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TASK 4 JOURNAL

Upon completing the sponsor pack we showed it to some lecturers for feedback.

Overall the feedback was that we needed to simplify some of the design on the pages, as well as the legal information should be in black and white. A final suggestion was adjusting some of the text to make it more legible when reading it on print.

I also participated in making the presentation to show the people we had calls with for feedback as well being in one of the groups that was in a call with representatives from Heritage Malta.

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ICA TASK 3 JOURNAL

After the theme was chosen, our lecturer split us into 3 teams to tackle the 3 booklets for the ICA Festival. I was put into the Finance and Logistics team and then as we were deciding who would be team lead the group decided that I would be the one taking the role as I was part of the original concept team.

My personal experience was overall positive as we worked very well as a team, after an initial meeting with all the team’s members as we delegated who will do what for the purposes of task 3. It was settled that Philip, Neala and Emman were taking care of the events research as well as getting the quotes of how much it would cost. Erica would tackle the Financial Plan and I would be in charge of designing and compiling the Sponsor Package which also doubles as the presentation, Lisa and Elise were aiding us with pricing for bundles and helping me assemble the Sponsor Package.

When designing the Sponsor Package my challenge was to make something that is traditionally very boring be instead filled with a lot of personality to truly showcase something that when viewed by the sponsors, I feel like I was successful with my approach and through feedback from other classmates it seems to be their consensus too, of course all of this will still be subject to tweaks and changes by the time we have to submit it for Task 4.

The Sponsor Pack:

Other things I did was oversee some of the merchandise design concepts as well as offering suggestions on the designs of of the Marketing Plan and Brand Guidelines as well as helping with any queries from other teams for concept aid as well as checking the English for some things in the Brand Guidelines.

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ICA 2022 CONCEPT PRESENTATION

When we started off the project our group was presented with our mood boards that we had created for our initial concept selection for the task before. When we were analysing each of our top four mood boards we noticed similar colours and graphic elements that we could pull from to create a visually interesting and conceptual theme for the upcoming 2022 ICA Festival.

We as a group decided to go with the layout and general aesthetic of my retro cyberpunk inspired mood board (seen above) in combination with Maria’s colour palette from her Flair mood board as well as combining image treatments and graphic elements from Liam and Luke’s mood boards too.

Seeing as we decided to work closest to my initial concept I took a sort of leadership role in the group making sure that all things were delegated to each member according to their strengths and tried to give consistent and clear feedback on each aspect of the process.

My contributions were mostly in the initial ideation of the theme as well as the subsequent tagline of Embrace Liminality. After coming up with the theme and tagline I then took the initiative to put it into words for our rationale with the assistance of Luke. I also worked closely with Liam on the style of animations we were going to do and spent time with Maria when developing a suitable layout for our concept presentation, during the process of creating the presentation we settled on our main type and colour scheme that shall be used in all our branding.

A section I was in charge of was the photography style we were planning on incorporating for our branding which was inspired by street photography and 90s punk images in black and white which allowed maximum contrast for the gradient map we would add for the image treatments.

My role was mostly doing a bit of everything to assist the other members of my group, my contribution to the mock ups was creating the digital wallpapers, patterns, instagram content and billboard signage.

Overall I feel like we contributed very enthusiastically with this project and we are all very proud with the work we have done, it offered me a chance to work with classmates that I wouldn’t usually pick to be on a team project with and I believe that we have produced great work that fulfilled the requirements and more.

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ICA Concept 2: Cyberpunk

Pinterest Board Here: Link

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ICA Concept 1: Pop Art

Pinterest Board here: Link

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Hire a Marketing Firm: PSP White

This Sony advertisement is from a 2006 advertising campaign in the Netherlands. The campaign promotes Sony's new white PSP (which was previously only available in black) and uses race to personify the devices. It depicts a pale white woman with white hair and white clothes physically dominating a black person clothed in black attire, with the phrase "White is Coming." Due to protests, the ad was pulled due to the depiction being deemed racist and inappropriate.

Critics slammed Sony for using the racially charged image to promote a product, claiming it harkens back to a time when black people were represented in minstrel shows.

This wasn't the first time Sony had provoked a rash of advertising controversies related to racial appropriation with this advert coming right off of the previous PSP ad campaign that involved paid-for graffiti in major American cities. As well as and ad campaign that ran exclusively in London that had vaguely sexist undertones as well, which were unnecessary for the target demographic of the PSP.

This type of tone-deaf advertising is yet another case of companies using in house marketing teams that clearly lacked diverse voices during the brainstorming process as well as it is a good reference point for the kind of stunt advertising companies tried to go for at the time to gain publicity regardless whether good or bad.

Source: https://www.mtv.com/news/1536222/sony-pulls-dutch-psp-ad-deemed-racist-by-american-critics/

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Activism that fell flat: Pepsi

Pepsi's "Live for Now – Moments" campaign made its debut on April 4, 2017, with the goal of aligning Pepsi as a millennial-friendly brand with a socially relevant and unifying message. The commercial featured Kendall Jenner, a 21-year-old supermodel, participating in a photo shoot before "jumping in" with protestors marching down the street. Pepsi had to pull the ad off the air and off the internet less than 48 hours after it first aired due to widespread outrage.

Many people panned the commercial for its insensitive tone and what some viewers perceived to be poor execution of the intended message. During the commercial, Jenner joins the protest and eventually approaches a cop with a can of Pepsi who is standing guard over the protestors. He takes a sip of his beverage. It was described by Entertainment Weekly as "a tone-deaf attempt to co-opt a movement of political resistance" in order to boost sales.

Following the ad's release, many Twitter users expressed their displeasure, claiming that it trivialised real-life protests in which several people died fighting for a legitimate cause. Some users were offended by Pepsi's implying it was the miracle cure for all societal issues. This campaign brought about serious discussion on what happens when companies use in house marketing teams that tend to lack diversity.

Advertising like this was prevalent around this era and most of them unfortunately fell flat like Pepsi’s attempt to take a stand on a very sensitive issue due to consumer demand for the brands of products they buy to have the same ethical values as them. While in the long run Pepsi recovered from the blow to their reputation 9 months later when the next Super Bowl rolled around this definitely had them rethink their approach to marketing their flagship product.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/05/business/kendall-jenner-pepsi-ad.html

https://astute.co/pepsi-kendall-jenner-commercial/

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Sometimes change is not good: New Coke

Coca-Cola (later shortened to Coke) was first introduced in 1886, and it quickly became ingrained in American culture. Despite its seemingly secure position in American lives, Coke was facing a strong challenge from Pepsi by the mid-1980s. The "Pepsi Challenge," in which the majority of participants in blind taste tests chose Pepsi over Coke, was launched by that beverage. Concerned Coca-Cola executives decided to reformulate their beverage, making it sweeter.

After extensive testing, the reformulated product was released in April 1985 under the name New Coke, though its official name was simply Coke; the word "new" appeared on bottles and cans.

On the street, it was regarded as a national catastrophe. Coca Cola's stocks fell on the New York Stock Exchange, while its competitor's rose. ‘‘After 87 years of going at it eyeball to eyeball, the other guy just blinked," Pepsi boasted in full-page newspaper advertisements.

The loyal customers of Coca Cola were left with a bitter taste in their mouths. The company received 5,000 angry phone calls per day within weeks of the announcement. By June, that number had risen to 8,000 calls per day, prompting the company to hire additional operators.

The new Coke commercials at the Houston Astrodome were booed, and original Coke was hoarded or sold at Prohibition-era prices. In addition, New Coke was dumped into Seattle's sewers in front of the public. After a 77-day hiatus, the previous version of Coke was reintroduced as "Coca-Cola Classic" on July 11, 1985. The Coca-Cola Company may have lost millions of dollars on research and advertising, but it received three times that amount in free advertising.

While they might have gotten a lot of attention for the recipe change it was probably for all the wrong reasons, by changing the recipe to taste similar to Pepsi’s sweeter cola, Coca-Cola unintentionally acknowledged Pepsi’s superiority which sent a message that they weren’t confident in their flagship drink.

Source: https://www.history.com/news/why-coca-cola-new-coke-flopped

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Does a body good: Got Milk?

In 1993, participants in a focus group led by Jon Steel, a partner at the San Francisco advertising firm Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, were urged to refrain from drinking milk for a week before taking part in the study. Steel's goal was to gather data on milk consumption habits in order to prepare a pitch for a new client, the California Milk Processor Board, which was seeking for innovative ways to enhance sales.

Got Milk? is an iconic piece of advertising-turned-pop culture that perfectly encapsulates the 1990s. The campaign is the holy grail of celebrity culture, if the 1990s were the decade when it reached its pinnacle. It was a hotbed of celebrities from movies, television, sports, and politics–a crossroads of high and low, where Bill Clinton and Bob Dole rub shoulders with Van Halen and Dennis Rodman, and The Simpsons.

Over 70 commercials appeared on television in California alone during the two decades that Got Milk? dominated the public mind, and 350 milk moustache advertising ran nationally in print and on television—at a time when those two media were still all powerful. On any given day, an estimated 80% of all consumers in the United States were confronted with the simple question: Got Milk? Multiple industry awards were given to the campaign. It was parodied and imitated. The phrase was as omnipresent as the product it was advertising at the height of the mania.

The craziness and boldness of this advertising campaign was simultaneously of its time while staying forever in the minds of western audiences and despite countless attempts to mimic its impact, few campaigns have come close to reaching its popularity.

Source: https://www.fastcompany.com/40556502/got-milk-how-the-iconic-campaign-came-to-be-25-years-ago

https://medium.com/@onlykutts/iconic-ads-got-milk-and-milk-moustache-a8b63712ca2c

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Think Different: Apple

In the beginning when Apple Inc. was first establishing it’s brand values as a company, they settled on improving the quality of life for it’s users in a creator focused way, in their eyes they had to make life with Apple technology easy and seamless that will free them up to focus on their work in their chosen industry.

This prioritisation of creative thinking was further emphasised in Apple’s now famous 1984 Super Bowl advert that depicts a colourful athletic woman sprinting through an Orwellian nightmare inspired by the book ‘1984’. The woman representing the first Macintosh computer that was coming soon. The Super Bowl adverts tend to be larger than life to create a huge impact during one of the most televised events in America.

This advertisement is hailed as one of the more iconic advertisements of all time, constantly put on lists of best advertising campaigns of all time and this specific advert launched Apple that sent it from a small start up into the tech giant it is today.

I personally love this style of advertising, it’s witty, topical and bombastic in a way that sticks in your head to create an iconic moment associated with the Apple brand. Just like their tagline at the time, Apple inspired other companies at the time to think different.

Source:https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/what-made-apples-1984-advert-so-successful-dc5af1b073f3

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How many licks?: Tootsie Roll

Tootsie Roll Industries creates and sells many well known candy brands in the world. With the creation of the Tootsie Roll in 1896 in a small New York candy store, the Chicago-based company has evolved to become one of the America’s major confectionery corporations, with operations across North America and distribution outlets in over 75 countries.

In 1969, a commercial made by the advertising agency Doner aired on national television that asked, "How many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll centre of the Tootsie Pop?"

The ad is simple and asks only one question. It's surprising because you're not sure if the ad will give the answer. As the young boy goes and asks the same question to multiple animals each one not able to answer him. It’s believable because it urges you to try it for yourself, and Tootsie Rolls were a popular sweet at the time.

To determine why, Ace Metrix, a technology company that assesses advertising's impact, conducted a study in 2014 to establish the ad's relevancy score by today's criteria. The ad "drove extraordinarily high likability and attention levels, but also scored well on relevancy and desire, on par or exceeding scores of recent candy advertising," according to the 500 participants polled. The words "love" or "loved" were used by 29% of the 326 people who left comments, which is similar to the 9% average for candy advertising today.

I believe that this simple yet effective advertising campaign is majorly successful as even now over 50 years later the plot of all these commercials haven’t changed, it’s also become a staple of pop culture as it has been referenced in multiple songs and comedy sketches throughout the years following that first commercial which shows the staying power an advert can have.

Source:https://bettermarketing.pub/how-the-tootsie-pop-has-managed-to-go-and-stay-viral-for-50-years-afeeb3c6662c

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