NEST Trend Forecasting by Charlotte Mahoney

MARKETING REPORT FORECAST D N I NG E R T

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“CULtiVATE AND GROW”

FORECAST D N I NG E R T

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NEST Trend Forecasting Creative report for the Green Party Date Issued: Distribution List: Jo Holloway / The Green Party

NEST aims to cultivate and grow ideas based on well informed facts and figures to anticipate future trends and interpret consumer values. This will provide companies with the tools they need to grow and expand their businesses to their full potential.

WHO WE ARE Nest Trend Forecasting is a forecasting consultancy that generates interest in new styles and products in lifestyle advertising. Our areas of work include forecasting, promotion and public relations. Nest Trend Forecasting is a multi faceted communications business whose intellectual abilities, knowledge and skills enable us to strategically manage the reputation of brands. Nest Trend Forecasting aims to cultivate and grow ideas based on informed facts and figures to anticipate future trends and interpret consumer values. This will provide tools businesses need to grow their businesses into their full potential. Delivery capabilities: •To effectively implement best practices and devise strategies that will aid and support our clients’ needs •Working with initiative, passion, assertiveness and inspiration. Nest Trend Forecasting uses its talent and experience to take brands forward for higher returns • Highly analytical and confident with all aspects of forecasting segmentation •Commercially astute and driven towards delivering excellence and results in all aspects of creative marketing • A proven record in supporting, developing and providing marketing strategies to a variety of retailing outlets including luxury, high street and independent brands worldwide • Experienced in collaborating with external third party specialists alongside the internal marketing teams • A highly experienced and talented team able to deliver all your organisational and negotiation requirements with a high level of attention to detail together with a like minded commercial interest in luxury products

CAMPAIGN & CONCEPT NEST Trend Forecasting have created a concept on behalf of the Green Party which plans to entice and educate the future generation of voters through a variety of creative campaigns. This campaign will tie in with the lead up to The Green Party’s May 2015 general election. With the influence from our predicted 2015 trend ‘Brandilise’, NEST have created a poster campaign which will be used to promote The Green ‘Party’ - a tour of Universities around England and Wales. With the Green Party specifically wanting NEST to focus on their younger potential voters, we believe The Green ‘Party’ does so. Through staggered advertising our poster campaigns which have been regionally targeted, will initially reach out to our core age group and spark interest in the build up to the launch of the tour. As the weeks progress NEST will use various forms of innovative marketing and promotion strategies including ‘Clean Advertising’ - using power jets over designed templates to clean the streets and leave a promotion of our event. These will be raised near and around the local areas of the eight Universitys chosen for our tour. The street art will be encouraging local spotters to upload them onto Instagram hashtagging The Green ‘Party’. This form of promotion is new and exciting but is also representing one of the many values of the Green Party. Additional to the poster and street art campaign, NEST have created a Spotify advert which will tune into our targeted age group at a time when they are in their own surroundings and grab their attention. At the The Green ‘Party’ itself NEST have invited local known celebrities and supporters of the Green Party to come along and celebrate with us. Our guests will be provided with music from up and coming bands, they will enjoy the benefits of a free bar. In return the Green Party will ask, as a form of currency, for their guests to Tweet about the event hashtagging their chosen cocktail which will be named after one of the Green Partys relevant values and will be seen from the interactive Tweet Deck situation by the bar. Using the street artists used to design the promotional poster campaigns, values and information about the Green Party will be painted live at the event for our guests to come, have a look and be informed. NEST believe that knowledge is power and our whole concept is designed to educate the youth of today but doing so in a way in which they can relate themselves.

CLEAN GRAFFiTi AND GUERiLLA ADVERTiSiNG

UP AND COMiNG LiVE MUSiC events at uni’s across the uk. TWEET DECK and tweets as currency

POLiCY COCKTAiLS

PEST ANALYSIS POLITICAL Considering the Green Partys current supporters, being aware of their current values and not wanting to create a campaign which would result in losing votes. The Liberal Democrats choosing to join a Coalition Government and going back on their promise of the increase on student fees. This enables a generation of new voters who would have previously supported this party. Similar to the Liberal Democrats, the Conservatives are at risk in the next General Election to losing their previous supporters due to the increase on student fees in 2012.

TECHNOLOGY

Technology is ever evolving, the Green Party needs to be seen to keep up to date with the up changes. All promotional material needs to be accessible to smart phone users. This is where the Green Partys core target market get notified and informed on a regular basis throughout their day. 6

SOCIAL Not wanting to sway current voters of the Green Party to other political parties with a new campaign that may be out of taste to the current values of the Green Party. Encouraging and relying on digital â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;word of mouthâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; for our event may spark negative comments being hashtagged towards the Green Party. Using new innovative ways to promote the Green Party through social media.

ECONOMIC The current climate affects budgets. Where in the past political parties had big budgets this is no longer the case. The Green Party relying on outsourced donations.

SWOT ANALYSIS STRENGTHS Green Party is renowned for supporting and developing green values that affect all variety of families all across Britain, educating them on a successful system that enhance their lives. The political party gained one seat in the House of Commons in 2010, and additionally, two MEPs in the European Parliament.

WEAKNESSES Green Party has unfortunate preconceptions from potential voters because of their lack of modern attempt of rebranding their image in the eyes of the public. It is also noticeable that the political party have not taken advantage of pushing their younger people policies to the centre of their campaigns, which is where the majority of their potential votes lie.

OPPORTUNITIES Recognizing that Green Party already has a very strong following and votes via some of their more apparent policies; they have not exploited the fact that there is a gap for younger customers, who are receptive young adults and back anyone who is willing to stand up for the voice of young people. Green Party has an ability to be at the forefront position in the politics circuit, giving them a strong sense of purpose and a wide marketing appeal.

THREATS With rapid use of technology in modern lifestyles, Green Party need to generate more interest through social networking sites and planned sub-campaign events to gather a younger supporter. The political partyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s lack of pushing education and young people policies also sets them back in terms of interest from potential younger voters. 7

COMPETITORS One thing we noticed the most from all competitors to the Green Party was how much each party relied on their leaders personality. The Green party differ with focusing less on the personality but more so on their core values. With the online presence with all parties it enables its voters to have influence on their peers with ‘likes’ on Facebook and ‘follows’ from Twitter. The leaders of the competition are much more obvious that we are living in a digital age.

LABOUR PARTY Famous for introducing Education Maintenance Allowance for college students so I areknowingly behind the youth, similar to that of the Green Party. They have many values and campaigns which are targeted specifically for students and the youth of today. The online status of the Labour Party is currently 132k ‘likes’ of Facebook, 68k ‘followers’ on Twitter. They rely on the personality of the party leader, Ed Milliban and have recently filmed ‘A Better Future’ a short documentary on the Ed Millibans humble beginnings.

CONSERVATIVES The Conservative Party have significantly affected their support from their student voters since tuition fees were increased to £9,000 per year for an average student. With this in mind and with the Green Party strongly opposing this increase, it leaves a big amount of previous voters looking to other parties in regards to voting for the next general election. Similar to their biggest competitor, the Conservatives have 158k ‘likes’ on Facebook and 75k ‘followers’ on Twitter.

LIBERAL DEMOCRATS Since the coalition government and the Liberal Democrats going back on their promise of student fee’s, this party are expected to lose a lot of their supporters for the May 2015 election. For a major competitor, the Liberal Democrats have significantly less of an online support to that of the other parties with 93k ‘likes’ on Facebook and 37k ‘followers’ on Twitter.

Nest forecasting feels that a strong trend of 2015 is going to be social networking and the impact it will have on our everyday lives even more than it does today. As of 2012 Facebook hit 1 billion active users with Twitter slowly behind with over 500 million users, making these the biggest forms of social networking and the most influential today. During the 2008 US election Facebook was used to raise awareness of voting by showing a pro voting message at the top of there Facebook page, it included a ‘I voted button’ and the profile pictures of friends that had already clicked it, this persuaded an extra 2.2% of people to vote. Currently companies are already using social networking sites to promote their brands in innovative and exciting ways. For example most recently Kellogg’s opened a pop up store in Carnaby Street called the Tweet Shop. Where tweeting was used as form of currency to purchase Kellogg’s products as a reward for promote their brand.

Quantas is another example of a brand using social networking to promote them selves. They do this by checking customers Klout Scores and if the score is high this will determine whether a customer could be entitled to an upgrade. With everyone being so aware of their online personality and now companies introducing schemes for consumers to benefit from this NEST forecasting predict more brands getting involved with consumers having to rely on the popularity of their online persona.’

THE FUTURE GENERATiON 11

In modern advertising, Brandalise stands for a unique hybrid of branding, street art and graffiti. This is a term recently coined by a group of artist across eight different countries including UK, US and Germany, who then came together for the biggest subvertising campaign in the UK. Together they challenged conventional advertising and began to change its direction. One of the more effective Brandalise promotional tools used is by a street artist called Olek. This year, on a Great Eastern Road in Shoreditch, London, four art walls were utilised by street artists to promote their art, but also events.These pieces were running in conjunction with an event called â&#x20AC;&#x153;Street Artists against Slaveryâ&#x20AC;?. Olek uses space in a slightly different manner and created four giant pieces of crochet, which feature quotes from the famous Martin Luther King speech. Online we noticed that the public have been posting photographic images of these art pieces, thus spreading the word about the event. The hybrid between street art and advertisement is the subtle and discreet creative future of advertising and Nest Forecasting can see many companies using these methods to their advantage. 12

Nest Forecasting believes that Brandalise highlights that we don’t pay enough attention to our surroundings and therefore caters to that. We all tend to look straight through campaigns and billboards without acknowledging their presence, knowing that they are selling us a product. Brandalise captures our attention with something that we genuinely find interesting and visually pleasing. The beauty of discreet advertising is that we’re looking at something that we flike visually without the pressures of consumerism, and that we’re obviously being told to buy a product. It can distinctly target multiple brand platforms whilst utilising local artists.

The simplicity of Brandalise is that the artwork will capture the public’s attention, which thus leads the advert to multiple platforms of possibility, for example word of mouth, social media.This gives an opportunity for one person to discover an artist and uncover a brand.

POSTER CAMPAIGN

NEST have created a poster campaign which will be used to promote Green ‘Party’ - a tour of Universities around England and Wales. Through staggering our advertising our poster campaigns which have been regionally targeted will initially reach out to our core age group and spark interest in the build up to the launch of the tour. As the weeks progress NEST will add more information to the same posters eventually leaving the full advertisement through the use of ‘Clean Advertising’ which both cleans the streets and leave a promotion of our event. These will be raised near and around the local areas of the eight University’s chosen for our tour. The street art will be encouraging local spotters to upload them onto Instagram hashtagging #GOGREEN. This form of promotion is new and exciting but is also representing one of the many values of the Green Party.

PRINT CAMPAIGN

TARGET MARKET Nest Trend Forecasting agrees that we live in a technological age where many generations communicate online and through social media. Our belief is that statistically, Green Partyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; current supporters still use television and newsprint as their most common source of information when it comes to political parties communicating their values. It is widely believed that political leaders donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t talk about political issues that are relevant to young adults at their level, however British politics need to move forward and be more current with using social media, technology and art in incorporate their messages nationwide. The benefits of Green Party are their encouraged and strong values, as opposed to competitor political parties who have the same rhetoric to one another. The potential young electorates are more likely to support Green Party because of their young adult directed values and feel most appreciated with their modern approach to communication. We can envisage that in the future, the communication between political parties and the younger supporters will get stronger and more online strategic communicating processes will develop. Nest Trend Forecasting foresees that by 2015, the political parties will have more power and need to engage with their electorate for the upcoming elections and further on.

Target market profile now:

Target market profile future:

Gender: Female Age: 25-50 Origin: British Location: Brighton, Urban areas Income band: ÂŁ26,000+ Living status: Homeowner/ Renting Education: Higher education Social class: Working and Middle Class Marital status: All Family: Yes Interests: Fashion, Eco-culture, Socialising, Family Newspapers/magazines/books: Newspaper, Chart books, Magazines Supermarket: Tesco, Marks and Spencer Holidays: Abroad Night in/out: Both Other: Uses public transport, bicycle, walking. Recycles, is

Gender: Both Age: 17-50 Origin: British, Other Location: University cities, Urban areas Income band: student loan+ Living status: Student Accommodation/Renting/ Living at home Education: All Social class: All Marital status: Single, Living with partner Family: Yes Interests: Technology, Social Media, Fashion, Culture, Brands, Socialising, Family Newspapers/magazines/books: Magazines and books on tablets Supermarket: Tesco, Sainsburyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s, Asda Holidays: Home, Abroad Night in/out: Out Other: Spends their free time socializing. Uses public trans-

TIMELINE

EVENT The pinnacle of NESTs concept for the Green Party is a University tour across England and Wales. Through the hype and promotion of our staggered poster campaign, Instagram #GOGREEN, Spotify Gif and general updates on both Twitter and Facebook, NEST fully expect our events to be more than successful. The event themselves will have invited celebrities and supporters of the Green Party, live music from new and up-and-coming artists, there will be ambassadors of the Green Party on hand to provide the values of the Green Party to our guests plus free drinks on offer all named after the various values that we feel are relevant to the young future potential voters. A tweet deck will be placed next to the bar and as a form of currency, the barmen will ask his customers to tweet about the event hashtagging the name of their chosen drink. This will help raise awareness of the event and spread the values of the Green Party digitally.

UNIVERSITIES & VENUES Newcastle - Newcastle University NUSU Manchester - The University Of Manchester, Manchester Academy 1 Birmingham - Birmingham City University, Lounge North Brighton - University Of Brighton, Grand Parade Campus. Cardiff - Cardiff University, Solus Bar Bristol - University of West England, Red Bar London - University College London, Richard Mully Basement Bar Plymouth - Plymouth University, MINT Bar.

POLICY COCKTAILS NO FEES BACK TO BASiCS BANK ACCOUNT SNAKES AND& FRENZY HEALTH KiCK LADDERS BOOSTER

50ml White Rum 12.5ml Funkin Blackcurrant Purée 25ml funkin Green Apple Purée Cinnamon sugar 3 lime wedges

1/2 cup blueberries 1 tablespoon minced ginger 1 tablespoon sugar Juice of 1/2 lemon 2 cups blueberry juice 2 cups sparkling wine, divided

1/2 oz simple syrup 1 1/2 oz citrus vodka 1 oz fresh, unsweetened pomegranate juice 1 lemon wedge

3 lemon wedges 50 ml Gin 25 ml Funkin Raspberry Purée 15 ml Funkin Sugar cane Syrup Top with soda

As part of our event we wanted a way to explain The Green Parties policies without having to use a guest speaker. Innovatively, Nest Trend Forecasting came up with having 4 policy themed cocktails, each named after an important policy. By doing this, we thought guests at the party would have to physically say out loud the name of the policy, thus it resignating more in that persons mind. Each cocktail will also have a cocktail stirer which also breaks off as a keepsake keyring, featuring the details of that drinks policy.

SPOTIFY Considering our target audience we felt that to create an advert on Spotify would be a great way to reach out to this age group from the comfort of their own surroundings at a time when they could be relaxing,revising or getting ready for a night out. NEST have created a Gif which aims to grab our core target with the initial sentence ‘Calling All Students’. The advert then describes the event highlighting our celebrity guests, live music and free drinks. We provide a link on the Gif to the students area of the Green Party Website as well as advising our listeners to search the Green Party on Spotify to hear our playlist which includes music from the live band who will be playing at our event.

SCRIPT FOR SPOTIFY ADVERT “Calling all students! Click the banner to see when the Green Party are at your university. There will be celebrities, local live music, art, food and cocktails. And the best thing is, it’s all free! All you need to do, is tweet!” “Search The Green Party on Spotify to hear our playlist. The Green Party – standing up for students.”

SPOTIFY MOCKUP

WEBSITE

NEST created a website dedicated to the students and young supporters of the party. The link is GREENPARTY.ORG.UK/STUDENTS and appears on our Spotify advert as well as the poster campaign we created. It is separate from the Green Partyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s current website, as NEST did not want to change anything too drastic to the current webpage considering their current electorates. It is youthful, fun and eye catching as well as being informative.

TWITTER EXAMPLE

FACEBOOK EXAMPLE

TWIBBON Twibbon is a device used to support charities and causes online. Through this you can create a small logo that can feature on Twitter and Facebook accounts proifle images.

COSTINGS Considerations:

Entertainment

Band/ Music Artist Hire Venue Hire Guest List Travel Expenses Clean Advertising Printed Advertising Spotify Advert Cocktail Stirrers Photographers

For each event we are hosting, we will hire two to three upcoming artists/ bands to play at the different venues. We looked into hiring ‘Deliah’ and ‘Young Guns’ for London. These were the only bands who needed to be taken into consideration when doing the costing’s as the other bands are up and coming. The two artists came out at a total cost of £3000. In total we had 23 bands/ music artists, for each we will pay for travelling expenses, we have allowed up to £50 each. This came out at £1050 in total.

Venue Hire We looked into each of the venues and as they are part of The Students Union, there will be no charge to hire out the venue. We have also checked that each venue has a projector and their own bar that supplies their own glasses for the cocktails.

Guest List In total we will invite 62 Olympic athletes and 13 Celebrities who support The Green Party. We will allow them to claim back up to £50 for travel expenses.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Our concept for the Green Party is a nationwide advertising campaign to educate potential younger supporters with the relevant policies for the upcoming 2015 election. We aim to do this by using our trends Brandalise and Generation F to our full advantage and keeping them evident throughout our campaign to maintain a level of cohesivness. Nest Trend Forecasting believes that the Green Party have a beneficial opportunity to grow their supporters and gain more followers with a strong and approachable delivery of values via the use of digital advertising. This will appeal to a younger demographic and build relationships with the future supporter.

RECOMMENDATIONS Nest Trend Forecasting concept for the Green Party developed using interactive social media outlet and a nationwide campaign trail which will see a rise in a younger demographic electorate. The engaging and nation-friendly campaign advertisements together with the informative #GoGreen campaign trail will lead the way in grabbing the attention of the younger supporter, as well as gain unparalleled press coverage and stronger policies awareness to the masses. We anticipate the prospective rebranding of the political party with the current values to bring the Green Party more power and opportunities in gaining potential supporters beyond 2015 and push British politics to a newfound approach to future communications.

NEST TREND FORECASTING 34