Workshop 2: Personas and Focus Groups

I had my second ‘advertising and branding’ workshop yesterday which I really, really enjoyed. It connected to the lecture we had been given the day before on market research. (which I also really enjoyed). Reconnecting with the research methods I was introduced to last year reminded me how fun and interesting it is. It’s proven to me that I made the right decision in choosing the ‘research and creative practice’ module for next semester.

Anyway, back to the workshop. We were given a brief: To get people to try Smash – the instant mashed potato in a packet.

It was actually described rather eloquently in our notes:

“Smash is dehydrated mashed potato. When boiling water is added it reconstitutes into hot mashed potato that can be served as part of a meal.”

(Yuck…Although I think I really should force myself to try it his weekend in the name of research)

We were also given some notes about the product and it’s market, basically desk research stuff including a SWOT analysis. Rather than coming up with a new marketing campaign for Smash, our job was to do some market research. This involved collecting ‘reactive data’ involving peoples attitude and relationship to/with food. We also wanted to explore nostalgia, happiness, friendship, memories and experiences, particularly within the context of food. In the afternoon we would use this data to create some personas of people we wanted to target.

Morning Session

I met up with the girls in my group and we decided to find out about people’s favourite meals. We liked the idea of it being more interactive than a question so we drew some plates on some paper with coloured markers. After splitting up into two pairs of two (so we could cover more as well as different ground) we started asking people to tell us about their favourite meal and encouraged them to draw it for us.

Christina and I headed down to Magdalen Green because we thought people would be sunning themselves. It was a bit of a mistake because it was the wrong time of day but we bumped into lots of people on our way back to the Perth Road. We found a little park type area with benches and got lots people to talk there. Heading down towards the town was not as productive and we got a few knock-backs from people who were too busy. Nonetheless we did get some people in that area – I think it helped telling them that we only needed a few minutes of their time.

Here are some photo’s of the people we asked with their hand-drawn dinners!

The boy on the right was one of the most interesting dinners we got. Initially he didn’t want to tell us because we wouldn’t have heard of it or be able to spell it. We quickly told him that didn’t matter, he could draw it for us and write down the spelling. Whilst he was drawing we got him to tell us more about it. It turns out he was from Sweden and this was a really special, expensive meal that a group of about twenty people would come together to eat. Apparently his uncle would hunt a reindeer then spend ages preparing, cooking and carving it up. I wished we could have been in a better environment with him rather than just on the street. Had we been in a cafe or somewhere more comfortable I am sure we would have found out a whole lot more! But that’s the nature of ‘outside’ research, we would never have met him had we not approached him like this.

We had been told in our lecture the day before to offer people the chance to cover their face with the drawing. This is apparently a technique Lauren Currie uses just to make people feel more comfortable but still allow her to have a record of her research subjects. Some people didn’t mind being photographed as you can see but it was definitely a good tip to have up our sleeves when we sensed the person was uncomfortable.

I also think they responded better to having the paper rather than being asked questions. As Lindsay, one of the girls in my group, said: it takes away the awkward silences where you are writing down their answers. In effect they write down their answer for you and actually get quite involved in it as they draw away. It becomes more of a conversation where you can ask some open questions or ask for more detail when they mention something interesting.

I did try to ask people who made the meal, where did they learn to cook it, does it remind them of anything/anyone when do they eat it e.g special occasions. My only regret is that I didn’t push these questions more. It didn’t always work mind you, sometimes we got flat responses such as “mum made it”. Other times we did get the more descriptive answers like “she made it for me most days because it’s all I would ever eat”. It is a generative tool I would most definitely remember and use again.

Afternoon Session

We had a quick run-through of how each group had gotten on with their research. Most of the groups, like us, had taken the decision to not mention Smash. We focused on peoples attitude to food in general. One of the groups had decided to ask people about it – once they had completed their questionnaire. They told us that a lot of people had memories of it being watery, lumpy and not made properly. One person told them they actually used it, to this day, to make a pizza base! One woman had a positive memory of the old ad jingle “for mash get smash” but said she would never buy it! One group tried to get people to interact with an iPad and draw food on it but apparently it didn’t go down very well. I think a lot of people were put off by it because they didn’t know how to use it. My favourite story was the group who asked people “if the meal were a person, what would it be like”.

I couldn’t help thinking that was an instant ad campaign!

> What’s Mr Roast Beef like? He’s lean (athletic), rich, grounded  and has traditional family values. He enjoys being surrounded by people with different tastes but likes to be the main focus of the gathering. He also likes a good glass of red wine.

Anyway, sorry I am getting carried away. Once that was finished we had to create some personas of the sort of people we might want to target. These were to be quite general, not too specific. For example our Swedish student would be generalised into International students from a range of countries. In fact it could be broadened out even more into people who like travelling and visiting different countries.  One of the groups had a camper so that would be broadened out in active people who like exploring. The idea being that this persona represented a type of person. This ‘type’ would have a similar view on life, similar interest and use the product for a similar purpose or in a similar way.

I have drawn a quick sketch of some personas for the Apple ipad:

While not every student would say use it exactly the same as Sean, they are more likely to use it in similar ways to him, apposed to Katy. They will be in a similar stage in life to him, have ambitions, goals and wants that are similar to him.

So, here are the personas we created using our data and experience from the morning research:

As you can see, we have three distinct targets: International Students, British Students and Busy Mums. I actually remember speaking to quite a few older people so I have created another persona for our group myself:

You can see that we persona of a busy mum who sometimes opts for quick dinners. We could also have created one for a mother who insists upon nutritional food for her children. She would be a harder person for us to tackle but as my lecturer said: “know your enemy”. We could investigate the nutritional properties of smash and see if there was an argument that would encourage her to try it.

Anyway, these are our personas who represent the people we want to target. The idea being we want people like them to give Smash a go, to be attracted to it, buy it and try it out.

I have a few ideas in my head already for some possible ad campaigns so I will draw them out over the weekend!

Good Branding > Funny Signs

I was at a farm shop one day over the summer for lunch; I really liked how they had branded the entire the shop in a fun way, by taking the farm aspect to excess. So much so that it even continues to the toilets as you can see below! I remember I took these photo’s just because I thought the signs were funny. They are actually relevant to my current advertising and branding module however.

They how the little details can contribute to your overall personality. Whilst the farmshop that was very serious about fresh, free-range produce they were not serious and dull about their communication of it – they were playful and astute. It was clear they were professional but they could have a fun too.

The photograph below was taken in Bowness when I was down at the Lake Distritct. I remember thinking how it had a much nicer tone that the usual “NO FOOD OR DRINK”.

You can almost imagine the disaster in your head – it’s visual. You feel sorry for them because something bad actually happened – it’s a precaution that’s based on experience (not just a speculative one). The “please, please” sounds like they are begging you, but in an exaggerated way where it sounds childish; making it amusing. This sign gives the shop a “voice” which speaks to the customer before they have even came inside. It’s a nice voice speaking a serious message but in a good attitude. I think it’s a small but good example of branding.

Applying My Lectures

I spent some times re-writing my lecture notes last week and even though at times I thought: “why on earth am I doing this, stop it now”, it was actually really useful. There were a few occasions where I felt things clicking and realised ah okay, I get that now. It also gave me a chance to look through the  notes on the lectures (on the course blog) and read about some of the points in more depth. Re-writing the notes took far too long, I would need to watch that in the future, but the practice of going over things again definitely seemed to work for me. If I did it weekly (I had two weeks worth) and kept on top of it that would make it much more manageable and worthwhile.

I am not planning to bore you by reiterating my lectures by the way so bear with me.

Oh and one last thing, my writing ends up as large scrawls sometimes so by writing it out again I am keeping good notes that I can revisit in the future. I would actually like to do my dissertation on something to do with marketing so they could prove valuable to me next year. So, I think I have just about convinced myself that it’s a good thing to do (even though it’s time consuming).

Anyway. Once I had finished re-writing them (and reading) I thought it would be nice to quickly test out some of the things on Pillow Talk. If you don’t already know, Pillow Talk is a new interactive product by DJCAD graduate Joanna Montgomery that helps long distance couples feel more connected. You may remember I did a workshop last week where we practiced using marketing tools, for the first time, on Joanna’s invention and company, Little Riot.

The first thing we were introduced to in our first lecture was the concept of a ‘brand’ – what it is, what it isn’t and how it’s much more than you think it is.

“A brand is a collection of functional and emotional values and together promise an experience”

You should be able to see these values on things like livery, advertising and packaging. They should also be part of the companies position in the market, it’s personality, it’s expertise. While these things are “intangible” they are just as important, if not more. I looked at two of these “intangible” qualities, Personality and Culture, thinking about how Little Riot, as a brand, would want to come across.

From this, I tried to see how this friendly, sensitive character would translate over to some packaging:

I then moved on to consider what the customer might want from the brand or the product. My lecturer told us about Theadore Levitt,  an American economist and professor. In his book, Marketing Myopia, he makes the point that when customers buy 1/4 inch drill bits what they really want 1/4 inch holes…I looked him up and he seems to concentrate on getting business to ask:

“What business are we in?”

In the drill-bits case, is the  company in the business of making drill-bits OR the means of making holes in material?Do they invest in manufacturing faster, stronger drills or in new technology that could make better holes, such as lasers. A way to help you answer this question for your business is considering what customers want or need. So, I tried this out with Pillow Talk:

As you can see I have tried to match up these ‘wants’ with the benefits of Pillow Talk. In my lecture, we were told that it is best to concentrate on the benefits of the product –  i.e. what can they use it for – apposed to the make-up of the product – i.e. how many USB ports it has. I don’t think these two things are meant to be connected together like this but I think it works. It lets you see whether or not the ‘needs’ and ‘wants’ of your customers have a relation to the features and benefits that your product has.

However, different people and indeed markets would ‘want’ different things from the product. I thought about this when I started to look at ‘Objectives’. An example of a typical business objective would be “increase sales”. It sounds monotonous though doesn’t it? My lecturer told us that objectives like that are not specific enough and that it is hard to judge whether or not they have been successful. He then introduced us to SMART Objectives:

Here is a SMART Objective I did for Pillow Talk:

It should say “who have a good grasp…”, sorry. This nevertheless reminded me of the Ansoff Matrix, one of the tools we practised using in our first workshop. I did a rough one just to see how my SMART Objective could be incorporated:

I have probably did this the wrong way round but nevertheless it let me see for myself how ‘marketing tools’ could produce SMART Objectives! I left the OAPs behind however, and went back to my original target market (20-40 year old professionals), to do a Marketing Mix (Four P’s) analysis:

Here is what I came up with for ‘Place’:

I covered most of the tools on the workshop last week, albeit with a slightly different target audience, so I shall move onto my second lectures notes:

The first thing we considered was how very often the people who buy things are not the people who use them. You need to think about this difference because these people might have different ‘wants’ or ‘needs’. Breakfast cereal is a good example: the mum might buy it but it’s her children who eat it. These children might want to eat sugary, chocolate cereals where as mum might prefer to buy something more nutritious like oat clusters. She is not going to buy the clusters however if she knows the children won’t eat them. Solving alignment problems like this is rather difficult. Finding the problem in the first place is simpler – ask yourself who your customers are, then who your consumers are.

(I also noted down that the nature and price of the product meant it was an unlikely ‘gift’ from a third party)

Once you know who your customers are  you can start to analyze them a bit more. Two main ways of examining customers is: as market segments or as a set of attributes. Segmentation, according to The Brand Gap by Marty Neumeier, means:

“The process of dividing a market into subcategories of people who share similar values and goals”

Thus, a market segment is:

“a group of people who are likely to respond to a given marketing effort in a similar way”

I tried to create a segment for Pillow Talk by firstly breaking ‘long distance couples’ down into ‘long distance couples because of work’.

As you can see I even went a little further into a particular profession: Acting. There will be lot’s of location filming going on in the world of acting for example. There is even different types of actors you could segment off too I guess, concentrating it even further e.g touring theatre companies.

This theory is illustrated in the “elephant story” my lecturer told us: There is a group of people in a room with a wooden floor. An elephant is then lead around the room by a very slight woman wearing heels. Once she and the elephant leave, the people leave too and a new set of people come in. How could the new people tell that anyone had been there before them?

The answer? The woman would have left heel marks in the wooden floor. If you think about it, the elephant would not have left any marks because it’s weight is evenly spread. The woman on the other hand, slight as she may be, is focusing her weight on two small points. The moral of the story in marketing terms is that you’re more likely to leave a mark by focusing. If you try to spread your weight you won’t leave a mark, i.e if you try to make your product as universal as possible you’re not going to make an impression on the market.

So, focusing in on one single group of people, one segment is a good marketing strategy. It also relates to Pareto’s 80:20 Rule: roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. So, 80% of your business comes from 20% of your customers. For that reason, it would be a good idea to concentrate more on that 20%, rather than trying to please everyone. How can you help them? Of course you need to make sure you don’t ignore the other 80% as well. It’s an out of balance, balancing act I suppose you could say! My lecturer mentioned that Amazon took advantage of Borders focus on 20% of their stock. The way Amazon operates allows them to stock books that Borders would have to order in. Meeting this small demand for less know titles gave Amazon an edge that Borders, unfortunately, fell over. This can be illustrated in a statistic known as “the Long Tail”.

With Borders, if you wanted a book that was unpopular and fell in the ‘yellow’ proportion of the % of sales you would have to wait weeks for it. They didn’t stock it in shops, in fact they might not have even stocked it at all. Amazon on the other hand would most probably have one or two copies that would be shipped out to you in a matter of days.

Now, moving onto customer attributes – which means their “characteristics”. In my lecture we also looked at customer behavior alongside this as well. Investigating ‘what’ and ‘why’ people buy things can help you decide how to market your product. The ‘what’ is more physical, what have they bought? How many? The ‘why’ is more psychological and I must admit, made me feel a teeny bit uncomfortable.

As you can see from my notes on the subject, the ‘why’ can be broken down into ‘rational’ reasons and ‘irrational’ reasons. Irrational sounds worse than it is; in this context it means the emotional reasons – apparently. I actually managed to come up with more ‘irrational’ reasons people would buy Pillow Talk…

This is most likely due to the emotional nature of the product. I will however try to think about this again and be more rational! Anyway, these irrational (or rational) reasons can then be translated as benefits which the company can advertise. These benefits will, as I mentioned earlier, be more likely to sell the product: people buy benefits, they buy what a product can do for them. Here are my ‘selling benefits notes’ for Pillow Talk:

Marketing campaigns can play up to irrational ‘why’s or can, just as importantly, ‘counter them’. (I like the latter scenario better) If you look at my Lecture notes (2 up) you can see the car campaign idea.

It supported the decision to do the ‘rational’ thing (the right thing?). My two scenarios for Pillow talk tide towards irrational reasons. I would like to revisit this and try to play more towards the rational reasons. I would like to come back to it with some new knowledge from future lectures or indeed new knowledge of the product. I think I need to get a better understanding of how customer behavior is perceived in advertising terms.

Home-made Sketchbook

 

I made this sketchbook over the summer with some leftover paper I had kicking about. The stitching style is “coptic stitch” – I had to learn it for one of my book projects whilst I was at college. There are loads of tutorials on youtube for it but you can go to places like Owl and Lion who do bookbinding workshops. I went to one over the summer holidays and it was quite good although there are still some parts I struggle with – just practice needed I guess!

If you are a Dundee University student you can go to a free bookbinding class on Thursday in the Union (Carnegie Suite) at 7pm. It is being run by the Dundee University Arts Society who run lots of different events like this every year. It sounds really good and I am very disappointed that I cannot make it. You can follow the society on Facebook and Twitter.

The Process of Poster Design

A neat video about the process involved in designing a vector based poster by DKNG Studios. It contains screen-cast footage and some clips of the printing process – screen-printing no less! I was left in awe of this designers illustrator skills!

Workshop 1: Using Marketing Tools

I had my first ‘advertising and branding’ workshop yesterday which I actually enjoyed. I met my team (team 5) for the first time which was great I am working with three girls, each from different disciplines: Textiles, Illustration and Interior and Environmental Design. Sadly we have no boys – but I am sure we will do just fine :) However we were paired off with another team (6) yesterday for the tasks we were doing.

Our mission was to practice using the tools we were introduced to the day before in our first lecture. The idea was to develop “quick and dirty” (not my words) marketing strategies for selected clients by using the tools. We practiced this in the morning session using three hypothetical clients: DUSA (Dundee University’s Student Association) The Cantena (DJCADS canteen) and the V&A (Dundee’s new museum).

So, here are my summed up thoughts/notes/pictures from the workshop:

MORNING SESSION

Tools
Ansoff Matrix, SWOT Analysis, Perceptual Mapping and The Four P’s Marketing Mix. Do them in the Brainstorming fashion we were taught last year – i.e time limits, write down everything (THERE ARE NO BAD IDEAS!) separate post-its or shout-outs.

Client
We chose the Cantena because we felt we had the most experience/knowledge of it.

(SW)OT > Strengths and Weaknesses
Firstly, we all wrote down, on individual post-it notes, what we thought it’s strengths and weaknesses were. We put them together and grouped any similar ones. We also quickly wrote down whether they were service (S) or environment (E) related.

SW(OT) > Opportunities and Threats 
The possible opportunities and threats for the Cantena were then listed on another bit of paper. (It just worked out for us that we did the SWOT separately like this, as I said, it was our first time!)

Perceptual Mapping
The cantena was then plotted alongside it’s competiton for student business! We decided to test it out for the quality of food from the nearby eating places against the price. As you can see below the Cantena is pretty much on it’s own (according to our perceived rating) so it’s got no immediate competition. However, it is very much in the worst possible quadrant: low price and low quality! Oh Dear.

Group Presentations and main points/strategies/ideas
Each group (there were seven in total) chose different clients so these notes are collective of each groups ideas. I couldn’t write quick enough / was too busy listening so these are rough!

DUSA

• Less focus on drinking culture
• More daytime events e.g cookery classes, lunches
• More events for international students
• Themed ‘nights’ – Robert Burns Supper

 V&A Dundee

• Package deals – encourage tourism to rest of Dundee’s attractions
• Celebrity endorsements – Jordan(??)
• Cafe
• A proper objective was given by one group which I thought was brilliant: How do you make it ‘owned by Dundee’ – make Dundonians feel more involved and happy about it.

 Catena

• Build toilets in it – nice ones
• Hold exhibitions of student work
• Give the staff a break away from it
• Given the staff more input
• More staff (possibly students?)
• Meal Deals
• Quieter TV music – encourage local acts to do sessions?
  
• ZONES (my groups main idea) e.g
• ‘quick zone’ with perched seats and newspapers
• ‘comfy zone’ for groups to sit and relax i.e ‘long stay’
• ‘movable seating area’ with tables and chairs that are not nailed to the floor!
• ‘hot desks’ for people to do work / groups like us to meet
• ‘reading library’ / bookshelves with art/design/relevant magazines (merge with library?)
• ‘outside canopy’ for the smokers…
• > Generally make it more comfortable, sociable and less sparse!

As you can see there were generally more ideas for the cantena. This was probably because the groups analysing it (us included) had more knowledge/experience of it than the others did of the union and museums. This shows how it is good practice to learn about/experience different things so that you have some awareness of it should you ever have to do something like this on the spot.

AFTERNOON SESSION (‘REAL LIFE’ CLIENT)

We were given a brief presentation by Joanna Montgomery, a DJCAD interaction design graduate. She has actually gone into business with one of her fourth year projects and will hopefully have it on the market very soon! As a result, she has set up her own company, “Little Riot” which aims to specialize in physical interaction design – opposed to screen based.

She told us a little bit about her hopes for Little Riot but the main focus was on her sole (for the moment) product: “Pillow Talk”. A sensory device which allows ‘long distance’ couples to hear the real-time heartbeat of their partner. It does this through a fabric panel, which slots into pillowcases, and a wireless ring. The panel also lights up to let the respective partners know when one is in bed. You are best to watch the video below to fully grasp the concept:

Joanna told us her objective had been to create:

“digital intimacy for couples that would be more subtle than an email or other screen based utilities such as Skype”

She mentioned that the product video had already gone viral on youtube. In fact she is getting daily requests from people wishing to purchase a set. We also found out (thanks to an international student who is over for the year) that she is very big in China! Anyway. Our job was to come up with some marketing proposals using the same techniques we had tried out in the morning session.

The Four P’s

In my group we decided to try a technique we hadn’t actually looked at in the morning – the ‘Four Ps’. This was risky but it paid off. The structure of looking at four specific things kept our focus on track but the ‘brainstorming’ technique of writing down every idea gave us variety. We bounced a lot of idea’s around the table and came up with the concept of hiring them. This was born from the idea of selling them separately, rather than a double unit. We realized that it could be a potential USP for hotels who could do deals etc on renting them out. This would encourage returning custom for them thus encourage them to invest in the product. The product would therefore be marketed at airports, train stations and travel websites.

We also suggested she think about separate shipping and even selling as well together with a replacement parts service (such as thing ring which could get lost or the fabric cover which could get grubby). Oh and we thought her target market would be young, tech savvy, working couples with disposable income as students would perhaps be put off by the high price bracket.

 

We presented these idea to Joanna together with our suggestion that it was perhaps a little bit gimmicky. Whilst she does have a nice little niche target market we thought that the technology could be more “useful” in the ‘mother and baby’ market. A heartbeat and a soothing light might be really comforting to a newborn baby for example. In fact someone even suggested a dog and her puppies (I laughed along with this but their might be something in it…) Ethics and things start to come into things however so this market would need a whole lot of development. Until then, she has a unique product with no competition and lot’s of demand so she should get selling and establish a reputation for herself!

I quickly took some notes from the other groups presentations so here are some of the other suggestions:

• Pitch it towards men > ‘counterintuitive’. It’s a high tech product and they can use it to impress their girlfriends…
• Peace of mind > use it in hospitals to comfort patients staying away from home
• Rent it in hospitals > money could be donation, seen as charitable product. Could go towards Help for Hero’s which strengthens the idea of it being used by army couples.
• Moral booting > troops in war zones have wifi, they could use it.
• Adapt the technology for elderly people > care homes
• Personalize it > engrave the ring / increase the emotional tie with music “our song…”
• Mood light > reflects changes in heartbeat
• Celebrity endorsements (used it when away filming)
• Do more demos to explain how it works

Nearly every group had a different spin on it and it gave me lots of food for thought about how many marketing options there are. We would never have came up with them without the tools however! As a group, we could try to practice these more with different companies and encourage ourselves to brainstorm quickly.

Advertising and Branding Module: #1st Post!

I chose to do the ‘Advertising and Branding’ module this year, for semester one. The main reason for my choice was that I wanted to be more conscious about the entire ‘brand’ of an organisation. I think it will be valuable for me to know about things like a brands image; it’s voice; it’s values and ethics; it’s history/future; it’s strategies; it’s place in the market/world. (I am sure there are plenty more things involved, many of which I would probably never even consider!)

Knowing more about these things will give me some awareness that will help me as a graphic designer when I come to work on projects involving organisations. It will hopefully enable me to better understand the design approach I should take.

I also hope to gain an insight into advertising, it sounds (and looks) interesting but is something I have not had too much experience with.

The first lecture I had on Wednesday was really fascinating and reinforced my decision to do the module. I have added a new ‘advertising and branding’ category so you can check it out to see how I get on with this module and what I am discovering!

I found this on Google - I wonder if it's true?

3rd Year!!

New classroom and new desk! I’ve got a nice bright window seat and am right next to the adaptor behind the wall so I have a feeling i’ll be spending more time in the studio =)