The Brand

The term 'brand' has been described by the marketing association as a name, term, sign, symbol, design or a combination of all of these factors to identify the products qualities and services, that in turn will set the sellers product apart from all of the other sellers out there.

A good brands objectives are: a clear message, confirmation of the products credibility, evoking an emotional response from the buyer, motivates the buyer, and seals the buyers loyalty.

In order for a marketing company to succeed in branding, they must understand the needs and wants of the customer. To do this, the seller must integrate their brand strategies at every possible chance of public contact.

You have to be on the same wave length with your customers: summing up their experiences and perceptions, some of which you might influence, and some that you cannot.

A solid brand is one that will capture the hearts and surpass the expectations of the potential customers out there. It will become invaluable as the fight for customers accentuates every day. For your brand to be successful it is imperative that you spend the time researching customer attributes, defining yourself as that name, term, sign or symbol. At the end of the day, your brand is your promise to the customer and you want to gain and retain their loyalty for as long as possible.

Know your brand: Know your customer (Lance& Woll,2006,p17)

When it comes to manufactures or wholesalers, the vital part of marketing information is the price. The price is a vital means of communication between the manufacturers and the customer. However, on its own, the communication becomes stilted. Other additional areas that would strengthen the bond between manufacturer and consumer are; consumer research and advertising research. For example, from doing some consumer research, we know that the best way to control consumer demand is by either reducing or increasing prices. Also, by doing our advertising research, this gives the consumer a more in depth knowledge of the products they are trying to sell. It also gives the manufacturers a chance to suggest new and innovative ways that the consumer can use their product. Thus, generating a better experience when using the product in question. By doing this research, the manufacturers are opening up a dialogue between themselves and their consumers and in turn create a response from them. For instance, receiving the answers to questions such as, how is the (brand) conversation going?

Reviewing Advertising fragmentation: the beginning of a new paradigm?

The idea of converting old advertising media to new media- Ries and Ries (2002) argue that the future for brands is in public relations and not in advertising.

As the internet becomes an evermore integral piece of the advertising pie. It is apparent that advertising agencies may seize to exist due to rapidly evolving internet assisted marketing strategy, one which cost effectiveness bodes extremely well with the large corporate wholesalers. Business week echoed:

"Some marketers have worked to make their brand message so enjoyable that consumers might see them as entertainment instead of an intrusion. When leading brands are seen on TV they're apt to have their own co staring roles (....) rather than just lending support during the commercial breaks. All are trying to create a stronger bond with the consumer (business wee, August 1, 2005).

Bradley and Bartlett (2007) studied the impact of new horizons for media strategies and go on to pursue the internets strengths during the 1990's. Consequently, advertisers started to use the internet to enhance their offline campaigns.

Due to the fact that the media in advertising is becoming even more difficult for agencies to complete with the likes of myspace, facebook, youtube, google and so on.... For instance, the google search bar has become one of, if not the most powerful machine in generating huge profit from advertising, as-well as subsequent charges from sponsored links in search results.

Superhero tag line and wording in ad

Did you know that the leading cause of death of men aged 20 to 40 is depression- resulting in suicide, diabetes, respiratory failure, heart disease and eating disorders. Subsequently, none of the health problems above have any external symptoms, thus resulting in an underlying health crisis for men aged 20-40. It's well known that most of our men suffer from a heightened inferiority complex. Like every superhero, they are least likely to admit to you when something is wrong. Consequently, causing the manifestation of an underlying illness that could have been prevented if only they had visited their doctor. Now it's up to us girls!! "Save your superhero before he becomes your damsel in distress."

Collaboration of our superhero idea- Eilidh Malcolm and I

Myself and Eilidn Malcolm came up with what we think is an intellectual take on the superhero idea that was collated by our large research group. In order to get more men aged 20-40 to he doctor we came up with a new tag line and fresh image that is aimed towards women, helping persuade them to get their men to the doctor. Here are some of the images we created.The problems with our group campaign:

o It should have included a small amount of the ‘fear factor’ otherwise people do not feel the need to take any action

o The merging of the two ideas (superhero and ‘the lengths the girlfriend would go to’) was too complicated

o We hadn’t decided on a specific enough location to advertise to women

o The tag line could have been improved

o The imagery was not interactive enough

In order to fix these issues we decided:

o There should be an informative poster situated in a location where people have time to stop for a moment and read it.

o The Superhero is a more appropriate campaign that women can relate to as ‘ the lengths a girlfriend would go to’ depicted the woman as a bit too crazy and could alienate them.

o The advertisements should be put up in the changing rooms of gyms and leisure centres; as women who care about their own health should be easier to influence.

o The tag line that our larger group came up with in the initial development: ‘Save your superhero before he becomes your damsel in distress!’ was more appropriate than the tag line our group decided on for our final campaign.

o The image of a woman carrying a man, the reverse of a stereotypical superhero cartoon, should be our main image, created in a typical comic book style.

Campaign

We decided to focus on one aspect of our overall group campaign, creating a set of adverts targeting women in a relationship with a man aged 20-40.

24 hour brief

Problem:

Men not going for regular health check-ups.

Research methods:

o Questionnaire – Pressure from mothers more than girlfriends.

o Brainstorming – Why men don’t want to go to the doctor

o ‘Desk Research’ – Research through existing media – Lance Armstrong

o race for life Rachel Stevens advert

Proposal:

Targeting Women to encourage men aged 14 – 45, to go visit the doctor for regular check ups. We’re approaching this in a humorous way in order to appeal to men more. Steering clear of the ‘fear factor’.

Why humour will work:

o Men won’t do anything if they’re nagged

o More light hearted approach

o Less intimidating

o Something easy to discuss if a common joke is shared

o Social media could carry the campaign, appeals to younger generation as well.

Target market:

Women in relationships, in different generations

To narrow it down:

We all came up with sketches of proposed ideas, then took a vote between the group to decide on an overall winner using sticky stars & pens. A choice of 2 were then decided & we split the group in half as we were split on what idea was the best choice.

As a smaller group we bounced ideas off one another in terms of taglines and imagery, coming up with preliminary sketches & then eventually joining forces with the other half of our team and deciding on a final idea to then pursue into the last stages of this process. As a team we both pitched our ideas to each other and came to a conclusion to combine both our ideas into one ad campaign. Half of our team came up with a plan for ‘trapping’ your man, whereas the other half followed the ‘superhero’ idea of ‘saving your superhero’, reversing the roles of women as damsels in distress and men as superheroes, all the meanwhile keeping the appeal to women in mind. We selected one team member to draw out the storyboard, another to design the poster campaign and the rest of us contributed all of our ideas towards it.

We believe the strapline “The doctor doesn’t know your superhero’s weakness but you do” worked best with the message we were trying to put forth. The visuals resembled a ‘comic book’ style with a lighthearted approach, this will be carried through the tv advertisements as well as print media.

Media:

o TV

o Print

This is what it takes to get my man to the doctor!!

What does it take to get your man to the doctor??

For this one day brief I would create an advertising campaign that tries to extract the fear men have of going to the doctor. I would also try to get rid of that inferiority complex that most men have. If you want to get a guy to do something they don't want to, it's best from my experience to bribe him with either beer, sex or sports. I had a few ideas that I will illustrate and post as a short story board for this campaign. The first one will be a wife holding a pole with a hook on the end dangling beer in front of her husbands face, leading him to the doctor. The next two images will have a similar theme, but with a bra dangling in one and a football or golf club in the other.

Originally, we were put into groups to come up with a campaign, which would encourage men to go to the doctor and we came up with:

"The doctor doesn't know your weaknesses, but you do"

At the beginning, I thought this was a good concept. It explained that men have this 'there's nothing wrong with me' attitude which is a mask to hide what is really wrong with them. However, in each of the sketched concepts shown above it conveys that the mother, girlfriend, wife knows exactly what is wrong with him. Thus, communicating to the women out there that they should trust their instincts and get their man to the doctor as soon as they notice something is wrong.

In order to reach these final concepts we came up with various useful brainstorming techniques; creating an 'idea wall', using AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire and Action), using the Ansoff matrix to help refrain us from over analysing and encouraging us to look at what has already been done campaign wise, with regards to this issue. We also made up a short questionnaire focused at men to find out why they didn't like to visit the doctor regularly. Consequently, the market research was all there, but I don't think we quite hit the nail on the head when it came to resulting in a successful solution to the problem. Thus my reason for trying to come up with an alternative. Stay tuned for my outcomes....

Why do men not like to visit the doctor??

Women see looking after their body as maintenance

Men see looking after their body as repair

From my reading of this subject I have gathered a few observations. Firstly, men don't take time off work to go to the doctors. Secondly, they feel vulnerable and weak and are uncomfortable by this. Thirdly, they feel as though it is too formal, dulling the tone of the experience. Moreover, they are worried that they hear that they have something serious.....

There are some suggestions out there by the men of the world, which may make them more inclined to go to the doctors. These are as follows; Extending the hours of some surgeries during the week and into the weekends. Employing more male receptionists and male nurses, so their is more of a gender equality in surgeries. Also, having male magazines social or health related and male posters up on the walls.

Interview 23:26pm

subject: white male

age:25

Occupation: Engineer

Q: How often do you visit the doctor?

A: Only when I have been physically injured.

Q: How would you describe the experience of going to the doctor?

A: Long, drawn-out, boring and a waste of time.

Q: Are you put off by visiting the doctor and if so why?

A: Yes because guys don't like taking about feelings and doctors ask probing questions.

Q: What could improve your doctors visit?

A: Less formal. Like shopping I like to go in, get what I need and leave. I would like the same applied to a doctors visit.

Q: Are there enough campaigns out there about mens health do you think and if not why do you think that is?

A: I've seen a few, but they haven't made much of an impact. I don't think that anything will happen to me until it happens.

Q: If you were to make an advert to get men back into doctors surgeries what would it sound or look like?

A: It would show an average guy before and after. Fine one day and dying the next. At the end showing that a simple doctors visit could have prevented the rapid decline in health.

Personas:- character diamonds

I came across an article written by hollywood screen writer, David Freeman, that helps us identify 'character diamonds'. He explains that a character is merely made up of layers. One of the layers is the character diamond and each corner of that diamond represents a trait of the characters personality. The term 'Character personality' means, the combination of all of these traits that encompass the character's personality.

I will take one character who is fairly well known to try and explain Freeman's term 'character diamonds'

Marilyn Monroe

Spiritual and aesthetic: she is aware of her beauty and how powerful it can be for a lady of her stature. She is also very humble and spiritually aware.

Confused: she was sort of a loner and misunderstood young woman.

Depressed: Very unhappy with her life, as she felt she had no control over it any more.

Irresponsible: She would always let people down. Not show up on time, if at all.

Character diamonds can get pretty confusing. For instance, how can a person so spiritual and energetic be irresponsible and depressed? We would then use a tool called 'a mask' to address this issue.

When a character is fake, he/she wears a 'mask', thus to fool others or even himself. Marilyn does think that she is spiritual, gracious and energetic. However, these traits are only a mask until the confusion, depression, and irresponsible nature start to reveal themselves. Fake or not. This mask helps Marilyn think about which way is best to approach the world.

The real problem in advertising is when we have to address a buyers mask. Then what traits are we targeting, or are we targeting traits at all?