories and meet up at a later date to sum up the information.

For once, the Facebook messaging tool worked really well. The only downside was when you weren't logged in and on the move as there could be a delay for some people to read them, especially if they didn't have a smart phone!

But yeah, so far so good. Everyone turned up to the first session and I was able to get on with everyone fine! A bit of banter and jokes were flying about as well which is always good.