Creative Brand Strategy - Task 1A & 1B

22 April 2024 - 13 May 2024 / Week 1 - Week 4
Sim Jia Min 0349784
Creative Brand Strategy / Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media / Taylor's University
Task 1A & 1B: Case Study & Campaign Proposal

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LECTURES

Week 1: Introduction
This module introduces the essentials of brand building through in-depth visual strategies, crucial for establishing a brand in consumers' minds. We will learn to solve brand-related problems by analysing the relationship between the brand and its target audience.

Branding: 

- defines the value of an organization, product, or service, providing a competitive edge

- differentiates businesses and builds a strong connection with customers

Brand strategy:

- outlines how, when, and where to communicate brand messages

- ensuring consistency and building emotional connections with customers

- shapes perceptions and influences market position and customer expectations, guiding effective marketing strategies

Week 2: Branding Process

Brand experience: Audiences crave immersive brand experiences that blend tangible and intangible elements. Brands must engage senses, demonstrate value delivery, and build emotional connections through creative strategies that transcend traditional rules.

Campaign: 

- Consistently delivering a message to the audience over time, reaches the target audience with a single, focused effort to announce and engage.

Concept campaign: 

- The core idea that convinces audience to act, gives them something to care about and a clear message to support

- Audience may not know what action to take or why without it.

Cause campaign: 
- when a business promotes a cause alongside its products to boost profits and benefit society

- involve activist messages in ads

- the focus is on the cause rather than directly selling products

- brands do this to improve their image, connect with customers, or support relevant social issues.

Event campaign:

- use experiences, virtual or in-person, to educate potential and current customers about products, services, or businesses

Launch campaign:
- to achieve specific objectives like gaining new customers, boosting revenue, raising product awareness, increasing interest, enhancing brand reputation, or gathering customer feedback

Personality campaign:
- to take a person’s reputation and career from relative obscurity to high visibility 

- strongly rooted in content marketing

Social media:

- Allows connection, conversations, community, building relationships

Brand story:

- Stories create scenarios for how people engage with the brand, making it feel more real and helping people understand its purpose

SWOT:

- Strengths: things that the brand is good at or distinguishes itself from the competitors

- Weaknesses: examine how and why the competitors are doing better and what the brand is lacking
- Opportunities: chances for something positive to happen (marketing trends, technology advancement, or changes in social patterns, population profiles and lifestyle)

- Threats: external challenges that can have a negatively affect

Customer journey map:

- visual representation of customer journey

- identify customers' experiences on all touchpoints with the brand

- help to visualise current or future states of customer experience

- requirements: focus on customer perspective, map reflects touchpoints, account for customer segments

Brand Positioning:

- the benefits you want audiences to think of your brand

Week 3: The creative brief

Big idea

- The big idea of a campaign is its overarching message, crucial for resonating with the target audience

- This idea should stem from a sharp insight and be aligned with campaign objectives for maximum impact

- The big idea should transcend platforms, allowing seamless integration across various media

- brand building involves guiding and influencing rather than just telling

Understanding > Clarifying > Positioning > Brand essence > Big idea

Week 4: Touchpoints

Brand touchpoints:

- interactions and exposures that consumers can have with brands

- online: website, social media, app, digital advertising

- offline: banners, packaging, print advertising

Step 1:

- refer back to customer journey map 

Step 2:

- determine where to best focus time, money, and energy

Step 3:

- prioritise brand marketing activities and touchpoints, map them

Moodboard

- visual represents brand's visual identity

- photos, colours, typography, quotes, patterns, shapes

- direct the artistic style, tone and manner

- valuable tool for inspiration, affirmation, guidance and communication

Design direction:

- Logo, colour palette, typography, visual style (illustration, pattern, graphic element, photography)

INSTRUCTIONS (MIB)

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Week 1 notes
- module briefing
- in-depth visual strategies
- further reading
- task 1 & 2: concept based
- task 3: carry out and design

task 1a
- objective: goals (what need to be achieved in this rebrand), purpose: why (why rebrand)
- brand positioning: what do u offer, who is offer to, usp
- brand experience: experience with the brand
- key visuals: visual style, typo, logo, colour etc.
- applications: social media, website, etc
- credit resources

task 1b
- campaign for snack
- rebrand or introduce new concept/new product
- organisers not neccessary
-customer journey map

task 2a
- campaign name, communication goals, key message
- ideation: how customer going to experience with the brand (customer journey map), references and rough plan of application lists (website, social media, etc.)

task 2b
- colour, typography, logo style, graphic elements, personality
- create mood board
- references, plans

task 3
- 2 catagories: online (website..) and offline (merch, pop-up store, environment graphics) experiences
- insta at least 9 posts
- 4 online, 4 offline

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Task 1A: Case Study

For the case study of a brand's rebrand, I pick Celine as my study. The reason why I picked Celine is because I roughly watched a YouTube video before about how Celine rebranded in 2018 and it was quite an interesting watch due to the major , this is the first rebrand that came to my mind when thinking about this task.

I started by working on Doc to compile some brand story and timeline of Celine to get some basic understanding of the brand's background. 

Figure 1.1: Draft doc (Week 1)

The most information that I got for this study is from blogs and articles, there are quite many interesting reads about the rebrand, such as the difference in target audiences between before and after rebrand, and how Celine recently targeted the younger demographics to create a more trendy and cool kids image and be appealing to attract younger consumers.

To get onto the visual study part, I looked through some designs of the previous and current creative directors, they both influenced the house to develop very distinct styles, directions, and advertising styles. 

Figure 1.2: Task 1A slides progress (Week 1)

After the week 2 class, some insightful feedback was given and refinement needs to be made.

FINAL TASK 1A SUBMISSION

Referring back to the feedback on week 2, I refined brand values, vision and mission, and expanded the brand experience with more visuals. For a well-established and popular fashion house like Celine, there are quite many brand experiences that can be included since every info is recorded online, as well as the key visuals.

Figure 1.3: Final Task 1A slides (Week 2)

Task 1B: Campaign Proposal

For this task, we have to create a brand campaign based on any snacks, whether a rebrand or introducing a new line of products. 

My initial plan was to rebrand the chinese white rabbit candy, which is a nostalgic traditional chinese candy, but then during the class I realised that white rabbit candy has been rebranded for years in China, and the rebranding created quite a refreshing image of the brand. I immediately lost the interest in pursuing this direction anymore since white rabbit candy already has a quite successful rebrand. 

Then I decided to pull up my backup plan, which is another nostalgic chinese snack: haw flakes. Since it doesn't really have a solid brand out there, so Ms Lilian suggested creating an entirely new brand for haw sweets that offers more than just the flakes, such as strips, cubes, balls, etc.

Figure 1.4: Haw flakes

Figure 1.5: Task 1B draft doc (Week 3)

FINAL TASK 1B SUBMISSION

Figure 1.6: Final Task 1B Campaign Proposal (Week 4)

FEEDBACK
Task 1A

Week 2

- brand values, vision and mission focus more on the new celine

- age range should be younger, might not go until 60+ since they are not in the demographic anymore

- expand more on brand experience, more examples

- expand more on visuals (more slides)

- store interior designs

- features and activities: ads that came out that announce the rebrand

- can make pics-only slides

Task 1B

Week 2

- haw haw with different forms: circle, cube, strip, etc.

- come out with a new brand and products

- or reposition white rabbit candy to cater to western market (research their existing candy snack, how they market them)

- customer journey map

Week 3

- Mention health consciousness in brand story

- asia craze

- rephrase values

- remove nostalgia

- mission repetitive, emphasis global market

- specify the age group (secondary target audience)

- ethnicity should focus on diverse backgrounds not only chinese

- geographic: target all continents

- more strengths can be included

- threat: backlash on chinese culture (lack of trust in china product)

REFLECTION

Task 1A has given me some understanding of how rebranding works in both contextual and visual aspects. Contextual aspects include understanding the market, target audience, brand positioning, and competitors, while visual aspects include the design of logos, colour, typography, and overall brand visual identity. It's a quite comprehensive process that aims to refresh a brand's image, align it with evolving market trends, and better connect with its audience, or target an entirely new audience. 

With the understanding from Task 1A, developing the campaign idea for Task 1B is rather less challenging, but with a more detailed context, as it is a proposal that is going to base the rest of the projects throughout the semester. In the middle of doing this proposal, I often found myself lost in some details, trying to strike the perfect balance between honouring the Chinese traditional sweet heritage and embracing the need for change in the modern global market. I am still unsure about how will I be able to carry this out in the further tasks, just hope that a perfect balance will be possible.