W05 – LT – HAVING FUN WITH BRAND IDENTITY

Week 05 – Strategic Design Overview – LT – Having Fun With Brand Identity

---

Watch the movie “The Greatest Movie Ever Sold” and answer the questions that follow:

• Question 1:
  Do you think the movie provides insight or detail into what drives product placement in entertainment?
  If so, what have you learnt from that? If not, how would you change aspects of the movie to reflect insight on this?
• Question 2:
  What have you observed about presentations of visual strategies/brand identity?
• Question 3:
  Let’s consider this movie as a form of research. In other words, it was done to see what the effect of branded entertainment would be, a case study of sorts. What are your findings? What have you learnt? What has changed your pre-conceived ideas? Do you think there’s relevance in this case study? How could you apply your observations in real life?

• Question 4:
  From the findings above (question 3) imagine that the international coffee brand, Starbucks, is your client. Give one complete strategy for a small activation campaign to advertise Starbucks on aeroplanes. Give one idea of how you would do this, by following the 5 steps of the work process. To guide you, follow the points below and do a write-up of your idea as well as the steps you followed:
  Conduct research – you can visit the website http://www.starbucks.com as part of your research. Also think of quick research methods, such as surveys done on family and friends.
  Clarify the strategy – Once you’ve conducted quick research, do a write-up of your findings and create your own brief.
  Design the identity – Here you do not need to go into lengthy design, but create sketches of your ideas and remember to think about the movie for inspiration.
  Create touchpoints – As this is a focused campaign, you may have one touchpoint only; describe how you would activate your campaign using this touchpoint. If you need to, you may do sketches that would aid your communication.
  Manage the assets – As this is not a prolonged campaign, briefly describe how you would use the possible outcome of your campaign for future use. Also state what your follow-up steps would be to strengthen your message. For example, you’ve done research and decided to give free vouchers along with every boarding pass handed out. How would you collect feedback from consumers or how would you communicate to them at the airport, on the flight, etc. to support your campaign?

---

Question 1

Yes, I absolutely think that the film provides great insight into what drives product placement in entertainment.
Some of the things I learned from the film was how a lot of films are able to maintain a lower budget when having product placement featured in their film, and how everything works behind the scenes with all the contracts, pitching, meetings etc. And also how important it is to know your own brand and how to market and pitch it to others.

Question 2

Morgan Spurlock really had a great and unique way of presenting/pitching his ideas and strategies to the brands he was meeting with. I really liked how he sketched out all of the scenes he had in mind, actually went to places to take pictures to show the brands and really immersed himself in the roles of the different scenes. He was always very confident, friendly and upbeat which seemed to make the brands like him and partner with him.
When placing a specific product from a brand in a film (or any other type of media), it’s important to think about the genre, the environment where the product is placed, the audience and the other sponsors that are involved and how they all relate to each other.

Question 3

I think this film definitely is a relevant source of research. It taught me a lot of how things work behind the scenes, how much work actually gets put in when trying to find sponsors/brand partners, how much product placement in a film can cost the brands and how it’s a win-win situation where the goal is to benefit both the brand and the filmmaker, and the importance of marketing the products in a certain way according to the brand’s wishes while still maintaining your own/the films identity.
I think the film has also made me be more aware of product placement in film and tv going forward, and I suspect I’ll start to notice the subtle placements of products or brands more than before.

---

Question 4

Starbucks:

Some quick research:

• Opened in 1971 in Seattle
• Their goals:
  “share great coffee with our friends and help make the world a little better.”
• The name was inspired by Moby Dick and the thought behind it was to evoke the romance of the high seas and the seafaring tradition of the early coffee traders.
• Their logo is also inspired by the sea and features a twin-tailed siren from Greek mythology.
• They have over 30 000 retail stores in 80 markets,
• Their mission:
  “to inspire and nurture human spirit – one person, one cup and one neighbourhood at a time.”
• They have more than 30 blends and single-origin premium coffees.
• Apart from coffee, they also sell a selection of teas, pastries, and other treats.

Strategy:

Starbucks is a company that wants to be perceived as inclusive, diverse, welcoming and caring. The target group seems to be pretty wide based on their goal to be inclusive and diverse, but I would narrow it down to people of all genders between the ages of 18 to 45 who belong to the middle class and above. They should be people who either travel a lot for work or someone who goes on holiday at least a couple times a year since this campaign is to be seen in airplanes.

Designing identity and creating touchpoints:

All passengers are offered a complimentary Starbucks coffee or tea and there will be advertisement on the back of all the seats. Since there are Starbucks on a lot of airports and in a lot of bigger cities, the passengers would also be offered a coupon when stepping on to the plane for a discount on their next Starbucks order, prompting them to choose Starbucks as their next place to get coffee.

Super quick ‘sketch’ of the coupon:

Managing assets:

The important thing here is to collect information from the passengers on the plane about their experience with Starbucks. To this, they could i.e. scan a QR code that’s located on the ad on the back of every seat, or they could be asked to fill out a physical form provided by the airplane staff – both of which would reward the passenger with additional points.