Project 2 is the 3rd and longest module on the Squared programme, lasting 3 weeks. This project is led by Swedish entrepreneur, Jesper Astrom (@JesperAstrom) who has worked on hundreds of digital campaigns for big clients such as Pepsi and H&M.
Here are the details of the project to give you a bit of background...
Here are the details of the project to give you a bit of background...
Project Aims:
- Gain a holistic view of the marketing industry
- Understand the role of marketing
- Understand how marketing can help a business grow
- Gain better understanding of the industry through research
- Practice working with briefs
- Practice cross channel marketing
- Practice client relations
- Practice presenting and selling
The brief:
The world's largest cosmetics and beauty company, L’Irréel are launching a new hair care product, L’Irréel Tint. Your Team/Agency are pitching to win the launch campaign
- Budget: £2m
- Time: Christmas Party Season
- Objective: Awareness and advocacy
The Task:
- Deliver a media plan including placements, formats, and max weights over time
- In the brief, we have given you the client’s usual budget split (80% TV, 20% Print) and investment model. The media plan should re-weight that model to encompass the digital channels you want to include in your strategy. You can also include ATL channels as you see fit, but you should look to re-evaluate the role of digital
- You will be pitching to a panel of real clients; give the client a reason to invest in digital
and demonstrate how digital channels can reach and engage with their target audience
- Put together a messaging journey to work alongside your media plan. Which creative messages will you use on which channels? How will these messages change across the time of the campaign?
- Put together a measurement plan; what KPIs and measurement strategies will you recommend to the client to measure success? Bear in mind the client’s challenges and objectives
Expectations:
- Show Creativity (=innovative + Relevant)
- Demonstrate comprehensive understanding of the client’s needs and branding objectives
- Handle change in a positive and creative manner
- Present your strategy in an understanding and inspiring way
Assessment:
1. Competence: the participant’s ability to apply her/his skills and/or knowledge in context
2. Attitude: self leadership and the participant’s willingness and ability to adapt to change and collaborate
3. Creativity: the participant’s ability to be innovative and relevant
Pitching Panel:
- Phil Mitchelson, Head of Digital, News International
- Paul Ridsdale, Head of Marketing, ITV
- Selina Sykes, Senior Brand Manager on Lynx, Unilever
- Adam Henderson, Global Brand Partnerships Manager, Jaguar
- Bryn Snelson, Head of Marketing, eHarmony UK
- Helen Lawrence, Marketing Manager for New Platforms, ASOS
- Masha Voskresenskala, Category Solutions Manager, Johnson & Johnson
- Charlotte Greenaway, Mobile Marketer, Telefonica O2 UK
So this time we were split into groups of 4; let me introduce you to Team Hedge...
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| Team Hedge writing up our team guidelines (guideline 1: Nurture a fun working environment) |
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| A trust exercise before we got going... |
I’ve really enjoyed the last two weeks working on project 2; I’ve learnt a great deal about the process that agencies go through from the very start of receiving a brief from the client. This task is perfect for me as a planner, as it reflects exactly what we do as a planning team and has given me the opportunity to really test the water.
Although it may sound obvious, one of the lessons I have learnt is that it is the responsibility of the agency to challenge the brief; we’ve spent a lot of time over the past 2 weeks researching the target audience, identifying the problem, developing an insight , identifying an opportunity for the client, and SELLING IT IN!!
The product that L’Irréel is going to launch is a premium priced at home colourant, ‘L’Irréel Tint’. The USP of the product is that it comes with a bespoke application tool, which allows women to easily apply colour for a multi-tonal salon effect at home. The target audience are 28-40 year old women who have disposable income , buy designer clothing and who live busy lives (very broad).
We recognised that one of the main challenges the client will face is convincing the target audience that this product is good enough to compete with salons and is worth the premium price of £24.99 (highly expensive compared to other home colouring products). After much research we identified an opportunity; many women who colour their hair at home are often dissatisfied with the results (messy application and not the colour they expected) and many women who go to salons are also often dissatisfied with the results (hairdressers often do what they want to do rather than what the customer has asked for). Therefore, rather than try to convert women who are loyal to their current hair colouring experiences, we want the client to target women who are dissatisfied with their current experience; educating them with regards to which colour to choose and showing/guiding them through the process of actually dying their hair using our product.
Therefore our solution is:
empowering women to take back control and make the most of their head
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| We've got our solution, so now onto our media plan... |
We watched a youtube video which featured Simon Sinek talking about the increasing importance of the ‘why’ for brands , especially in highly cluttered markets. Why is it that that brand exists? Consumers need to be able to emotionally relate to the brand , and if they can’t , they won't purchase from them, and will go to a competitor instead whom they share the same core beliefs and value as . We recognised that the at home hair colouring market is cluttered and brands often compete on price. However, since we are a premium priced product, we cannot compete on price and need to stand out some other way .
Research revealed that our target audience are educated, aware of and concerned about social responsibility and the lack of business opportunities for entrepreneurial women in developing countries. Therefore, we want L’Irréel to support microfinance initiatives as a way for women to help other women who are ‘using their heads’. or who are trying to but do not have the same opportunities as women in developed countries. They will give loans to entrepreneurial women in developing countries to start their own businesses and ‘make the most of their heads’. The target audience will be able to relate to this and would therefore want to be apart of the initiative.
We are still working on the media plan, etc, so I will update you on this early next week, but some of the ideas are as follows:
- creating and uploading video diaries on youtube; for the women who have received the loans to keep the consumer updated on their progress and allowing the consumer to choose who they want to support in developing countries
- facebook updates showing that you have supported women in developing countries (similar to the option to share when you have sponsored someone via justgiving on facebook etc).
- after sale services on youtube e.g. videos on how to create the perfect hairstyle for an interview, or how to create the perfect ‘up do’ for your friends wedding.
The client is stuck in their ways and has always split their advertising budget in the following way: 80% TV and 20% Print. Our challenge is therefore to convince the client to break the mould and introduce digital. Our research shows that the audience are highly engaged with digital platforms and therefore there is a perfect opportunity for the client to reach them in the digital space, but convincing them is tricky! We need to show the client that digital platforms allow brands and consumers to have a two-way communication which traditional media does not offer. This would allow the client to respond to any dissatisfied customers in real time and develop a relationship with them .
To wrap up... we had our first ‘client meeting’ on Thursday, where we shared our insights etc with the client and introduced the idea of perhaps trying out digital for this campaign. Unfortunately we had received the brief almost 2 weeks prior to the meeting and didn't have an opportunity to speak to the client to challenge the brief until Thursday. We know that in real life this wouldn't be the case and we found it hard as we had lots of questions that we wanted to ask sooner, that we just had to make assumptions on.
I felt really under pressure in the meeting, the client made it very difficult for us, challenging us at every opportunity, although this was great experience for what we might face in the real world. We learnt that we were not as prepared as we could have been, failing to provide basic stats about digital and stats on our audience’s media consumption..This is something that we will be better prepared for come the pitch; I think we were so focused on building on our great insight that we overlooked the need for basic information that we should have known the client was going to want to know about. Overall, it was great to experience what a real client meeting might be like where we wanted to challenge the brief and propose a new idea to the client.
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| We needed a break after that client meeting! |
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