Project 1: ad campaign

ADIM 1311 AA and BB
PROJECT 1: AD CAMPAIGN
We will be developing a fictional ad campaign for an existing product or business that is struggling to connect with Gen Z (you will draw this randomly out of a hat). The creative directive from the client is simple: Create an ad campaign that will increase the visibility of the product or service’s position in the current marketplace and help make it “cool” again to a younger generation. This should turn into sales. Hootsuite data found that Gen Z consumers prefer to shop on mobile devices and use a smartphone to visit an online retail store (80%), engage on social media (95%) and shop for a product online (61%). The design needs to work in both print and online applications and you should think about how to engage Gen Z to buy this product. A couple restrictions on concepts: 1. No celebrity endorsements. 2. No reusing or repurposing an existing campaign or campaign elements (e.g., using Ronald McDonald for a McDonalds ad, or ‘America runs on Dunkin’ for Dunkin’ Donuts) and 3. No redesigning the brand ID. Your design MUST work within existing brand/logo guidelines so if your existing logo is yellow and their brand colors are yellow and brown, you must work within that brand.
This project has 4 components:
A. RESEARCH and MARKETS: DUE SEPT 15
1. Factual Research
a. Primary: Gathering material that does not pre-exist (interviewing, focus groups, observation)
i. Interview 5 people with 3 questions as your sample. Use the data to draw some conclusions.
Ex: 4 out of 5 young survey respondents would not shop at Macy’s because they perceive the clothing as uncool and out of date. They only are interested in clothing they see pushed by Instagram influencers. 2 out 4 respondents said they only shop online and are heavily influenced by the ads they see popping up on TikTok.
b. Secondary: internet articles, data gathering. What can you find out about your product? Strengths and weaknesses. What about the competition?
Ex: Every year 8 million college students go back-to-school shopping with their parents at brick and mortar stores. 4 million go to malls, 2 million go to the same stores they have shopped at since childhood, etc. etc. Macy’s currently has x amount of product lines, 2 of which are focused exclusively on teens, etc. etc. Macy’s competition is primarily Nordstroms, H&M, and other major mall retailers. They would like to compete more in the online market. H&M has x billion dollars of revenue because of x. This is your chance to draw some conclusions about why your product is or isn’t successful in the current market.
2. Visual Research —
a. Primary: material that does not exist: drawing, image manipulation, mood boards – what sort of things does your product make you think of? What do you wish it did?
b. Secondary: Pinterest, magazines, packages, etc.. What have their ads/packages looked like in the past? Currently? What is the competition doing? If a product, what does it look like on the shelf? Where is it? Top or bottom? Big space like Tide or tiny like Mountain Dew. Is it different in different stores?
3. Creating a customer profile
a. Synthesizing the data you gather above, write a profile of the current conditions. You may also include some of your visual examples from current campaigns and/or competitive campaigns. Then, create a new customer profile that your ad campaign will target.
Ex. Macy’s current ad campaign focuses on heavy sales pushes, and traditional design of female models in basic work clothing. While they have contemporary designers and fashion forward clothing available, the ads don’t emphasize the cutting edge designers they feature online. This ad campaign will target men and women 15-40 who live in urban and suburban areas. It will make them feel that Macy’s is “cool” again. It will push them to shop online.
After you put together your generic customer profile, write up a fictional customer that embodies this campaign.
Ex. Rachel is a 22 year-old college graduate from Houston, TX, who needs a new wardrobe to start her job as a junior content developer at an internet technology company. Rachel’s wardrobe needs to also transition easily for her active nightlife meeting with her friends for happy hour. She goes to yoga 3x a week, but also likes to drink margaritas and binge on Euphoria on HBO Max. Etc etc. She spends over 2 hours a day on social media and tends to purchase items she sees marked to her from Instagram or recommended by her favorite influencers.
B. Visual Exploration- Thumbnails: DUE Sept 22
a. Lateral thinking (brainstorming exercise). Create a “word web” that helps you visualize your new campaign (see textbook for examples)
b. Using the word web, generate 20 thumbnail ideas. We will discuss the thumbnails in a critique and select the best ones to execute your rough comps.
C. Refining the Ideas: DUE Sept 29
a. Take the 3 best ideas, and work up rough comps of each idea.
D. Final comp design: DUE Oct 6
a. Create final comps of your magazine page ad and web ads (can be either a banner campaign using 2 of the traditional sizes) OR social media ads using 2 of the traditional sizes for IG, TW, TikTok, Snapchat, or FB). Finals should be mounted on board and protected with tracing paper. Magazine ad should be 8.375” x 10.75”. Web ad sizing is variable depending on what format choose. An easy way to draw it is to convert pixels to rough inches so 300×250 px might be 6” x 5”, etc. Also, you must hand in the WRITTEN compilation of your research and potential customer profile (Part A).