T he A mazing H uman B rain Processes 3,000
advertisements per day .
The hippocampus of is somewhere in advertisements this part of the brain. The end up here in hippocampus decides which the front cortex- the ads are worth remembering and decision making part which are to be discarded. For an of our brain. Once ad to be noteworthy, it must “break here, they become a This through” to the front cortex. part of our conscious and is thus we find our brains where telling us to buy iPods, 98% of An account planner’s drink Starbucks or “Do ads end up, job is to figure out what it the Dew.” never to be takes to get into a consumer’s thought about front cortex. The only way to do again. this is to live with, breath with and observe the consumer., no matter how far outside your comfort level you are. 2%
M y B rain
Left Side
of my
Brain Right Side
Makes up 60% of my brain Likes research and numbers Felix Trivial Pursuit Wikipedia Discovery Channel Public Transport Charlie Rose Crosswords The New Yorker
of my
Brain
The other 40% of my brain Likes presentations and briefings Oscar Pictionary YouTube HBO/Showtime Road Trips Stephen Colbert Paint by numbers The New Yorker
case study
D unkin ’ D onuts
D unkin ’ D onuts Assignment
Dunkin’ Donuts’ afternoon coffee sales are colder than a cup of day old joe. Our job was to increase all of Dunkin’s coffee drink sales from the hours of 2 p.m. to 5 p.m.
Insights
and
S t r at e g y
If someone doesn’t go to Dunkin’ in the morning, they’re definitely not going to go in the afternoon so focus became to increase current Dunkin’ customers’ usage. Through blogs, Mintel reports and replies to a feeler e-mail I sent to my friends in the Northeast, I recognizing trends among Dunkin’s core. Everyday customers see Dunkin’ as just that- something everyday. It’s not a destination or a treat but a pit stop on the way to a typical day of work. The obvious question then became “what’s a typical day?” I asked five avid Dunkin’ customers from a construction worker to a fulltime mom to an office temp to keep a journal for “a typical day.” Examining their responses, one thing stood out- their afternoons were physically the same as their mornings, only their attitude changed. They sat in the same desk, worked on the same job site or went back to the same school to pick up the children they dropped off 8 hours before. They all went to Dunkin’ in the morning, but even though three of the respondents reported feeling tired after lunch and one even mentioned Dunkin’, none of them went back in the afternoon. There was no connection between being tired in the afternoon versus the morning.
T he B ig I dea
Compare afternoons and mornings and let people know that the coffee they use to energize themselves in the morning will energize them in the afternoon just as well.
C r e at i v e B r i e f i n g
Instead of just telling the creatives that people’s mornings and afternoons are the same; I wanted to show them. I created a picture timeline (below) of an office worker’s typical day.
The first three frames are current prime Dunkin’ hours- the drive to work, arriving at work and sitting at a desk. Lunch comes and then the routine is the same, except in reverse. People are not going to Dunkin’ in the afternoon because they don’t realize how similar their afternoons are to their mornings. I told the creatives to remind them.
D unkin ’ D onuts
C r e at i v e
[B i llb o a r d ]
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case study
P hillips L ighting
P hillips L ighting Assignment Phillips Lighting wants to become known as a leader in energy efficient light bulbs, which are also known as compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs). Our assignment was to increase sales of Phillips CFLs.
TASK: To increase sales of CFLs for Phillips Lighting.
I n s i g h t s a n d S t r at e g y We decided to focus on people who have made a decision to switch to CFLs but have yet to do so. Unlike early adopters, who were mainly environmentalists, many of the people now making the switch to CFLs are doing so for non-environmental reasons such as electricity savings or longevity.
DESCRIBE WHO WE’RE TALKING TO The 90% of homeowners who haven’t bought a CFL yet. Not the environmentalists but the Wal-Mart shopping American. They’ve seen Oprah or some talking head on TV talking about CFLs and they’ve decided to check them out next time they’re shopping for light bulbs. They’re not very well informed but they know that CFLs are supposed to be cheaper in the long term and they’re supposed to last a long time.
Viewing light bulb purchasers at a Target, I was surprised to find no difference between CFL buyers and incandescent buyers. I realized that people see CFLs as they do incandescents, a low-involvement, thinking purchase. Since people were only spending a couple of seconds picking out CFLs, it seemed important to find a unique selling proposition that Phillips could get CFL buyers with. Hard data on CFLs is still scarce so I relied on magazine and newspaper articles and kept a tally of factors journalists thought were important. The three most mentioned were price, light quality and longevity. Of those three the one that stood out was longevity. The industry standard for a CFL is 10,000 hours. Phillips best seller, the Phillips Marathon is rated at 12,000 hours. Phillips also has a reputation for quality, something that goes hand in hand with longevity.
WHAT’S STOPPING THEM FROM BUYING A PHILLIPS CFL? Disinterest. They’re not going to spend an hour in the light bulb aisle examining the pros and cons of a Phillips CFL versus a GE one. As they go down the light bulb aisle, they’re at maximum devoting brain space to one proposition about CFLs. Therefore Phillips needs to have one proposition and one proposition only about CFLs so that when these people finally do come down the light bulb aisle, they immediately associate Phillips with it.
T he B ig I dea
Communicate in real world terms, not just hours, that Phillips CFLs last the longest.
CREATIVE BRIEF
SO WHAT IS THE PROPOSITION? CFLs last a long time but Phillips last the longest. SUPPORT • Phillips CFLs last twenty percent longer than the average CFL. • The average lifespan of a human is five Phillips’ CFLs. • The Civil War lasted half a Phillips’ CFL. WHAT BRAND CHARACTER DO WE WANT TO REFLECT? Wise, savvy, humorous. Anything positive associated with age.
P hillips L ighting C r e at i v e
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case study
H ormel
H ormel Time Line
of
Project Blockbuster
Week One & Two
The first thing I did was buy a big pack of post-its and stick up every protein product that came to mind. I also started research on potential targets. Hormel had told us they wanted to focus on a younger market and so I started to examine ways Gen-Y and Gen-X see food differently than Baby Boomers.
Assignment: Project Blockbuster Hormel came to Miami Ad School looking to move beyond its core users of older, white Americans- the Spam users. They wanted a “protein-based” product that would help them reach a younger audience and that had the potential to be a “blockbuster.” Our job was to develop, advertise and market this new product. Two months of work culminated with a presentation in front of Hormel’s CEO.
The biggest difference I found was expectations. Gen-Y and Gen-X don’t demand good food- they expect it. Yet they do not have the time traditionally associated with quality. Baby Boomers by contrast like high-end meals as much as Gen-Y or Gen-X, but they like the time to enjoy them. Gen-Y and Gen-X want excellent food to go. This trend of quality and convenience I called the conflicted foodie.
Week Three & Four
I turned my attention to the retail food market and found it’s moving towards high end products. Not surprising considering what Gen-Y and Gen-X are demanding. The main trend is to make the product an experience, from everyday to gourmet. Once boring products like condiments and frozen pizza now have twenty or thirty competitors trying to top each other in terms of quality and exotic flavors.
Week Five & Six
My group racked our collective brains trying to think of what meat products were currently everyday but had the potential to become gourmet? Some ideas we had were good, some decent and some just plain bad. Going into a meeting with Hormel, we picked the three we thought were strongest100 calorie meat wraps, grilled nuggets and caffeinated jerky. The day before the meeting, sitting in a doctor’s waiting room, I had the idea of hot dogs. When I got home I did a Lexis-Nexis search of hot dogs and realized that gourmet hot dogs were already a trend on the coast. The group liked the idea and Gourmet Hot Dogs became our fourth finalist.
H ormel
Week Seven
Hormel let us know that two of our four ideas, caffeinated jerky and 100 calorie meat wraps were not feasible so I made a survey on SurveyMonkey asking people their opinions on our other two choices: hot dogs and grilled chicken nuggets. People’s responses for gourmet hot dogs surprised me with their enthusiasm. The majority of people surveyed said they liked hot dogs yet reported only eating them at ball games or picnics, not at home. Follow up e-mails indicated that young people used to eat hot dogs at home as children but now that they were older, a simple hot dog didn’t appeal to them. Looking at the responses, I realized why gourmet hot dog restaurants were so busy: people’s taste for hot dogs had not gone away; it had just been hidden under blandness. Both my gut and my insights told me that Gourmet hot dogs was Hormel’s blockbuster.
T h e H o r m e l H au t e D o g
Week Eight
The group unanimously decided on Gourmet hot dogs leaving us to come up with a name, packaging, advertising and everything else that comes with launching a new product. The name Hormel Haute Dog seemed a natural fit and was quickly agreed on. I started another SurveyMonkey survey asking people what flavors they’d like to see on a hot dog and worked on finding old Hormel packaging for my art director.
Week Nine
With the presentation one week away. I started working on the PowerPoint presentation itself. Since I only had thirteen minutes to present, I had to make sure to be very succinct and it took me four outlines and two rewrites before I finally felt had a good working script.
The Presentation
The presentation went extremely smoothly and to my surprise everybody seemed to pay close attention (some people even turned off their Blackberry!) and before I knew it, the entire thing was over. In the end though we did not win. It’s disappointing to lose but it’s also a part of this business and I know not take it personally. Instead I asked Hormel on what I did well and what I need to improve on and I made sure to listen to their advice. That way, I can avoid the same mistakes when an assignment like this comes along again.
• • • • •
Refrigerated Single Serving 3 oz All-beef frankfurter Poppy seed bun Comes fully prepared with toppings
S ample F lavors
Chilidog: tone ground Dijon mustard, sautéed onions, black bean chili, corn relish Bbq: Apricot bbq glaze, grilled onion, cole slaw Alpine: Gruyere, sautéed onion, sautéed mushrooms, sauerkraut with stone ground mustard Cali: Monterrey jack, avocado, bacon, sun dried tomato aoli Suggested Retail Price: $3.29
H ormel Packaging
H ormel C r e at i v e
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[R e a c h
in
Cooler Poster]
O wen M orris
913-636-2212 owendmorris@gmail.com
Objective: To explain in simple terms, the rationality behind peoples’ seemingly irrational decisions. Education: Miami Ad School, Minneapolis, MN. AP Bootcamp. Summer 2007
Planner/Presenter of a 4 person team on numerous real-world assignments Develop presenting skills for business clients, including the CEO of a Fortune 500 Company.
University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS. Graduated: Spring 2007 B.S. in Strategic Communications with an emphasis on advertising. GPA: 3.1 overall, 3.4 in major
Experience: Account Planning Intern, Barkley (formerly Barkley Evergreen). Kansas City, Missouri. June – December 2006
I wrote a series of three different mini-books on Gen-Y’s attitudes and beliefs which I turned into a 45 minute presentation that I gave to the 350 plus people in the agency. Kept on as a Gen-Y consultant after internship was over and worked full- time during school breaks. Worked on national accounts- Blue Bunny, Build-a-Bear, Citgo and two new biz pitches.
Editor & Writer, University Daily Kansan, Lawrence, KS. January 2005 – May 2006 I was the trends writer for one semester, focusing on stories such as Abercrombie’s “package-enhancing” jeans and Facebook’s effect on dating. Also editor of Tongue in Beak, the once-a-month satire section in the campus newspaper.
Computer Skills: Adobe Photoshop CS2. Adobe Illustrator CS2. All Office Programs. MAC/PC Proficient Planning Skills:
Lexis-Nexis, Mintel, Census.gov, ethnographic watching, man-on-the-street interviews, presentations, many more to learn.
Life Skills: Can drive a stick, have no fear of bugs or rodents, know how to tie a bow tie and I also make a darn good cup of coffee Interests: Rock climbing. Buildering. ½ Marathons. Baking. Marx Brothers. Play-Writing. People Watching. Lot’s of Reading, References available upon request