SPAM

Re-launch SPAM




Click on the image to read advertorial.

Click on the image to read advertorial.


SPAM is not a particularly trendy food. In fact, SPAM-eating seems to have developed a bit of a stigma. One woman confided in a whisper, “I really like SPAM, I have it every day for my lunch. My colleagues think I'm a bit weird, but I love it.” This campaign aims to play on this simple admission, promoting SPAM-eating as an underground movement. Creating fresh intrigue around a well established product to draw in a new audience.

Willie's Cacao - Online Brand Campaign

Background

Willie's Cacao is a premium product, made with the “finest, rarest, most expensive cacao in the world” (www.venezuelanblack.com). Willie's Cacao is chocolate at it's best, an ingredient and not a cheap snack food. Chocolate in this form has more uses than people imagine, enriching anything from aromatic truffles, cakes and creamy hot chocolate to dark savoury sauces, gravy and casseroles. It is versatile and adaptable and can be used in both savoury and sweet dishes.

The product was launched as Venezuelan Black 100% Cacao with a TV series 'Willie's Wonky Chocolate Factory' which followed the eccentric Willie Harcourt-Cooze along his journey to be the first chocolate producer to grow and make 100 per cent cacao from bean to bar.

Channel 4 viewer profiles suggests the programme appealed to middle class adults with a slightly female bias and supports the fact that Willie's Cacao is likely to appeal to a similar TA. The show was part travelogue, following Willie and his family to South America to harvest the cocoa crop from his own plantation; part cookery programme, as Willie demonstrated a range of different and unusual ways of cooking with his chocolate. It is this aspect of the show which is likely to have appealed to serious home cookers and chocolate lovers who would form the TA for this campaign. According to Cadbury's 2003 report “women continue to be the largest purchasers of confectionery, primarily for Home Consumption, Sharing Occasions and Giving.”

The product is available to buy in Selfridges, Waitrose and a short list of specialist sellers.

Since the TV show there has not been any noticable advertising to market Willie's Cacao. The brands online presence is poor with different art direction and tone of voice being used across three separate sites. The most recent site shows a current and much needed rebrand in process. This was not in evidence at the beginning of the project but was in line with the identified target audience and character of the brand discovered through research here. The new brand identifies Willie's fun and slightly eccentric character as one of the great selling points of the brand by using his name in the logo. With the new logo creating a much stronger and more appropriate brand identity it was therefore incorporated into the campaign undertaken here.

A fresh brand campaign would target a new audience and jog the memories of those who may have seen or heard about the show but who didn't research the product further first time around. This may have been because they did not have immediate access to the internet while the programme was being aired, while online adverts provide a direct link to further information instantly.

According to a Yahoo! report 'Research Online, Buy Offline: The Impact of Online Pre-Shopping on consumer Shopping Behaviour' (Yahoo! and comScore, July 2007) “While consumers have the option to purchase online the majority of shoppers turn to the Internet to 'pre-shop' for information about products before they head to the store to make a purchase.” As for the power of online advertising in actually increasing in shop sales they note, “Most retailers know that online advertising drives online sales. According to this study online advertising drives in-store sales at a much higher rate than online sales, indicating the value of online advertising is perhaps many times greater than currently recognized.” In this way an online campaign could be used to drive sales both instore and online while increasing general brand awareness.

In 2006, 67% of the total GB population was online (NOP World, December 2006) with the second most popular activity on the internet after using e-mail being sourcing information on activities and interests. This suggests that people who consider cooking and food to be an interest and who would therefore be in our TA for Willie's Cacao are likely to look online for information. Online advertising would target the consumers who are now looking online for their recipes and cooking advice giving them the perfect platform to instantly learn more about the product and it's uses and instant access to purchasing.

In terms of media placement www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/foodanddrink and www.uktv.co.uk/food/homepage are appropriate.

The 'Life & Style' pages (which include the food and drink pages) of www.guardian.co.uk received 4, 022, 326 UK page impressions in August 2008 (Omniture August 2008) This was the 5^th most viewed section of the online newspaper out of 21 sections recorded.

The readership of the 'Life & Style' pages is defined by www.guardian.co.uk as “Upmarket, affluent and female” with 69% of the readership being females compared to an internet average of 48% and 74% being ABC1 compared to a 58% internet average (Forrester Internet User Monitor May 2008). This fits in with the TA for Willie's Cacao.

Competitor brands

Green and Blacks does not produce a 100% Cacao bar but is one of the leading premium chocolate brands in the UK. This is convenient for Willie's Cacao as it removes this established brand from direct competition. The fact that Green and Blacks have established themselves relatively quickly (they started up in 1991) as such a leading brand makes them an interesting reference point for possible campaign strategies for Willie's Cacao. 5 years ago Green and Blacks was still a relatively unheard of brand and chose to increase brand awareness with a give-away on The Observer Food Monthly, this continued with other glossy magazines (www.chocolate.org/green-blacks.html). This could prove to be a successful method to employ for Willie's Cacao in conjunction with an online campaign.

Brief Overview
Produce an interactive online ad campaign to promote brand awareness and online sales of Willie’s Supreme Cacao. Encourage people to find out more online about the brand and the uses of the products in cooking.
This campaign was academic and is not endorsed by the brand.

Why are we doing this?
To promote sales and product awareness of the Venezuelan Black.

Who are we talking to?
Serious home cookers, chocolate lovers and professional chefs with an interest in high quality products and the money to spend on them. Food lovers.

What is the key insight?
This is chocolate at it's best, as an ingredient not as a cheap snack food. Chocolate has more uses than people imagine.

What is the one thing we want to say?
Venezuelan Black is a premium ingredient for your cooking.

Why should I believe it?
Venezuelan Black is made from 100% cacao. The finest, rarest, most expensive cacao in the world.
Venezuelan Black can be used in a multitude of ways, enriching anything from aromatic truffles, cakes and creamy hot chocolate to dark savoury sauces, gravy and casseroles. Its delicious, distinctive 100% pure cacao flavour is exceptionally versatile and adaptable.
http://www.venezuelanblack.com/index.html

What tone of voice?
Inspirational, friendly, informative

What media should we be using?
Banner advertising on sites such as
http://uktv.co.uk/food/homepage/sid/566
http://www.guardian.co.uk/food/0,,,00.html
http://food.yahoo.com/
http://www.deliaonline.com/

Microsite for traffic directed from the banners

The Big Idea

Do you love your food enough?

Having identified the target audience for the brand as serious home cookers and chocolate lovers it follows that the target audience are simply food lovers. With Willie’s Cacao established as a premium product the question of ‘do you love your food enough?’ asks the audience to consider if they are 'foody' enough and therefore worthy enough of the product. This reinforces the premium quality of the brand while creating aspiration in the consumer to love their food enough. The question also reflects Willie's love for his cacao taking great care of it from bean to bar. It is about loving eating and loving cooking, caring for your food, where it comes from, what you do with it and how it tastes.

The campaign is aimed at inspiring food lovers to use Willie's Cacao to spice up their cooking and take it to the next level. To experience the taste and pleasure of cooking with Willie's Cacao and in turn to love their food even more.

Click on the image to view full site.


Click on the image to view animated banners.

Arts Centre - Website Re-design

As the Arts Centre are currently undergoing a redesign you can no longer view a full working version of this site on my blog. Please contact me if you would like to view the site.

The Brief

This site was produced as part of an academic brief to identify an SME whose site was considered to be poorly designed based on ease of navigation, visual appearance, appropriateness for target audience and client, content and structure. This site was then to be re-designed, including the restructuring of the site map, and built in Adobe Flash.

The Client

The chosen client, a local Arts Centre, was a creative community venue and a group of creative clubs and organisations which use the venue. The existing site in no way reflected the creative output of this community and an opportunity was identified to re-design the website.

The Target Audience

The target audience for this site was the local community, especially those interested in creative past times. It was also identified that appealing to a younger audience would help to promote the Arts Centre to a new generation to help maintain this valuable community centre for years to come.

The Existing Site

Initial impressions of the existing site were that the layout and design were bland and uninviting. The user was faced with both top and side navigation systems which seemed rather unnecessary. Numerous internal links within the main copy on the pages resulted in navigation becoming complicated for the user as it was difficult to tell exactly where the links had taken the user. The site lacked constancy, with content being laid out differently on each page.

Content about groups was also widely spread across the site often with no links between separate pieces of information and with some content being repeated in different sections.

The calendar, which could possibly have been one of the most used sections of the site was exceptionally complicated and could be navigated in two ways which were not clear to the user.

The Re-Design

The re-design was intended to create a more entertaining and creative site which functions better for the user, provides a creative platform for communicating information and creates an approachable online presence to promote the Arts Centre and the groups who use it.

By creating a room which can be explored by the user navigating the site becomes a more interactive and rewarding experience. Replacing the usual tabbed navigation system with a system of images is much more in keeping with the creative nature of the client. Labels which fade in when the user hovers over an item assist understanding of the navigation.

The curtain mechanism which plays in-between each section of the site prevents the change of background images from looking confusing and creates some theatre in the site.

A link for the user to return to the main 'homepage' of the site is present in each section in the top left corner, a conventional 'back button' positioning.

Although each section of the site is different and uses different fonts there is still constancy in the style of the illustration and the colours used. The 'homepage' of the site also brings together the different elements so they become part of a whole scene.

Extra interactivity is added to site for the users entertainment. In the 'Bridge' section the user is able to play solitaire and in the 'Classes' section they are able to move the chalk and draw on the blackboard.

The new calendar provides information much more clearly than the previous site. Although this area of the site is not fully functioning potentially he use of a database or XML CMS system would allow this information be easily updated buy the client and the RSS feed would allow the user to receive regular updates.

The new site provides a much more rewarding and entertaining journey for the user which will hopefully encourage usage and repeat visits.

This work won 'student of the year' at the DADI Awards '08.

lastminute - pink-less.com

Create communications in any media or format that boosts awareness of the lastminute.com brand – turn the world pink!


Click on the image to view full site.


Click on the image to view animated banners.

The Idea

Turn the world pink? If lastminute.com wants to turn the world pink it is surely worth considering if the entire world is worth turning pink? What about impolite waiters? Thoughtless gifts? Hotels next to building sites? Some things just aren’t that great and would definitely not be up to lastminute.com standards. Perhaps what is more appropriate is to turn the lastminute.com world pink; and everything else? Well that’s Pinkless.

By creating the antithesis of lastminute.com, a pinkless brand offering mundane, tacky and crap alternatives to lastminute.com, all that lastminute.com stands for becomes pink. Pink-less.com is where we would be without lastminute.com. A world without magenta, where 1* holidays come at 3* prices, nothing is convenient and time is wasted.

The Execution

As lastminute.com are an online brand they’re adversary also needed to be highly visible online in order attract a similar audience and to easily channel traffic to the lastminute.com site. To catch a wider audience DM and a broadsheet insert encourage traffic to both lastminute.com and Pink-less.com.

Visually the Pink-less.com brand needed to look badly designed, cheaply put together and importantly pinkless. This has meant that the copy has had to work extra hard to engage the viewer in a site they would not normally pay attention to. Tone of voice was therefore of utmost importance. It had to reflect lastminute.com’s own cheeky and friendly approach whilst creating a unique tone for Pink-less.com to over sell their poor alternatives. As a visual alternative wherever lastminute.com is referenced within the campaign it is shown well designed and without fuss.

lastminute.com, describe themselves as bold and daring and this campaign shows them as just that. The campaign is a cheeky approach which lastminute.com have already shown they can get away with, with their own site content. The campaign could be easily translated for a global audience. The insert could be used in any broadsheet, the post card too is easily translated and lastminute.com already translate their own site globally and Pinkless.com could easily follow suit.

This campaign was nominated for 'student of the year' at the the DADI Awards '08.

Inner City Allotments - allot more...

Promote having your own outside space for people in highly developed cities where there is a lack of outside space, see it more as a sanctuary, and try and modernize the appeal of allotments, as they’re in decline. Altogether rid the “Arthur Fowler” image of the allotment and try to make it into a cooler pastime.

People perceive allotments to be full of retired men growing prize turnips rather than a community of people each with their own unique reason for being there. An allotment is a space that allows you relax, attract wildlife, enjoy the outdoors, entertain children and friends, grow your own food and flowers and get away from city life. Allotments are for everyone but this campaign targets a more specific audience. According to a press release entitled ‘London's allotments losing ground’ by the Greater London Authority on 25/10/06

“The unprecedented interest in organic food has led to a renaissance in interest in allotment gardening, particularly among women and young families.”

A report by the Green Party Group dated September 2004 states that,

“People from different ethnic backgrounds, younger people and families are taking up allotment gardening. New allotment holders also tend to be younger and financially better off.”

A target audience of young professionals and young families who probably already take an interest in being ‘green’ has therefore been considered with the media being used as a key to targeting them specifically.

Public transport adverts target younger professional commuters and inner city dwellers. This will guide those interested to a website which will inform and educate in more depth. Online advertising will also encourage traffic to the website and reach a larger audience than the transport adverts. The 'gardening calendar' DM can be used to target addresses within city centre locations or those within a certain radius of available allotment plots.

Most allotments are provided by local councils so it is appropriate to consider that this campaign would be run by the government in areas where allotments are available. The campaign is therefore not city specific and could be run nationwide. To attract a young professional audience the tone of voice is friendly and approachable but nonetheless informative.

This was the winning campaign for this brief at the MPA Student Roses Awards '08.