Our Promotional Campaign Technique - TML

As a group we decided that our promotional campaign looked a little messy, and needed some kind of an order. The timeline would follow later in the presentation of our ideas, but we wanted to cut it up into segments that made sense with our main objective - TO CREATE AND KEEP LOYAL CUSTOMERS.

Keeping this in mind, it was a case of breaking it down into three sections. T-M-L.

TRIGGER - the campaign begins and triggers customers and potential customers to look into the brand more and look on the site. It also interests them in the relaunch and the video, creating an atmosphere of anticipation and excitement. It includes a teaser video, SHARE & LIKE competitions and initial Twitter links.

MAIN - this section of the campaign will be all our major promotion. It includes the full video on social network and media sites, introducing our hashtag, the mailing list with sale and story line information. The aim here is to solidify sales, and create new customers first sales.

LOYALTY - our final strategy segment is about keeping those new customers and reintroducing old customers to a loyalty scheme where they are rewarded per sale.

This is what it will look like as a visual, and Francesca will explain the timeline further.

Rebecca Jaye Sharples

Creating The LIKE & SHARE Image

We needed to create a promotional image for our LIKE & SHARE competition. We took our main inspiration from a promotional image for BCBGMAXAZRIA.

The original image we chose to edit was also aligned, but the model was on the left hand side. This basic rule of thirds technique was a quick way to create a canvas for text - with empty space next to the model for any type we chose.

We wanted to try the image in black and white and darken her lips to create a better contrast. It worked successfully and we chose to use it.

The hard part of selecting the right typography would be in placement. We would be using the texts Garamond and Bodoni as basic fonts to correlate with the website and brands fonts. Just as BCBG did, we chose to use the idea of a block shape to fill our main text with. We did this by changing the fonts size and stretching it slightly to be the same width but different height. We also wanted to adopt their subtle use of colour, we tried red lips to match some of the red font but it wasn't working and look a little clumsy and tacky. This was our final outcome:

On this final image the Swarovski crystals were brightened in areas for an extra sparkle. If we had more time and the option of re-shooting we would like to use a prop as BCBG did with their clutch bag to match the red text.

Rebecca Jaye Sharples

Using Facebook GUI's

Once we had our iPhone GUI ready for a screen, we needed to create the Facebook page. Although GC already had a Facebook page, we had our own promotional work to add into the page, so we needed a further GUI to place this as if it were a post.

The promotional image (which will be explained further in a later post) was a SHARE and LIKE competition and this needed to be stipulated on the post's text.

Now that the layer work here had been done, all that was left was to place it into out iPhone 5S.

I was very happy about how this turned out, I also added a second view, where you could see what the image would look like on an iPhone when the image itself had been clicked.

Overall I found the GUI's okay to use, if not a little complicated when first opened. There is some useful tutorials online but they aren't difficult to master after the first one. I really like how readily available they were too. Also if there was time, I would have a go at creating my own GUI with less complicated layers, which I could use in the future.

Rebecca Jaye Sharples

Using iPhone 5S GUI's

To display our campaign, we wanted to include the latest and almost necessary technology for the modern social network-er and social media user. When searching through GUI and icon sets online, I came across a 3D iPhone 5S PSD Vector mock-up. It was set up like most GUI's, but with the smooth simple look we were after. The soft colours against the backgrounds were exactly what we were looking for and we chose the white/gold fascia against a beige background.

http://www.pixeden.com/psd-mock-up-templates/3d-view-iphone-5s-psd-vector-mockup

We really liked the drop shadows too, and finding how we would drop a Facebook GUI would require some time. We would have to create the work needed on the Facebook GUI as a separate file, flatten it, and slide it into the template on the iPhone 5S file shown here.

Rebecca Jaye Sharples

Video Inspiration - Pandora Essence

With our idea for a video so heavily supported by GC's need to move into moving pictures, we started to look into our own seperate pathways we would like our video to go. As with all of our work we wanted it to be a collaboration of our ideas and styles, and to eventually fit into the new image we wanted GC's to promote themselves with.

For me, we needed to move with gentle imagery, a show of product quality with a personal touch and emotive atmosphere. Pandora's recent release of their 'JOY' charm is just a small part of their 'ESSENCE' charm collection. Their collection releases a range of charms including JOY, HAPPINESS, HOPE, etc.

On Pandora's official YouTube page they released 3 videos - a concept video for ESSENCE, the main promotional ESSENCE video, and the first of the charms to be sold, JOY.

We love the muted tones and decreased saturation of the footage, maybe we could look into this as an option, or maybe simple black and white would suit the brand more. As the soundtrack is slow, soft and gentle, it could be suited to the delicate feminine dress designs.

We liked that it was released in several stages. It would be a great way to interest customers, releasing maybe a 'teaser' video as part of the campaign.

Rebecca Jaye Sharples

Initial Customer Profile Boards

When looking at our target customers, we wanted to squash together the brands ideal customers. Their current customer age percentiles look like this:

60% - 28 - 35
25% - 52 - 60
15% - 18 - 24

From this, the ages can be broken down with customer stereotyping. 28 - 35 were looking for one time dresses for special occasions or very rarely office wear. 52 - 60 were mother-of-the-bride market, looking for a dress for their daughters wedding. 18 - 24 were those buying for nights out and also special occasions in more casual styles.

After a briefing with Amy from the company, she made her customer ideals very clear. With an inevitable change in customers due to our campaign plan, we were avoiding the prom market avenue, and looking more at loyal customers around their preferred ages. Amy said their ideal customers would look like this:

40% - 28 - 35
30% - 18 - 24
15% - 16 (prom school leavers)
15% - 52 - 60

We decided to add the top two ideal percentiles together to create a customer target area of 70% of the people the brand would ideally want to reach and sell too. We felt the other two groups were more likely to be one time buyers and therefore did not fit into our 'loyal customer' objective.

After our recent trip to Nottingham for a talk from LS:N Global on 'XX vs XY' we had alot of inspiration about customer areas we could group and work from. The idea of a 'NOMO' fitted just one slice of what our customer could be. A 'NOMO' is a 'No Mother', someone who has a busy life with no current intention of family life. They live glamorous lives but not in excess, as they are health concious and busy. I chose a model from Manchester - Becky Holt. We created a fictional cartograph for her - a selection of images and a run of one of her typical busy days, Because of our brief, we focused the days run of events on the inclusion of social media and networking in her lifestyle.

Rebecca Jaye Sharples

Final Loyalty Account Icons - Geometric Design

We thought when choosing our images to work with, we could use landscapes that represent our levels of account. In simple terms, the shade of season or weather would reflect our original colours. For example:

BRONZE - autumnal landscape/scene

SILVER - stormy sea/sky

GOLD - summer sky/beach/sand

LUXURY - spring landscape/scene

Before this could happen, I attempted an experiment with a graffiti scene I photographed to see how detail would reflect in our diamond shape.

I was happy with the result and if the brand was more urban it would be a great SILVER icon. We were looking for more of a classic and simple graphic, but maybe with small intricate detailing rather than this bold pattern. We wanted to try the landscape idea but also look at soft detailing in branches and textured fabric. We chose the following images to alter and cut up:

For the first attempt I used the landscape and added a sepia filter before I cut it up for the diamond icon. This will be used for the BRONZE.

For the others I used the other image, and for LUXURY I kept the simple blue.

Together on the screen they are over layed on top of a crop of the same image but with a low opacity. It will look something like this:

 In the presentation this will be shown in a GIF of a rollover action on the site.

Rebecca Jaye Sharples

Current Graphic Trends - Geometric Art

The search began for a more modern aesthetic for our icons for the loyalty account. A quick brainstorm and chat with Paz led us to GEOMETRIC ART. This was quite a variety of work and mixed media projects. I found the following the most interesting:

Unfortunately we felt a more photographic route was needed, but building a new image from geometric cut outs. We liked the following ideas:

This was just the inspiration needed, and it was clear we needed a new shape to work from than a circular medal. A diamond was the obvious choice, as we wanted to emphasise the brands use of Swarovski crystals on their garments. The designing started from here.

Rebecca Jaye Sharples

Loyalty Account Icon Design

As we began to look into the design of our campaign, we knew we wanted it to be as simple as the new website, but eye catching so it's the first thing to interest customers visiting the site and viewing our promotion.

With this in mind, we had a fair idea already that we wanted to run with the BRONZE SILVER GOLD theme within our icons. The obvious starting point would be medals. Beside the recent interests in  the Olympics, we thought it would be popular and easy to understand in terms of stages of progression.

The first attempt was simplistic in design, with clear labels and fonts coherent with the brand. We used a faded image from the bloggers edit section of the site just to experiment with backgrounds.

Further detail can be seen in the wreaths featured around each medal. From the medal icons I had seen they used a wreath to surround the centre 'coin'. For example:

http://www.123rf.com/clipart-vector/gold_silver_bronze.html

It's important we look at each part of this campaign with the same eye for detail they do in creating their dresses, so we decided to make our medal wreaths from the brands initials 'GC'. I flipped the 'C' for a more rounded vector shape to add to the icon.

After speaking to Paz, we felt this clip art style icon needed further work. We liked the basic idea though, so it was a case of looking into more modern graphic trends.

Rebecca Jaye Sharples

Loyalty Account Scheme

After deciding that we wanted our main objective to be creating and keeping loyal customers, it was then a matter of finding a scheme to achieve this. This wasn't necessarily going to be a matter of promotion alone, we needed a new initiative for the company that we could promote further later.

After a day or so of brain storming, I suggested a change to the sales section of GC's online store. This would be along the lines of an account level system, where you could earn either points or advantages and move up levels.

I thought a simple ranking way to display this would be with BRONZE, SILVER and GOLD accounts you could progress to - you would begin with a BRONZE account with your first purchase. For aesthetic purposes (wanting them to resemble the webpage in sets of four) we chose to add LUXURY as a premium account. The harder part of this scheme would be to then choose how you could progress and what exactly you would earn in each account package. As a group we settled on the following:

BRONZE - you have bought ONE dress.

SILVER - you have bought TWO dresses and you earn a monthly 15% discount code.

GOLD - you have bought five dresses and you are entered into a prize draw to win a FREE dress, and 

continue your 15% monthly discount.

LUXURY - you have EIGHT dresses and you are given a guest discount code for a friend, a one off 30% discount code, and you continue with your 15% monthly discount after that.

The discount codes mentioned would be individual to the customer/account holder, they would be one use, and they would have a time limit for their use. This will reduce the amount of discounted sales and save the company unnecessary loss.

In time, depending on the company's growth and success, there could be further account stages added, or LUXURY customers accounts would be given further privileges such as being entered into random prize draws.

In terms of fashion shopping accounts online, a lot offer exclusive deals to account users such as next day delivery and discounts. Very.com provide the following:

10% off first credit order

FREE next day delivery when ordered with Collect+

FREE Very treat every time you order with a credit account

Buy now, pay later

3 payments, 3 months, no interest

As GC create most garments by order, free next day delivery would be unrealistic. Giving a free gift was also a possibility but appeared to be a waste of budget. The discount is something we had decided to use but because of our objective to create and KEEP loyal customers, we extended our discount codes to one a month rather than a one off promotion technique. Also keeping our objectives in mind, we feel the 4 level progression scheme I thought of would keep them interested and provide an ongoing opportunity to promote to customers and engage them within the company.

Rebecca Jaye Sharples

Re-developement of working strategy

Last week during our meeting with Paresh we found out that we were working towards the wrong result. We were concentrating so much on the customer that we lost the main point of the brief.

After Paz helped us to get back on track, we as a team sat down and created a new and a successful Social Media Marketing plan.

We thought of the USP of the company. We then gathered that the main selling point is the "made to measure" section and their beautiful Swarovski dresses.

This meant we had something we were working towards. Another point Amy seemed to mention a few times in our lesson was the fact that they were going to use more and more video content to get their customers interested.

This is were our idea started to develop further.

IDEA:

We were going to create a sexy and semi informative video clip about the sexy Swarovksi dress and about the made to measure. Now by concentrating on that we still had to create a successful social media marketing plan.

We will create a video to keep and attract new customers. Also to get them excited about making the made to measure section. There would be a teaser clip to gain attention but to capture there attention, we would first create a twitter and Facebook post to attract peoples attention to the accounts and the main website. A picture of 10% off your first order if you log on to their website will be posted. This will then increase sales and views on their website.

When we have gathered more views we will then put the teaser up. The teaser will be a mechanism by keeping customers on track and also to show them that this brand has a never ending growth process.

After getting peoples emails, by logging on to the websites, we will be able to sell special events or offers to the emails. And from then on we can measure the success of each offer/event. This also ables the company to receive more customer information. This is important for a company in order to grow organically.

By the end we will have more customers and increase in sales. To make a purchase even ore excited and more successful we will create a loyalty scheme.

The loyalty Scheme:

there will be gold, silver and bronx. Depending on how many dresses you buy you will have you will be ranked in gold, silver or bronx. The higher you are the the more dresses you have ordered. And for the the gold ranking there will be specialties (for example 20 % off your next order or a special made to measure dress designed by you with no extra costs.) This will make the customer feel involved and excited after every purchase for the dress and the ranking. As if they are working towards something.

And by the end of all of this we will off course have an Instagram which will show the making of specific dresses and pictures of new designs.

Customer

http://vimeo.com/76679465

http://vimeo.com/75860255

Both these videos are based on our target customer. They are from the XXVXY trend by the future laboratory. Even though we have our customer these videos help understand the feel of what we want to communicate with the garments. A strong, powerful , 21st century woman.

Customer profile 18- 33

In our last meeting we set a deadline to make three customer profile boards. Each board would portray a customer we think Gorgeous Couture needs.We started discussing the trend forecasters that we saw in Nottingham. But After I read through the brief again I saw that they were after a younger customers and wanted to share their made to measure to the mass.

I have created a younger customer, which I thought might be more suitable and successful for the brand.

CUSTOMER

First Meeting

Wednesday this week all of us met to discuss ideas. We started to define our customer and scheduled  weekly meetings which will take place every Monday and Tuesday afternoon. We have taken trends and the Brands point of views into consideration.

Firstly:

We are thinking of concentrating on expanding their Website. Meaning we would concentrate on their made to measure section by creating a professional made to measure clip, while concentrating on how to share this to the mass and attract customers.
We will have to get a team of professionals to create such a professional clip and coordinate with Gorgeous Coutures wants and needs.

Second:

We also have thought of creating and fashion shoot, where the garments are transformed into astylish and everyday to we are garments instead of only being for "red carpet events". An idea was to shoot  a fresh and cool blogger to or an influential fashion icon. We have contacted a great team that could work with us.


All these ideas will be thoroughly thought out to create a successful outcome.

Brief

Last Week Amy Bithell visited our course and presented Gorgeous Couture to the class. We have all been put in groups to create a successful Social Media Marketing tool for the company. This company is known for making dresses that also have been modeled by famous reality stars like Lucy Watson from Made in Chelsea.

The company would like to expand their customers and educate them about their exclusive and unique made to measure service.

Then we have to create an idea too attract customers via correct social media tools and successful social media time lines.

This group contains three Fashion Brand Managment Students, Francesca, Charlotte and Becks.