FMP PLANNING & TESTING
KIT DICKSON
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Contents Introduction
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Life of Kit
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Strategy
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Initial Testing
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Plans in Motion
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TikTok LIVE
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Testing
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What Next?
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Campaign
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References
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Introduction I must first address the fact that my original visual campaign has evolved in this direction. I found that my concept photo shoot was a great testing exercise that has led to the rebranding of myself and the inspiration behind the concept of marketing myself as a social media influencer. From ‘Life of Kit’ to ‘Influencer Kit’. My FMP is the testing and execution stage of my visual campaign. Following the planning, research and development stage of the ‘360 campaign’, I have decided to continue with my plan to market myself as a social media influencer. After my research into different social media platforms, I decided to discount Twitch, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, for now, my main focus will be on Instagram and TikTok. I decided to focus on only two social media platforms as I knew that consistency would be key to the success of my brand and campaign and that it would be hard to create a schedule of content creation for too many different social media outlets at one time. Therefore, I decided to be realistic in my approach to ensure maximum success and that I wasn’t spreading myself too thinly. In addition to this, my knowledge of TikTok and Instagram is much deeper and wellinformed, therefore I felt most comfortable starting with these two platforms. Other social media outlets are something, I can expand into in the future depending on the success of my brand and campaign. The idea behind my visual campaign is to successfully market myself as a social media influencer, I will create a visual representation of the planning and projection of my brand to back this up and showcase what this will look like. My intention is to create a full Instagram feed of content to showcase how I will engage and capture my audience, developing a loyal following and a clear market position. With my gap in the market and target audience already identified as consumers of genderless fashion, the beauty industry and members of the LGBTQ+ community, I will be able to market myself with these factors in mind to create a more successful campaign. I will support this intention by testing my abilities as a content creator, through Live Streaming on platforms such as TikTok, participating in trends and viral videos and challenges, developing a style and finding out what content I am comfortable making.
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Life of Kit The Life of Kit campaign’s goal was to create a safe space for people to explore fashion, makeup and themselves. This concept in itself was not the issue. The issue was the lack of planning and testing. Many of the ideas in the projection section of my brand book would have been more suitable to have as the main campaign. I found that the concept was too general to work as an initial starting point. Therefore, I have decided to go back to the drawing board, this is where the 360 modules helped me as it allowed me to identify my target audience, genderless fashion and beauty consumers, more specifically. As well as this I was able to plan a concept that could lead to the expansion into the projection ideas that I had mentioned previously. While I enjoyed the shoot for Life of Kit and I was really pleased with the outcome, I feel that I needed to have more prior testing and planning before to back this up and make it better in order for it to be used as a visual campaign for the Chameleon 2.0 brand. The Chameleon 2.0 brand will not be used for this campaign as I have rebranded to simply Kit Dickson. This is because I want to gain recognition and identification from my audience. I also want to be on a more personal note with my consumer to gain loyalty and truly become at one with my brand. Chameleon 2.0 is still a concept I would consider developing in the future however, I feel I need to establish myself as an influencer as an initial starting point first. This will give my brand some longevity and the option to cross over into different fields and areas of content creation. The Life of Kit campaign gave me the opportunity to collaborate with a photographer and utilise the skills I have learned modelling for other people, for example, planning and using mood boards and reference photos for makeup, posing, styling and editing. this gave me the confidence to plan my own shoots again going forward and helped me learn about lighting and photography techniques.
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Strategy Intention For my FMP Visual Campaign, I wish to market myself as a social media influencer, with a clear plan of my Instagram feed that has been executed to the highest possible standard. I will utilise the planning I have already done in the 360 module to inform how I will achieve this outcome, for example, the content creation schedule.
Market from the 20x20 research, I have been able to establish that I sit in the genderless fashion and beauty market, I will react to this by not only creating content that is inspired by current trends in fashion and makeup but transcending what is popular now with looking to the future of what direction fashion will take. I will do this by showcasing my individual tastes and style to create a truly authentic experience for my consumer. From my research, I have found that this approach to content creation is the most successful.
Consumer My target audience for this campaign will be consumers of genderless fashion and beauty, this will likely relate to a large amount of the LGBTQ+ community as well as the general beauty, makeup and fashion communities. I would like to create a safe space where my consumer can feel a sense of escapism when viewing or engaging with my content. As an influencer I wish to inspire self-expression, experimentation and a judgement-free zone, this means that it is likely that my consumer may wish to buy into fast fashion. While my values are typically sustainability focused, I appreciate that not everyone will have the disposable income to afford luxury fashion products, therefore I want to make it my mission to educate my consumer on the importance of upcycling, recycling and adding value and versatility through accessorising.
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Initial Testing My confidence in front of the grown immensely and I believe this is due to exposure to it. Once upon a time, I would have been far too shy to pose in the middle of the skatepark, much to the annoyance of the actual skaters. Through modelling for friends, and other students and even walking the runway at a graduate fashion design show, I have been able to conquer this fear and actually enjoy the process. A big part of influencing is having your picture taken, especially as the type of content I wish to create is showcasing my makeup, style and personality. This means that I had to normalise posing for pictures, in studios and in public. In order to do this, I decided to volunteer myself as a model for anyone and everyone who asked. This meant I was able to build a sort of portfolio, discover my angles and find out what type of setting I enjoy and feel comfortable in. Location shoots were more daunting than studio shoots, I found it harder to let loose and be free with posing, I found I needed more direction in this area compared to when I am in a studio setting. I really enjoyed working with the people I have modelled for as I found that I follow direction really well and worked well with them so that they could achieve their desired outcome. Through mood boards and examples, I was able to fully understand their visions, this has helped me when it comes to my own shoots and taking pictures for my social media platforms, having clear planning in terms of mood boards, setting, lighting and equipment can make the process much easier and allow for a better outcome. The studio is easier to shoot in as there aren’t as many uncontrollable variables that you get on-location shoots, for example, weather, lighting, wind, sunlight etc. this can affect the image in a negative and a positive way. For example, natural light can often enhance an image and create a nice mood for your photo, however, it can also oversaturate an image and take away from an outfit or makeup. These factors are important for me to consider as clothing and makeup are the main themes of what I will be photographing. Testing myself by volunteering to model for these shoots has allowed me to gain confidence and knowledge of what poses, settings, lighting and angles I look best in. this will help me when it comes to creating content and the ability to plan and execute my own shoots to the best of my ability. Knowing what I am comfortable and confident in means I will be able to easily interact and work with photographers as well as take my own pictures.
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(Houston, 2022)
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(Wright, 2022)
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(Soper, 2022)
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(Soper, 2022)
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(Kecskes, 2022)
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Plans in motion I would like to begin by discussing how I put my plans into motion; from my 360 research and planning, I was able to identify that a starting point for my visual campaign would be utilising the TikTok social media platform as the main initial focus. The goal is to establish a following, engage my audience and test the waters in terms of what kind of content I enjoy, and feel is reflective of me in order to be as true and authentic as possible. In order to access the TikTok Live function, which is what I wanted to utilise in order to gain an initial following, a user must already have at least 1000 followers. This meant I had to post content before I could utilise the Livestream function. I began by creating ‘transformation’ TikTok videos in the style of other creators such as Niall Casey. While I managed to gain the following in order to access the TikTok Live function, I also found that I struggled to create the content, spending a large portion of time and failed attempts before successfully being able to master the transitions and edit the video to a degree that I felt happy with. I would also like to discuss branding here; in order to make myself recognisable to my consumer and my brand identity stronger, I decided to make my handle on both social media platforms the same. As well as the profile picture. The name I chose was @kitdicksonn on both TikTok and Instagram. I decided on this because just @kitdickson was taken, therefore I added the extra n and changed the profile name to Kit Dickson on both. This has allowed me to maintain a cohesive presence across all social media platforms that I wish to grow.
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TikTok LIVE
After I was able to unlock the TikTok Live feature I was able to begin engaging and organically growing my audience, I tested out a variety of videos, mostly ‘Get Ready with Me’ content as this is what I enjoy as a consumer. However, I also tried to keep my mind open to other types of content such as Mukbang videos (eating on camera), however as you can see this wasn’t as successful as my other Live Streams. The analytics also show that I gained at least 20 new followers per live stream, this type of organic growth will help me to reach my target audience more quickly.
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Testing I wanted to gain experience in taking pictures in different settings, therefore I started asking my friends to take pictures of me on nights out and out in public mostly so that I could get comfortable with having my picture taken in public as this is the kind of content I would be looking to create as an influencer.
This is an example of a test shoot I did on a night out. I used my iPhone and the flash setting on. Despite the red-eye effect that comes with the flash, I like the quality and feel of the image however it does require editing to remove the red eyes and focus the image more. From this test, I learned that I like the angle of my face to be right facing and showcase the left side of my face, as this is the side where my jawbone looks more prominent. My face is unsymmetrical so tilting it or facing slightly to the side helps me to combat this. In terms of setting and background, I am not keen on this shoot however I like the styling and makeup; therefore, I would consider attempting to recreate this look in a different setting. The setting is quite dark which may not fit into the summery theme of my Instagram feed currently, however, I could look at posting this in the future.
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My top image from this test shoot.
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Test shoot 2.
This shoot was outside, I really like the green and blue natural background and setting. This location is definitely somewhere I would use again for future content. That being said the natural sunlight almost washed me out slightly, I think I could have combatted this by facing a different direction perhaps or utilising some photography equipment to reflect the light off my face. That being said I like the overall photo however, for me the quality is lacking, and it isn’t up to scratch. Filming outside is often harder as you have to consider external factors such as weather and lighting. These uncontrollable variables can make for really interesting shots, but also make it hard to follow a strict plan.
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Test shoot 3.
This test shoot was again located at night-time in a bar, while I enjoyed the experience, I gained from having my picture taken in a more public setting I was also not as pleased with the results. That being said I tried to shoot with and without the flash and preferred the shots with the flash setting on. I think relying on someone else to take my picture who wasn’t someone I had used before was something I would not do again as I don’t think the results are quite up to the standard that I desired.
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What Next? From my testing I can see that I prefer to conduct my shoots in a controlled environment such as a study, this is so that I can avoid any external factors such as poor weather and lighting conditions. I have also found that the effect of using the flash setting is hit and miss, sometimes I like the effect and sometimes I don’t. With that in mind, I am not going to take it forward as a technique I can utilise in my visual campaign. For my visual campaign imagery, I would like to utilise natural light in the setting of an indoor space, for example, the ‘golden hour’ effect. This is when the sun shines into a room and the subject poses in the light of this. For example, this effect can be achieved in my bedroom between half past 6 pm and 8 pm. This window of time allows for a full photoshoot where I can control the outcome of the image more easily than being outside in direct sunlight.
Planning for the event of poor weather where the sun may be obstructed at this time, I decided to invest in a ring light/tripod so that I could use a self-timer setting on my phone to take pictures of myself with the right lighting to properly showcase my makeup and outfit close-ups in the best quality.
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Here is an example of the ‘golden hour’ effect. I have found that in my room the sun shines between 6 pm and 8 pm, providing at least two hours for the ability to shoot imagery. The window allows for a portion of the light to enter the room, this is a great way to play around with natural light in a shoot. The controlled environment allows for more experimentation with the lighting, whereas if you were to shoot this outside, the effect would be different s there would be less able to control the sunlight with blinds or curtains etc.
I have planned to utilise this method in my campaign however, I wanted to plan for the eventuality that the sun didn’t come out or was obstructed. Therefore, I made the decision to invest in a ring light/tripod to combat this, as well as a smaller tripod I can use to hold my camera on the self-timer setting for my shoot.
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Campaign For my campaign, I would like to take forward the ‘golden hour’ setting and use this method to create an Instagram grid that is aesthetically pleasing and communicates my core values, beliefs and style to my consumer. I will be continuing to use the content creation schedule and planning from my 360-research module to inform and inspire my social media platforms, content and feeds. My testing stage has taught me the methods which I need to harness in order to create my desired outcome. This will all help to market myself as a social media influencer and kickstart this career path. My methods of testing have included testing myself as a model, testing my reaction to being photographed in different locations and situations, and my knowledge of photography and lighting. From my testing I have also learned that I value collaboration with photographers, however, for this project, I doubt it is really due to timing and scheduling conflicts. I would have collaborated with the same photographer I used for the ‘Life of Kit’ campaign as I was really pleased with the results, however, she did not have availability for the time frame I required. Therefore, instead of using someone that, I did not have the time to test and vet, I have decided to go forward taking charge of the photography, modelling, lighting and post-production. ‘Influencer Kit’ is a one-man-band. The future will likely see me collaborate again with photographers and other content creators however, for this campaign I would like to work solo to showcase my own skills fully and again to portray myself in a more relatable light to my consumer. This will enable me to connect with them and showcase my authentic self, hopefully resulting in a bigger following and a push on organic growth. From my testing of social media platforms, I have found that TikTok is a really good place for organic growth, especially the TikTok Live function which allowed me to gain followers and channel them to my Instagram. This method of promotion has allowed me to gain followers in the testing stage of my campaign which is something I had not anticipated.
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References Fig 1. Houston, H. (2022). Dystopian Rose [Photography]. Chester; Online Exhibition. Fig 2. Wright, M. (2022). Alpha [Photography]. Chester; Online Exhibition.
Fig 3. Soper, H. (2022). Limited Edition [Photography]. Chester; Online Exhibition. Fig 4. Soper, H. (2022). Limited Edition Test [Photography]. Chester; Online Exhibition. Fig 5. Kecskes, P. (2022). Beta [Photography]. Chester; Online Exhibition.
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