Eventually He’ll Get The Message Campaign – Reappraised

As you may know, my third ‘advertising and branding’ workshop was a ‘one day brief’ I worked on in a huge group of my peers. We had to devise an advertising campaign that would inspire woman to “encourage men to to take a more positive approach to their health by not delaying a visit to the doctor”.

• You can see the campaign we came up with that day if you click here.
• You can also read about the work that went into it and the things we did that day by clicking here.

If you’re still with me, you can see the revision of the campaign that Lindsay McQuarrie and myself worked on. We made some changes to the video advert, as well as the marketing strategy, for the campaign. These changes were based on the feedback we received from our lecturer and peers.

With it being just the two of us, we were also able to make some personal changes as well. These were both the ideas we had during the workshop and thing’s we had thought about since. I enjoyed how we could discuss it easily with each other across the table. We agreed on most things and refined each others idea’s a few times to fit in with the overall campaign. I think we felt more in control of the campaign, knowing that what we said was more likely to be done – rather than just a suggestion in a large group. I did find this a little bit daunting however; all of a sudden it was down to just the two of to make it work.

I have laid it out the same way as before so you can easily compare them. So here we go, this is our revised campaign:

Campaign Objective:
“Encourage young adult men to visit their GP’s by targeting woman”

Research:
We carried out desk and reactive research which revealed that men would visit their GP if they had a health problem over the NHS online and telephone services. The problem is they would wait until their problem gets really serious before they would go. Of the woman in their life the majority of men would be most likely to ask their wife for health advice. Of the younger males we surveyed, the majority would ask their mother.

Specific Target Audience:
Woman who are married to men

Style:
Light-hearted with embarrassment humour. Underlying message is to get men to go to the doctors early before their symptoms get worse.

There will be four sequential adverts in total which document a series of unfolding events during the time frame of a single day. They will be in sitcom style but there will not be too much dialogue so that you have to watch to see what happens. This will get people guessing as to what the characters are up to. I suppose you could say it’s taking some inspiration from silent movies as well.

Strap-line:
“Eventually he’ll get the message”

Pre-Launch:
Print mock medical appointment cards which have “There’s worse things…” scrawled over the appointment fields. The back of the cards will have our strap-line; relevant social networking icons; the web addresses for our campaign as well as for the NHS website and the NHS telephone number.

These cards will be distributed in places frequented by our target audience such as retail outlets, salons, cafes, gyms and indeed doctors surgeries.

The main idea is to familiarise woman our strap-line without knowing about the campaign. This will hopefully get them wondering what it’s all about and encourage them to check out the web links to find out.

A campaign website will be launched online with helpful tips and statistics about men’s health. It will contain positive stories about woman who encouraged their men to go to the doctors. There will be a ‘find your nearest surgery’ search map to help anyone (male or female) without a registered doctor. A ‘step-by-step’ guide to registering will show up on this page too. There will also be a ‘symptom checker’ and general advice from doctors. The site will have it’s own branded style centred around being informative, friendly and fun. It will be really easy to use with only one navigation bar and not overloaded with pages. It will link up to the NHS website either on the main navigation or a button which displays on every page and wherever appropriate.

There will be a preview clip of our first advert – in the style of a TV series trailer – posted on the website and on youtube. The site will also have an option button to join our mailing list which will email them when the advert is released.

There will also be social networking profiles such as Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube which will post relevant information and answer questions.

Official Launch:
The first of our four adverts will be shown on television. Here is a storyboard for the sitcom style advert.

(Click on it to see it full screen)

The advert will be shown during programmes with a high female audience such as dramas, films, documentaries, cookery shows, soaps and daytime television. In addition, it will be released on the website and Youtube channel. Emails will be sent out to those on the mailing list and it’s release will be tweeted etc.
It will run for three weeks.

Post Launch:
After two weeks the second, follow-up advert will be released on the website and Youtube. Here is a storyboard for it:

(Click on it to see it full screen)

Two weeks later the third, follow-up advert will be released on the website and Youtube. Here is a storyboard for it:

(Click on it to see it full screen)

Then, two weeks later, the fourth and final follow-up advert will be released on the website and Youtube. Here is a storyboard for it:

(Click on it to see it full screen)

Strategy:
The successive adverts will not be shown on television because we want to encourage it to go viral on the internet. The idea is that people will talk about the advert and tell people that there is more to it than the one that was shown on television. This will generate interest and encourage people to search for it online. They will hopefully find themselves on the campaign website and see all the helpful information on it. The idea being they will become familiar with the aim of the campaign and  be inspired to encourage men to go to the doctors.

This follows the principle of AIDA which we were introduced to in a recent lecture:

• A =  Attention
• I = Interest
• D = Decision
• A = Action

The thought is that people go through these cognitive phases when accepting a new idea. I had a think about whether it could be applied to this campaign:
So maybe the cards and television advert would attract them – get their attention. The information on our website would tell them the advantages of encouraging men to visit the doctor early on – raising their interest. The lengths Wendy goes to, to get Harvey to go to the doctors, will help to convince them that it’s worthwhile – creating a desire to encourage men to go to the doctors. Wendy’s eventual success with getting Harvey to the doctors would demonstrate that it works – inspiring them to take action themselves.

Hmm, I am not sure if that’s entirely justifiable… The next time I am working on a campaign I shall try to consider this earlier on.

Anyway. The mailing list will not overload subscribers with emails, it will just send them a link when each of our four adverts are posted online.

Further Development:

• The characters from the advert could be interviewed during a health feature on morning television shows such as This Morning. A representative of the campaign would be there as well to inform woman of the importance of encouraging men to go the doctors. (The quartet could play the jingle at the end of the show)
• This could equally be a health awareness segment on the national news.
• The campaign could be featured in health magazines or in health segments of woman’s magazines such as Prima, Marie Claire and Good Housekeeping.
• Stills from the advert will be taken and put on billboards where the woman in our target audience will see them. For example: near to schools, area’s of towns/cities where they work and in shopping centres.

Guerilla Tactics:

• Continue distribution of the mock medical cards. Once the second advert is released online, edit them to let people know about the second advert. Post them as direct mail to areas with a high number of female occupants. Use census statistics and the up my street website to find these areas.

(Up my street is an independent website that enables you to find out information about a specific postcode, city, town, district or region. You can check out neighbourhood profiles to get an idea of the type of housing and access ACORN classifications about the type of people that love there. For example if it was a postcode that had a high density of students living in halls of residence we wouldn’t distribute the mock medical cards there. We would look for an area with residential housing where lots of families lived.)

• Adverts on busses (like the one in the advert) with relevant contact details. We could also do some research into bus routes and find the most suitable ones to advertise on.
• Release the quartets jingle on itunes for free the same day the fourth advert is released online. Link to it on the campaign website and on the Facebook page as well as tweeting about it.
• Set up buses as pop-up clinics which tour around the country, encouraging men to get checked out there and then. Reports on their forthcoming presence could be reported in daytime television shows such as Daybreak as well as the Local News.

Reasons for success?

• The advert relates to woman as it refers to the fact they have to keep going on about things to their husbands sometimes. It doesn’t imply nagging in an argumentative way.
• The things Wendy does to Harvey are humorous and outlandish… and not impossible. They also get increasingly more embarrassing which will make people want to see what she could possibly do next.
• It recognises the image men have of plastic gloves and tries to make light of it: “there’s worse things…”
• It serves as a conversation starter where woman share their stories/tactics about getting men to the doctor. This could be encouraged by TV-spots, magazine articles and a Facebook page.
• Only the first advert would be shown on television so the budget wouldn’t need to buy air-time for all four. Desk research could be done to see how many views the successive adverts were getting. Reactive research could also be done to test the publics awareness of the campaign. You could compare research done before and after the successive adverts were released to see how effective the ‘post campaign’ and ‘further development’ was.

David Ogilvy

I am going to be really, really honest and tell you that I’d never heard of David Ogilvy until last month. Of course the second I flicked through his books, Confessions of an Advertising Man and Ogilvy on Advertising, I recognised a few of his campaigns; even though they are ‘before my time’.

Both books are filled with his experienced advice on creating advertising that works. True to my graphic design head I flicked straight to chapter seven How to Illustrate Advertisements and Posters in Confessions of an Advertising Man. He firstly comments that the illustration – drawing or photograph – should convey the same message as the ‘promise’ made in the headline. He goes on to say that photographs are much more successful than drawings.

“Photographs represent reality, whereas drawings represent fantasy, which is less believable”

The results he has gained by switching to photographs proves that they work better. He comments that art simply does not telegraph its’ message quick enough for use in advertisements.

Initially, I didn’t quite like this piece of advice but I have come to understand it. I just have a thing for good illustrations but I know that sometimes personal taste has to be sacrificed. Good evidence or research is one sure reason, for me, for resignation. Even from the few chapters I have read I already know that Ogilvy did his research – lots of it.

Sometimes this was simple test research. He recounts that one time his agency were in doubt (dispute) as to whether a photograph of an aircraft or a destination should be used to advertise KML airlines. They ‘split-run’ them in a newspaper and the one which pulled the most coupons gave them the answer: destinations.

Sometimes it was desk research:

“If, for example, it is a petrol account, read text books on the chemistry, geology and distribution of petroleum products. Read all the trade journals in the field.”

In his other book, Ogilvy on Advertising, he spent three weeks reading about the Rolls Royce car he was to advertise. During this research he came across an unassuming statement about how the only noise you would hear at sixty miles an hour was the electric clock. It became the headline.

Sometimes it was more psychological research. He refers to a substantial number of Doctors which have helped him understand human behaviour. One interesting analysis was that when watching films, people are more interested in actors of their own sex.

“In general, people take more interest in film stars they can identify themselves with”

He supports this research done by Dr. Gallup with analysis done into ‘3,874 dreams’ by Dr. Hall. A photograph of a woman will be ignored by men – apparently. One the same page, a photograph of a man will be ignored by woman. I thought about this in relation to perfume adverts, look at this:

Apparently though, the best way to get a woman’s attention is babies. Hmm, I guess it would depend on the product being advertised and the appropriateness of using a baby…

Oh dear…

Anyway. I watched Mad Men for the first time last night and I remember one of the stories (in the first episode) linking to this idea. It was the very first episode and Don gave an inspired off-the-cuff saga about the experience of going on a plane.

“You want to get on a plane to feel alive. You want to get on a plane to see the hint of a womans thigh because her skirt is just *this much* too short”

Mad Men, Matthew Weiner, Box of Broadcasts: BBC Four, Online, (13/10/2011)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Peggy – a flourishing copywriter – comes in later on in the episode with an updated ‘comp’ which illustrates the saga and indeed the air hostess. Don looks at it and comments:

“It’s obvious, I’m uninvolved”

Mad Men, Matthew Weiner, Box of Broadcasts: BBC Four, Online, (13/10/2011)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He then squares off the small child running to greet her father:

Mad Men, Matthew Weiner, Box of Broadcasts: BBC Four, Online, (13/10/2011)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Peggy quickly denounces it as “sentimental” but Don counters her by saying that something with sentiment is not necessarily sentimental. Peggy raises the point that it’s being advertised at business men and “sex sells”. I loved Don’s reply: “Says who?” He then goes on to say:

“You are the product. You feeling something – that’s what sells”

He then encourages her to think about a question the girl could ask her father rather than a statement. She comes up with “What did you bring me daddy?”

I realise this didn’t involve a man being directly used to advertise to a man but in a way it did. The question spoke directly to the man in a way that he could relate to. A man looking at that advert could identify himself in that situation.

Don’s selection of focusing on the little girl and cutting out the rest of the scene is a tactic Ogilvy actually mentions! He says that crowd scenes don’t pull, illustrations should be kept simple and the interest should be focused on one person. He also notes that you should avoid large close-ups of the human face because, in his experience, they repel readers.

The chapter was filled with lots of simple, one sentence tips like this together with more detailed stories. It’s the kind of book you could pick up and just read a random chapter – or even page – and learn something. In fact both books are. Of course it’s bias, slightly out of date and you may disagree with the moral implications on some of the things. However he gives some solid, practical advice that you could easily apply. E.g:

“If you start your body copy with a large initial letter, you will increase your readership by an average of 13 percent”

Eventually He’ll Get The Message Campaign

Campaign Objective:
Encourage young adult men to visit their GPs by targeting woman.

Research:
We carried out desk and reactive research which revealed that men would visit their GP if they had a health problem over the NHS online and telephone services. The problem is they would wait until their problem gets really serious before they would go. Of the woman in their life the majority of men would be most likely to ask their wife for health advice. Of the younger males we surveyed, the majority would ask their mother.

Specific Target Audience:
Wives and girlfriends of young adult men

Style:
Light-hearted with embarrassment humour. Underlying message is to get men to go to the doctors early before their symptoms get worse.

Strap-line:
“Eventually he’ll get the message”

Pre-Launch:
Print mock medical appointment cards with the strap-line and campaign web links on the back. The back also has ‘Do it for me, x’ written on it. Distribute these in places frequented by our target audience such as retail outlets, salons, cafes, gyms and indeed doctors surgeries. Advertise the card in magazines read by woman as well such as Good Housekeeping, Prima etc.

The main idea is to familiarise woman our strap-line without knowing about the campaign. This will hopefully get them wondering what it’s all about and encourage them to check out the web links to find out.

Official Launch:
An internet advert will be posted on youtube. Here is a storyboard for the advert style film:

1. The man wakes up *coughing and spluttering*. He reaches over to turn off his alarm clock and ignores the note left by his wife which suggests he go to the doctor.

2. The man has just had a shower and the bathroom is all steamy. The word ‘DOCTOR’ has been written on the condensation on mirror cabinet by his wife. He ignores it and opens the cabinet to get his toothpaste.

3. The man is waiting at the bus stop to go to work. The bus pulls up with an advertisement on the side which reads ‘MAKE AN APPOINTMENT’. He doesn’t pay any attention to it, in fact it doesn’t even register with him.

4. The man gets off the bus and walks a few yards to his office. A giant rolling billboard says ‘CALL THEM NOW’ on one roll followed by the telephone number on the next. He somehow manages to miss it.

5. The man then arrives home, looking really tired and ill. He catches sight of himself in the bathroom mirror as he coughs. His breath causes the ‘DOCTOR’ message to re-appear. This time he sees it and takes action by getting his phone to make an appointment.

6. The last scene is a static shot of the mock medical cards with the strap-line ‘Eventually he’ll get the message’. Another static shot of the back of the card appears with the telephone number for NHS 24 and ‘Do it for me x’ written on the back.

The ‘do it for me, x’ becomes the woman’s signature throughout the campaign – her kind of invisible presence, encouraging her husband. It is amusing to see her gestures getting bigger and bigger but her husband still fails to notice them. It is important to show to the target audience that it was one of her smaller gestures that eventually did the trick. This will encourage them not to give up because ‘Eventually he’ll get the message’. The ‘do it for me, x’ is also a subtle hint at men to go to the doctors out of love for their wife if they won’t go for themselves…

Guerrilla Tactics:

• Continue the distribution of the mock medical cards.
• Acetate transfers on some mirrors in ladies public toilets. The strap-line will be see-through and the background will be frosted, making it look steamy. This will make it look as if it has been written in condensation.
• Adverts on busses like the one in the advert with relevant contact details.
• Set up buses as pop-up clinics which tour around the country, encouraging men to get checked out there and then. Reports on their forthcoming presence could be reported in daytime television shows such as  Daybreak and This Morning as well as the Local News.

Further Development

• If the advert is successful on youtube and achieves viral status, launch them on television. They will be played during shows popular with woman of marital age such as morning television, soaps and drama’s.
• Stills form the advert will be taken and put on billboards where woman of our target audience will see them. For example: near to schools, near to offices where they work and in shopping centres.

Reasons for success?

• The advert relates to woman as it refers to the fact they have to keep going on about things to their husbands sometimes. It does it in an elaborate and humorous way however and doesn’t suggest nagging in an argumentative way.
• It could be a conversation starter where woman share their stories/tactics about getting their husbands to the doctor. This could be encouraged by TV-spots, magazine articles and a Facebook page.
• The campaign would be tested online first so it wouldn’t need a big advertising budget initially. This would allow desk research to be done into how many views it was getting. Reactive research could also be done to test the publics awareness of the campaign. This could then be compared with research done after it goes on television to see how effective the further development was, if it went ahead.

If you would like to read about the process and work that went into this campaign click here.

I worked on this campaign in a group with all of these lovely people:

Danielle	Carnegie	Website	Interior & Environmental Design
Vivienne	McGregor	Website	Textile Design
Elliot	McIntosh	Website	Graphic Design
Nicola	Prosser	Website	Illustration
Christina	Davis	Website	Interior & Environmental Design
Lindsay	McQuarrie	Website	Textile Design
Gina	Ramsay	Website	Illustration
Fionnlagh	Ballantine	Website	Graphic Design
Paula	Grubb	Website	Interior & Environmental Design
John	Russell	Website	Graphic Design
Anna	Rzepczynski	Website	Textile Design
Louise	Barrie	Website	Graphic Design
Vikki	Kidd	Website	Interior & Environmental Design
John	Siwek	Website	Graphic Design
Kirsty	Strachan	Website	Textile Design
Veronika	Belokona	Website	Textile Design
Fay	McGlashan	Website	Jewellery & Metal Design
Elizabeth	Murray	Website	Illustration

Workshop 3: One Day Brief

My third ‘advertising and branding’ workshop was a follow-up to the lecture we had the previous day about the workings of an advertising agency. It involved us researching, developing and creating an advertising campaign – in just one day. It started off with our small, four person teams being grouped together with other teams to make three large groups. In my case, I am in ‘Team 5’ and we were working with Teams 4, 6, 7 and 14. For the rest of this post I shall refer to us as Group B.

After the lecture the majority of us, in Group B, found each other and thanks to Paula’s iPad we read the brief straight away. It talked about how men are notoriously bad at visiting their GP; how many major health issues such as depression are ignored; how there seems to be a collective ‘head in sand’ syndrome when it comes to health. Rather than tackling these issues however, our campaigns aim was to:

“Encourage young adult men to visit their GP’s by targeting woman”

Our target audience was therefore to be woman: girlfriends, mothers, wives, friends etc. (Basically woman who know/have a relationship with men). You can read the brief here if you like. After a quick discussion about the brief we decided that each of us would do some desk research that night, to prepare us for the next day. We also appointed Anna to be team leader.

My Desk Research

I found lot’s of Statistics online which backed up the brief such as “men visit the doctors 20% less than woman”. I specifically highlighted the one I thought was most telling: (yellow box in picture above) how even though more woman get skin cancer – more men actually die from it. Whilst I did do a few pages of desk research I quickly realised that everyone else would probably be getting the similar stuff. I decided to mock up the field research idea that came into my head as I had been walking home earlier. I thought it would be good to know the most influential woman in men’s life. Knowing who men were influenced by the most or would go to first for health advice might help us make the campaign more effective.

So I created this chart as a research method suggestion:

The idea being they ticked which woman in their live would most influence them; or which one they would take advice from; or even more directly asking who they would take health advice from.

Thursday Morning

The morning kicked off at 9 am where we found a giant desk to sit around and have a group meeting. We went round everyone individually to find out what we had did, found out or thought about last night. It was a good chance to hear early idea’s and sort out any problems. After the discussion we split up into pairs to do some field research. Each pair was assigned an area of Dundee and one of three research methods:

• Influence Chart

This was the one I suggested although the group helped me tweak it a little to include a ‘friend’ and ‘other’ category. The idea was to just approach men on the street and ask them: which of these woman in your life would you go to if you needed heath advice. It was to be a quick tool that only took a few seconds to answer and produced a high volume of results.

• Body Concerns

This was Fay’s suggestion: an outline of a body, where woman could mark the area(s) of a mans body that would worry her most were he were to complain of having pain there. The idea was to approach woman on the street and ask them to circle areas on the cartoon body outline. This tool was slightly more interactive and allowed the pair to initiate a conversation with the subjects, if appropriate/possible.

• Chat / Interview

This was a more in-depth method which featured strategic, open questions for men regarding their attitude towards going to the doctors. The idea was that whilst the pair would not get a high volume of results, they would get more in-depth opinions and personal stories.

Each pair (using methods 1 and 3, i.e speaking to men) would also ask their research subjects: what would be their first port of call if they had a health concern. The idea was to find out which NHS service was most popular amongst men.

My Morning Research

Lindsay (from my Team 5) and I paired up  and we were to tackle the city centre (together with the Perth Road from DJACD to the city centre)

We got on really well; the majority of the men we asked stopped to look at the choices and consider their answer. A lot of them were rushing though and only took part because we assured them it was “just one quick question”. We did get a few rejections but it comes with the territory; we also got one man who said he would ask all of them! The first twenty men (first sheet) had no problems with it however the second sheet flagged up a problem. One man looked at it then told us that “Judie Dench” would be the one he would go to… A short while later another man told us he would go to the “blonde one” before another man said “Phoebe”. This confusion was my fault, I knew when I was making it the night before that I probably should draw the representations. I didn’t really have enough time so thought that movie stars who could be associated with being ‘a mum’ or ‘a sister’ would be fine. Unfortunately it wasn’t. We corrected the men that the woman were ‘representations’ and got their proper answers. Lindsay then quickly folder the paper in such a way that hid the faces but kept the text and we continued on.

At least I will always remember this research failure and learn from it for future experiments. Celebrities are not good for research representations!! Draw them if you have time otherwise use stock photographs of ordinary people.

Our Morning Research Results

After our hour and a quarter of field research we all met up to discuss and add up our findings.

The top four on the influence chart were not at all what I had anticipated, I guess it just goes to show the importance of doing research and not assuming things. One thing we did discuss, but didn’t seem to act on, was the idea that each pair doing the influence chart should concentrate on a specific age group. Had we reinforced this, the research might have worked out differently. However, because we did the research personally we were able to roughly remember. For example: the majority of men who said ‘mum’ were younger – about eighteen to thirty. The men who said ‘friend’ were also in this range. The majority of men who said ‘wife’ were about twenty five right through to seventy or eighty. The men who said ‘daughter’ were over sixty.

The group doing the body outlines found that the heart, head and joints were generally of the most concern to woman. The group doing the questionnaires told us how the men would wait until their condition got more serious before going to the doctor. The collective results for the NHS services showed that most men would go to their GP; a very surprising but positive result.

We moved on to do some mind-maps and brainstorms for the rest of the morning.

Some idea’s were blowing about but the main themes that kept coming up were ‘embarrassment’  and ‘nagging’. A lot of people were also keen to include ‘fun facts’ and statistics. The majority of the group were keen to go down the humour route instead of ‘shock tactics’. This was backed up by our desk research and questionnaire results which both suggested humour and fun would be most effective. For this reason we decided to focus on small ailments (such as a cough, rash or small pain) that get worse when left untreated. Serious illnesses such as heart disease or cancer would be inappropriate for humour. The idea being that if a man is encouraged by a woman to go to the doctors to get a cough seen to; he would be more likely to go again with a serious problem, such a lump.

I remember at the point we were discussing coughs getting worse, Fionnlagh told us about a video he had watched on Youtube for his desk research. We watched it and agreed that it had a good tone. He had just casually ignored her nagging, she persisted but neither did it in an argumentative way.

One idea that came from this was a woman looking up a mans symptoms on the NHS website but him pretending not to care. When she walks off, he quickly goes and check’s out the laptop. The idea being he does it when she’s not looking, he doesn’t like to make a fuss. The rough tag-line was “it does make a difference”. I quickly drew it out and stuck it up on the wall.

As you can see we had a few other sketches and post-it notes but there was a lack of general idea’s. We had a lot of big brainstorming sheets etc. I also stuck up a slightly out of context motivational poster…

There was a lack of doodling and writing things down however – I think we were just too comfy sitting down. We did discuss a lot of idea’s however and I remember one girl saying something but dismissing it herself as being targeted at men. However someone else like it, reversed it and made it work for woman. This was a great example of listening and group collaboration!

Here are some quick snaps of the things we did write down and put up:

Afternoon Session

After a short half hour lunch break we got back in the zone by doing some quick personas based on our field research.

These three woman were the ones we were to keep in mind for our campaign; asking ourselves regularly if it would appeal to them. This took a little longer than anticipated but it helped us do some mind-maps of places these woman would go. Noting down things like shopping malls, cafe’s, salons etc. gave us an idea of the places and types of media we could use for advertising.

At this point it became quite clear that we were all thinking along the same lines. We wanted a man who was ill and a wife who was nagging (telling) him to go to the doctors. He didn’t and as he got progressively worse (sneezing, spluttering, skin breaking out…) the woman would get progressively more embarrassing in the way she told him to go to the doctors (notes in lunch-box, leaving voicemail messages, flying past on a plane…). It was the sequence of events that was causing some problems and it was hard to keep track of everyone’s suggestions. I remember Anna taking charge at this point and suggesting we split off into small groups. Each group was to draw a potential storyboard for a television advert in ten minutes:

This is the one my group came up with:

We spent far too long discussing it and found it hard to settle on a sequence and what imagery would go with it. I do remember feeling a little bit lost at this point; I think it was just a combination of too many ideas/opinions and trying to connect too many things. As you can see this affected our sketching.

Anyway, even though it did take slightly longer than ten minutes, it did force us to quickly visualise the advert. The idea was to look at them all then pick and choose a sequence of events.

It was pretty much all go from there, Anna delegated tasks to certain people to help get things done quicker. So the illustrators and some of our good drawers were in charge of drawing up the final storyboard visuals:

The rest of us discussed the advertising, pitch and possible guerrilla advertising tactics that would link up with the campaign. We looked at our potential strap-lines narrowed it down very quickly to “eventually he’ll get the message” as it was more or less the unanimous favourite.

We then took a vote on whether it should be “eventually he’ll get the message” or “eventually he’ll get it”. The first one very much had the majority. I have say I was quite pleased, I felt it related more to the idea of the woman leaving/sending the man messages. The other one, for me, was just a bit vague – especially for an new, ‘unestablished’ campaign.

We developed the ‘cards’ idea that had came up earlier where our strap-line was written on a mock medical appointment card. We also decided upon handing them out prior to the campaign. Fay had told us that the old Wispa adverts were on before the product was launched. They were so obscure that they didn’t give away what was being advertised. This got people’s attention as they wanted to find out what it was. I actually looked up the campaign and it was quite clever:

“The bar was launched by teaser advertisements in 1983 bearing the phrase “Have you heard the Wispa?” but without identifying the product as a chocolate bar”

You’ll probably know that Wispa vanished only to be temporarily re-introduced in 2007 then permanently in 2008. I watched this video about the making of the advert and it’s actually really interesting. The advertisement was made up of ordinary people who had pledged themselves… For example one woman telephoned to pledge them her bear costume and herself wearing it!

Anyway, sorry, back on track. The early distribution of the cards would hopefully create interest and get woman wondering ‘what the message was’. Our previous personas’ research helped us when it came to the places these cards would be ‘placed’. So we thought about salons, retail outlets, cafes, gyms and indeed doctors surgeries. The cards would have web addresses and social networking logos’ directing them to the campaigns online presence. We were really keen to have a youtube video that would hopefully turn viral.

It was during this discussion that I had an idea for reinforcing the campaign in ‘reality’. One of the scenes from the final sequence involves a note from the woman written on a steamy mirror when the man comes out the shower. I thought that we could make transfers that would stick on mirrors in ladies restrooms (in public places such a shopping centres). A frosted print effect would make it look as if it had been written on condensation.

Other guerrilla ideas involved buses and billboards like the ones from our final sequence actually being put into action. We were very keen to develop the bus in particular and make it actually relate back to our main concern: encouraging men not to delay a visit to the doctors. We discussed it being a touring bus that delivered health education/awareness demonstrations and drop-ins. it was also cleverly suggested that it could become a touring surgery with real GP’s on board. I am not sure about the logistics and red-tape involved but it’s an idea. Kind of like the blood donation vans that go to offices and retail parks – delivering the service as near as possible.

All of these ideas featured in our pitch together with our final sketches or ‘comps’ (comprehensive layout – the proposed design initially shown to a client). Here are my notes from our discussion about the our pitch and how we would present everything.

We decided to actually mock up some dummy post-it-note ‘cards’ that said “eventually he’ll get the message” and stick them about the space where we would deliver our pitch. Whilst the team were going about sticking these up, a few us went over the plan for the pitch. Lindsay volunteered to do the pitch (or rather she was suggested and then gently persuaded to) so we had a run-through of what she would say and when. This all happened really fast and within no time at all it was deadline time and we summoned to the gallery space to deliver our pitches.

We were second and I must say Lindsay did it brilliantly; she remembered everything as she talked through our concept, advert and entire campaign.

I have written up the entire pitch as a campaign proposal so click here to read it.

The feedback we got from both our tutor and the other groups was really positive. Someone suggested it was more aimed at men but after a lot of discussion it was decided that it actually just lacked a woman in it. They felt that the suggestion of her was not enough and should be reinforced with her actually writing the notes and doing the thing’s. My tutor also commented that some of the things such as the billboard were a bit unrealistic. He was getting at the point of well how did she do that? Rather than a billboard could she maybe graffiti one instead. They felt it was appropriate both humour and target audience wise and liked our further development ideas – particularly the ‘drop-in surgery bus’.

Final Thoughts

Gosh. I would say overall I was happy with our final campaign. There obviously were things that I would not have did had I been doing myself but that’s just as much of a positive as it is a negative. It was interesting just on an experiment level to be part of ‘big idea’ that around twenty people were contributing to. It was nice to watch it grow and develop over time. I was conscious that a lot of good ideas had to be disregarded and some key things were overlooked.

I remember one idea was for the bus to have something embarrassing written in the destination bit. Along the lines of digital text that would normally read ‘city centre’ instead reading ‘doctors appointment’ or something along those lines.

Another one was my suggestion of making it a kind of sitcom style where each scenario was separate and a new successive one came out every couple of weeks. I thought this would give us more room to play up the scenes and make them quite detailed. The idea being people look forward to finding out ‘what happens next’ and maybe start subscribing to the youtube page in order to find out. The momentum would be maintained by regular new adverts and related guerrilla techniques so that peoples interest was maintained.

There were load of others and I think we were just overloaded and forced to make quick decisions in order for it to be ready in time.

For example if you look back at the quick sketches we did about the sequence of the advert you will see the woman in most of them. In fact, most of them are normal as well and contain her doing things she could actually do – such as phoning him up at work. Fair enough some of them are far-fetched, like the aeroplane banner, but she was driving it… I think she somehow just got lost in translation.

It would be really easy to re-instate her back in and tweak the scenarios a little. In fact the whole campaign could be built up and taken further. So yes, I think we created a good ‘big idea’ and I learnt a lot about the process of working in a big group.

It was also a brilliant opportunity to eat lots of sweets and sample Fay and Veronica’s home-baking: