PROMOTIONAL PLAN Frances Tilstone - N0632218 - Fash10106
ONE
Introduction
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TWO
Creative Concept: Logo & Packaging
THREE
Creative Concept: Print & Video Ads
FOUR Brand Onion & USP
C 0 N T
Fig 1. Dasai Photo & Videoshoot Montage (own work)
FIVE
Communication Tools & Media Channels
SIX
AIDA Model & Visualisations
SEVEN Timeline Of Events
EIGHT Bibliography & References
E N T S
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INTRODUCTION
Welcome to the official Promotional Plan for our new brand DASAI.
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Fig 2. Dasai Photoshoot Image (teamwork)
We are a men’s fragrance and lifestyle brand, created as an alternative to the stereotypical macho story currently on the market. Our fragrance is aimed towards attracting the ‘New Wave Man’ aged between 18 and 30 who cares about his appearance and requires a fragrance that is a reflection of his personality and individual style. We have taken inspiration from 90’s hip-hop music, Japanese culture and street-wear which our consumer already relates to within his aesthetic. We want to allow our target consumer to feel cool and unique wearing a fragrance that is as much of an extension of himself as any other part of his outfit, appealing to him, as well as how he wishes to present himself. This Promotional Plan will outline the ideas and reasoning behind our creative concept, as well as the essence of our brand. It will then propose a timeline and media plan on how we would execute promotional activity post-launch in order to best connect to our target audience.
CREATIVE CONCEPT
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When developing our idea into a creative concept, we were originally inspired by our chosen name of DASAI. Taken from colloquial Japanese meaning ‘uncool’, often used in the context of describing someone’s taste in clothes, we believe that this accurately captures our inspirations of Japanese and street wear culture. We also wanted to play on the meaning of ‘uncool’ for our brand identity and flip it to insinuate the opposite, as we aim to be a brand that people aspire to buy into. Creating our logo, we also took inspiration from 90’s culture including vinyl records , television screens and video tapes, playing with the use of geometric shapes, bright colours and patterns. We decided to keep our final logo basic but striking, with our name in a simple semi-circle design which represents the ‘D’ for DASAI and was loosely inspired by the circle on Japan’s flag. Later we added the Japanese symbols for DASAI and these are both elements that can be picked out and recognisably used to symbolise our brand, without the name itself. We tried out various colour options but during primary research we noticed that many of the
niche and independent fragrances currently on the market have very minimal packaging. We thought that a neutral colour palette of whites and greys would be too boring for our customer. In order to stand out in store we chose a black base for our main logo and packaging which we believe to be modern and representative of the sophisticated male. For the logo details and copy on the packaging we added a bright pop of colour. As our first fragrance contains notes of orchid, we chose to use accents of a pink fuchsia colour that stands out on the black background and we have made this the main colour palette for our brand. Adding the unexpected colour represents the individuality and creativity behind our idea and using a colour which is not normally associated with men shows a step away from the stereotypical male image. We believe that this makes our design modern and different while affectively communicating our brand values. In using this colour choice, we do not mean to suggest a feminine or androgynous message, only that our customer is one who embraces new ideas of masculinity, straying away from the norm.
Fig 3. Dasai Campaign Image (teamwork)
‘If the idea is the foundation of the creative process, then the story is the vehicle that delivers it, making it memorable and provocative.’ -Hegarty
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POPS OF COLOUR
ILLUSTRATION
JAPAN
STREETWEAR
P O H P I H s 0 9 Fig 4. Dasai Creative Concept Moodboard (teamwork)
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SKATER
Fig 5. Dasai Photoshoot Moodboard (teamwork)
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‘Assumptions and stereotypes stand in the way of building brands that understand customers and celebrate their uniqueness.’ - Wheeler
Left: Fig 6. Dasai Campaign Image (teamwork) Above: Fig 7. Dasai Bottle & Packaging (teamwork)
Our logo allows us to be flexible with changing the colour for various uses such as different social media platforms and we imagined changing it depending on the release of new fragrances in the line to reflect their scents and ingredients. Our bottle design is simple yet attractive, easy to use and to be carried around by our customer. For our print advertising campaign, obviously we wanted to again allude to our three original inspirations and a lot of our focus was on conveying the creativity and individuality of our product. We wanted to have more than one final image and liked the idea of having a series of advertisements, all in slightly different styles, to reflect the different personalities of our consumers and to be used for different purposes. We had several different ideas for communicating this message, some during the shoot such as an origami orchid, large cardboard cut-out shapes and projection of images for the models to interact with, as well as playing with the idea of illustration and creative effects during post-production. Casting and styling were very important in our shoot as we have a very specific target customer in mind. We chose two models who we believed were the perfect representation of this, as they had their own personal styles and creative interests such as photography, playing musical instruments and skateboarding. We also wanted two friends with a pre-existing relationship to
allow the shoot to look natural and genuine as the models played off each other. They wore their own clothes which we asked to be stylish but casual, and monochrome in colour to allow us to add the pops of pink we wanted to represent our brand in the form of props and post production. We were more inspired by interesting menswear fashion shoots than fragrance, as we believe that style is at the root of our brand. Our video concept was very much in keeping with this, using the same male models and placing them in context: on the streets of an urban setting. Again, this was focused on keeping the models natural looking in an environment out of the studio that they are comfortable in, so as to appear relatable and appealing to our customer. A big part of our concept is stepping away from the stereotypical, contrived and highly unrealistic men’s fragrance ads to find something more genuine and influenced by street wear culture and fashion brands. We wanted to create a typical sort of day in the life, follow around compilation video of clips of one of our consumers, inspired by old home videos and ad campaigns by some of our influencers, Supreme London and ASAP Rocky for Guess. We chose to use skateboards in the video as a mode of transport that we believe our customer would also use in their day-to-day life and made a nod to the 90’s with our choice of music: a Michael Jackson cover.
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Figs 8 & 9. Dasai Campaign Images (teamwork)
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BRAND ONION BRAND USP: We are different because we wanted to avoid the clichéd approach of seduction and over-masculinity by creating a fragrance that appeals to the man himself and his individuality, rather than just to be used as a tool to attract the opposite sex. Our fragrance allows the customer to express his creativity and sense of style, acting as a part of his outfit, and we speak to him in a cultural and intellectual way.
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This ‘Brand Onion’ diagram delves deeper into the essence of our brand. Within the ‘Heads & Hearts’ section, we believe that our vision is to create a brand and product that our male consumer can actually relate to and feels reflects their own personality. We believe that our target audience is not currently being catered for or marketed to correctly within the fragrance industry, as many do not identify with the cliché ‘sex-symbol’ story and are embarrassed to buy into it. Our consumer cares about his appearance and the clothing brands he wears, therefore we believe that fragrance should be an obvious extension of this image and lifestyle. Our core values are the qualities that we believe are at the root of our brand and we are constantly promoting. ‘Walking & Talking’ highlights how we communicate with our consumer in order to best connect with them. As the male shopper is becoming a more confident and savvy fragrance buyer, they appreciate being spoken to honestly
and intelligently, rather than having information dumbed down. They are starting to care more about where their products come from and what’s in them and this will affect which brands they buy into. Our target consumer is younger (18-30) and therefore responds well to communication online and via social media, particularly in the form of visuals as they are a creative, image conscious individual. Finally, ‘Proof & Pudding’ shows that we are aiming ourselves at the higher end of the mass market as we have a more niche customer who is willing to pay more to feel like they have a unique, less mainstream product. We see ourselves positioned similarly to brands such as Comme des Garcons who we aspire to. We do not see our customer particularly responding to clichés such as strap lines, but this sums up the idea behind our fragrance. We have also summarised briefly some of the insights that originally led us to this gap in the market.
Fig 10. Dasai Brand Onion (own work)
Fig 11. Dasai Campaign Image (team work)
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COMMUNICATION TOOLS & MEDIA CHANNELS
Fig 12. Dasai Website & Instagram Mockups (owm work)
Fig 13. Dasai Facebook Mockup (owm work)
EXECUTION & PLAN ‘Every interaction provides an opportunity for the business to differentiate itself from competitors, create value and ensure a positive experience for the customer.’ -Posner The main goal of our promotion plan for the next 12 months is to increase brand awareness and hopefully gain from this a loyal following of customers that will continue to grow. We know that we have a niche audience as we created our brand with a very specific consumer in mind. Therefore there is no point in throwing general advertising out to the mass market and hoping that the percentage of those that are our target customer will see it. We need to create specifically tailored advertising and promotions placed exactly where we know our consumer will see them in his everyday life. 75% of millennials have created at least one social media account. (The Guardian, March 2016) We know that our customer is creative, visual and cares about his image and so our main focus for creating brand awareness will be on social media such as Instagram and Twitter, where we would hope to initially attract his attention with our regular content and strategically placed advertising. We created a Social Media Plan to ensure that each of our accounts is in line with what our consumer aims to get out of the different platforms. Our Instagram is interesting and aesthetically pleasing, Facebook is personal and informative and our Twitter account is outspoken and witty.
Instagram is more likely to be used for style advice, while Twitter tends to be used for customer service support. Despite the continued popularity of Facebook, young people are increasingly using these other sites to engage with brands and show that they like an advert or campaign, meaning that Facebook will have less of a focus for us. Amongst young people there is also longer average visits per visitor and greater user acceptance of ads on media networks. (Mintel: Youth Fashion - UK - December 2014) All our advertising and social media will take customers straight to our website as our products will be sold exclusively online there and only in limited amounts in certain relevant clothing stores such as Urban Outfitters. We want to keep our website updated with regular content and information just as much as our social media in order to encourage potential consumers to visit as often as possible, keep them engaged and increase their likelihood of purchase. In the last few years there has been a notable shift in young people buying clothes online, the main change coming from young men, who are also more likely to buy at full price. This also benefits us as an aspiring fashion and lifestyle brand. (Mintel: Youth Fashion - UK - December 2014)
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‘Eighty million Millennials are the first generation to have grown up in a digital culture. Millennials aspire more to a set of values— freedom, knowledge, and creative self-expression— than to conspicuous consumption.’ -Wheeler
STEP 1: Attracting our target consumer’s attention with a specifically tailored focus on social media activity and advertisements to gain an initial interest and following, followed by web, print and billboard advertising. STEP 2: Stimulating further interest by collaborating with other individual creators such as bloggers to promote our product and creating our own regular video content to post on Youtube, raising brand awareness. STEP 3: Generating consumer desire by placing our advertising in the path of all possible consumer touch points such as the use of Spotify advertising and highlighting the individual and exclusive selling points of our product. STEP 4: Prompting the consumer to go to our website, the only place online to buy our product, and where they can sign up to communicate directly with us, receive exclusive content, limited-time offers and information about our brand. They can also find us in store at certain retailers to experience our product in the flesh before purchase.
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Fig 14. Dasai Consumer Decision Process (pwn work)
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Fig 15, 16 & 17. Dasai Advertising Visualisation (0wn work)
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‘The masses want videos. YouTube is the second most utilized search engine on the planet, and brands have created their own channels that function as wellcurated playlists.’ -Wheeler Above: Fig 18. Dasai Advertising Visualisation (own work) Right: Fig 19. Dasai Timeline of Events (own work)
SEASONAL PROMOTION
During our first Summer we plan to continue down the social media route and aim to collaborate with relevant street style bloggers and Instagrammers to raise brand awareness. We also plan to do this by launching our own YouTube Channel and collaborating with creators on there in order to produce short, regular videos, be it music, skateboarding etc. which show the lifestyle around our brand, engage and capture the attention of our consumer and allow us to communicate with them directly. We are a very visual brand and want to promote our core message of encouraging creativity. The rapid growth of short-form online video has become a significant part of people's media consumption habits. Millennials in particular are increasingly prioritising the mobile friendly and easily sharable content, with roughly 62% of 16 - 24 year old Smartphone owners watching videos on their device. (Mintel: Media Consumption Habits - UK September 2015)
During Winter we intend to extend our fragrance line allowing for the release of a gift set, as many of our target consumer's said that they still did not purchase their own fragrance and this may introduce them to our brand. We will also branch out into some more conventional forms of advertising, for example print ads in relevant men's fashion and music magazines such as 'Clash'. Should our YouTube advertising go well, we would also like to begin advertising on the website Spotify as it is increasing in popularity with our target demographic and reflects our consumer's interests. Three quarters of music streamers have used YouTube to stream music in the last three months, followed by Spotify’s ad-supported version (44%). (Mintel: Media Consumption Habits - UK - September 2015) The limited number of Spotify Premium subscribers against ad-free subscribers also suggests that our consumer would not be against listening to our advertising in this environment. (Mintel: Music and Video Streaming - UK -April 2016)
‘Compelling experiences attract new customers, extend customer loyalty, and, if they are truly differentiated, command a premium. Every customer interaction must be viewed as an opportunity.’ -Wheeler
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Fig 20. Dasai Campaign Image (teamwork)
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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Front Cover. Dasai Photoshoot Image (own work) 2016 Fig 1. Dasai Photo & Videoshoot Montage (own work) 2016 Fig 2. Dasai Photoshoot Image (teamwork) 2016 Fig 3. Dasai Campaign Image (teamwork) 2016 Fig 4. Dasai Creative Concept Moodboard (teamwork) 2016 Fig 5. Dasai Photoshoot Moodboard (teamwork) 2016 Fig 6. Dasai Campaign Image (teamwork) 2016 Fig 7. Dasai Bottle & Packaging (teamwork) 2016 Fig 8. Dasai Campaign Image (teamwork) 2016 Fig 9. Dasai Campaign Image (teamwork) 2016 Fig 10. Dasai Brand Onion (own work) 2016, Adapted from Image: https://martinotoole. files.wordpress.com/2013/04/ mot-brand-wheel1.jpg Fig 11. Dasai Campaign Image (teamwork) 2016
LIST OF REFERENCES
Fig 12. Dasai Website & Instagram Mockups (own work) 2016, Adapted from Image: http://stage-presents.com/ The Guardian. The Millennials wp-content/uploads/2014/10/ October-Calendar-Mockups.jpg Not on Social Media, March 2016. Available at: http://www. Fig 13. Dasai Facebook Mockup theguardian.com/us(own work) 2016, Adapted from news/2016/feb/01/millennialsImage: https://static.pexels. not-on-social-media-twittercom/photos/1185/apple-deskfacebook-instagram office-technology.jpg (Accessed: 1st June 2016) Fig 14. Dasai Consumer Decision Hegarty, John. Hegarty on Process (own work) 2016 Creativity: There are No Rules. Fig 15. Dasai Advertising London, UK: Thames and Visualisation (own work) 2016, Hudson, 2014. Adapted from Image: www. Mintel. Media Consumption behance.net Habits UK, September 2015. Fig 16. Dasai Advertising Available at: academic.mintel. Visualisation (own work) com, (Accessed : 1st June 2016) 2016, Adapted from Image: Mintel. Music Video Streaming sadirebsch.com UK, April 2016. Available Fig 17. Dasai Advertising at: academic.mintel.com, Visualisation (own work) 2016, (Accessed: 1st June 2016) Adapted from Image: Mintel. Youth Fashion UK, todayssalt.com December 2014. Available Fig 18. Dasai Advertising at: academic.mintel.com, Visualisation (own work) (Accessed: 1st June 2016) 2016, Adapted from Image: villalobosdigitalstudios. wordpress.com Fig 19. Dasai Timeline of Events (own work) 2016 Fig 20. Dasai Campaign Image (teamwork) 2016
Posner, Harriet. Marketing Fashion: Strategy, Branding and Promotion (2nd). London, UK: Laurence King, 2015. Wheeler, Alina. Designing Brand Identity: An Essential Guide for the Whole Branding Team (4th). Somerset, US: Wiley, 2012.
BIBLIOGRAPHY BOOKS: Cope, Jon & Maloney, Dennis. Fashion Promotion in Practice. London, UK: Bloomsbury, 2016. Hegarty, John. Hegarty on Creativity: There are No Rules. London, UK: Thames and Hudson, 2014. Posner, Harriet. Marketing Fashion: Strategy, Branding and Promotion (2nd). London, UK: Laurence King, 2015. Wheeler, Alina. Designing Brand Identity: An Essential Guide for the Whole Branding Team (4th). Somerset, US: Wiley, 2012. ADDITIONAL SOURCES: The Guardian. The Millennials Not on Social Media, March 2016. Available at: http://www. theguardian.com/usnews/2016/feb/01/millennialsnot-on-social-media-twitterfacebook-instagram (Accessed: 1st June 2016) Mintel. Leisure Habits Of Millennials UK, August 2015. Available at: academic.mintel. com, (Accessed: 1st June 2016)
Mintel. Media Consumption Habits UK, September 2015. Available at: academic.mintel. com, (Accessed : 1st June 2016) Mintel. Music Video Streaming UK, April 2016. Available at: academic.mintel.com, (Accessed: 1st June 2016) Mintel. Youth Fashion UK, December 2014. Available at: academic.mintel.com, (Accessed: 1st June 2016) Nexis UK. Selling to Millennial Men vs Millennial Women, May 2016. Available at: http://www. business2community.com/ marketing/selling-millennialmen-vs-millennial-women, (Accessed: 1st June 2016) Social Media Week. Marketing to Millennials, July 2015. Available at: http://socialmediaweek.org/ blog/2015/07/marketing-tomillennials/ (Accessed: 1st June 2016)
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