choosing past brief that interest me and why

UK Greetings

UKG have several established sub-brands, each priding itself on delivering something unique, giving UK Greetings a distinctive edge and sound reputation for diverse and eclectic product. More information on these can be found at ukgreetings.co.uk

The Creative Challenge

The greetings card industry is a very competitive market. We are constantly looking for ways to stand out from the crowd, whether this be through an exciting card format, interesting use of finishes (emboss, foil, glitter, varnish, gems, googly eyes, printed card attachments, bespoke attachments, buttons etc), or simply stunning designs that stand out from the competition.

Target Audience

16-34 year olds.

Considerations

Think about the sending situation. Why would you be sending them a card? What is the occasion? Birthday card to a friend or to a family relation? Something to say good luck, get well? Congratulations? You’re getting married? Simply ‘I love you’ or ‘I miss you’?

Who is the recipient? At what stage in their lives are they? Single, married, with children, off to college/university, passing their driving test, losing someone close to them?

Remember who you are targeting. Who is going to be actually buying the card for the recipient? Although you need to design a card that targets the recipient, it’s the person who is buying the card we need to impress and convince.

Also please note: Women buy far more cards than men.

Is the card design-led or copy-led (could be a quote, just a ‘hello’ or a longer message)?

Mandatories

You must design at least 4 cards. These will include:

•   Front page designs.

•   Designs for the inside of the cards (this may or may not include an insert).

•   A range name and logo to be printed on the back page.

•   Remember to think about the envelope colour or design.

•   Suggested card sizes – 159mm x 159mm, 121mm x 184mm, 137mm x 159mm, 110mm x 210mm but don’t let that restrict you.

•   Add 3mm bleed to all artwork supplied.

Preparation

Take a look at what is out there. Visit Paperchase, Clintons, WH Smith and local card shops. A successful range often does something different to what is already out there.

Do some research into what types of cards are being sent to this target group and why.

why i have chosen this brief:
i like the freedom of this brief - though there is a set deliverable, i am still able to approach it with my own style\technique of working. i feel it will force me to experiment with new techniques and approaches to creative something innovative and different - something that they want (to stand out from other ordinary cards) 

The Feel Good Drinks Company

Brief 1: focus on creating a new look for our pack design Brief 2: produce a national brand awareness campaign

Make A Name For Both Of Us

Why should you spend your time on this brief?

1.It’s feel good... our drinks are tasty, healthy and based on previous YCN awards they should get the creative juices flowing a little faster than most. 

2.            We’re up for a challenge... even though our business is growing quickly, we aren’t afraid of change and taking risks. 

3.            We’ll make it real... finally and most importantly, if your idea is good enough we’ll use it. That’s what happened to Debbie Hulme’s Feel Good gnome animation which became an E4 campaign. A YCN winning idea will also feature prominently in our 2013 brand plans. 

The creative challenge is detailed below, so if you want to make a name for yourself and create a CV which is second to none, then read on!   

A Little Bit About Us

We are a relatively small, privately owned company which makes tasty, healthy drinks.  The business was started in 2002 with a range of 3 juice drinks in 375ml glass bottles. We now offer 5 ranges including Feel Good Kids, Feel Good still & sparkling juices, Feel Good non alcoholic cocktails and Feel Good vitamin waters. 

The “golden rules”  we only use 100% natural ingredients and never add sugar to our drinks.  One major challenge we have is that consumers aren’t aware that almost all of the supposedly healthy drinks have lots of added sugar or artificial ingredients.

As the name suggests, our brand is all about making people feel good.  We keep things simple and quite light hearted. We do try to do our bit and have a Feelgoodness Days volunteering scheme for our team, along with our weekly Feel Good Fridays and our Feel Good Fund for good causes.

The Challenge

Brief #1 is focused on pack design.  
Brief #2 has a broader scope with the challenge of raising brand awareness.  So let your creative taste buds be tickled and take your pick (if you’re feeling very industrious, we won’t stop you doing both!)

Brief #1  - A new look for Feel Good

We think our pack designs look good.  The designs are simple, colourful and impactful on shelf, the brand name is clear and most people get the fact that we are offering tasty, healthy drinks. 

However there is a risk that we’re being a little modest with our communication of some the main reasons to drink Feel Good eg no added sugar and 100% natural ingredients. We also want to ensure that we strike the right balance between the communication that our drinks are healthy and having label designs which makes people smile and feel good. 

We’re big fans of simple, uncluttered pack design, we like what we’ve got but recognise that the best designs are constantly evolving. The supporting information included in our project pack shows how our designs have evolved over the last 10 years, we’re up for change and would love to see some fresh ideas.

Brief #2  - Make the nation Feel Good

The biggest opportunity in our business is to raise awareness of our brand.  We know that when someone tries one of our drinks, they’ll give it a big thumbs up. The trouble is, currently only 2 out of 5 of our target market are aware of Feel Good Drinks when shown a picture of our bottle.

That’s where you come in! We are looking for creative ideas for a national communication campaign to raise awareness of Feel Good Drinks.  We need you to think big - we want to see ideas that stop people in their tracks and make them feel good, an ear to ear grin kind of good.

The communication objectives are really simple: people need to know our brand name, what our drinks look like and that our drinks are choc-full of tasty goodness. We want the communication to be unique, memorable and very feel good. We’re up against some soft drinks giants with very big pockets, so be brave, be cheeky if you want, but above all be noticed!

Creative Requirements

Brief #1 please focus on the label designs rather than the bottle shapes.  We’d like the ideas to focus on our still and sparkling juice ranges but ideally you’d also demonstrate how your idea could be translated to our other ranges.  We’ve supplied the current brand typeface and logo, but please feel free to change, challenge and be creative.

Brief #2 we have a completely open mind as to which communication channels we use for the national campaign.  We like outdoor advertising because it can be confident and impactful, TV has also worked well for us in the past.  We’re big fans of digital, our Facebook and Twitter family is growing quickly and provides the opportunity to spread our message virally.  Whether an idea works across a number of media channels will be one of the judgement criteria, so get stretching!

Feel free to incorporate the Feel Good Drinks logo and images of our bottles into your work where appropriate. For the communication campaign we’d like you to focus on our small bottle still and sparkling juice drinks. Images of these can be found in the project pack.

Target Audience

16-34 year old adults who are happy to pay a little bit more for a healthy, tasty soft drink that isn’t full of junk. They are an up-beat, look-on-the-brightside, sociable bunch, who like to work hard but always find time for some feel good fun and games.

Tone of voice

PMA people - you can’t call yourself Feel Good Drinks and be miserable! The message should always be friendly, fun, and just a little bit cheeky. Please don’t get all serious on us now. It’s about talking to people on their level, making a connection and making them smile.

Additional Information

Read all about us at our site and stay up to date with what we’re doing by becoming a Facebook fan or a Twitter follower.

And remember, Drink Good….Feel Good!

Feel Good Drinks is keen to support young, creative talent and will be actively looking to develop ideas submitted for this brief. If your idea is chosen to be developed and implemented as part of Feel Good Drinks’ marketing plans, as well as seeing your work come to life and the publicity that will come from this, you’ll be given full credit for your idea and will also receive £1000.
reasons why i have chosen this brief:
to start with, i liked the sound of this brief because i have worked on a similar brief in graphic/product design a level and i enjoyed thinking of ways to re-introduce and re-design a brand, i also enjoyed working in a persuasive advertising manner. 
i also like the fact that there is a huge benefit to this brief if you win- a great way to get your name out there as a designer/illustrator. 

Very

Devise a campaign or concept that decodes key style events throughout the year

Background

Created in 2009, Very is a multi channel department store for women who are ‘style confidence seekers’.  Very sells famous brands and its own brand across 10 key categories: women’s/men’s/baby and kid’s clothing, sports, home and garden, electricals, entertainment, toys, gift and beauty.

Very uses celebrity ambassadors to raise brand awareness, recall and engagement. Our current partners are Holly Willoughby, Fearne Cotton and Jameela Jamil. Our customers use them as a short cut to what’s fashionable, i.e. an “if they’re wearing it, it must be trendy – how do I ‘get the look’!” mentality.

Our Positioning

At the heart of our brand is the following statement: Very reveals the style that works for you.

Our Mission

•   Compete in range, price and promotion.

•   Be credible with our fashion, style and aspiration.

•   Have excellent customer service that’s constantly meeting changing expectations.

•   Decode style as some trends can look a bit scary and most of the time they appear with no rhyme or reason and no guidance of how to put it all together. That’s where Very rolls up its sleeves and gets stuck in - we explain the why, the what, the what not, and hopefully point her in exactly the right direction. She doesn’t need her hand holding, she just needs a bit of reassurance to let   her know it’s OK to try something new.

•   Have exclusive ranges as we sell stuff the customer can’t get anywhere else.

•   Very account: making that all important style affordable

Our Personality

Very is never one-dimensional and boring, like all the best people we’ve got layers to our personality. Here are six words that describe our brand most of the time (of course we have off days too, we wouldn’t be normal otherwise!)

•   Spirited – we’re energetic, ambitious and relentless on your behalf!

•   Fashion savvy – we want our customers to look like a million bucks but without the price tag!

•   Playful – we’re cheeky, fun and a bit tongue in cheek!

•   Sassy – we’re feisty, edgy and a little bit grrrr!

•   Inspiring – we’re an endless source of new ideas for you, your brood and your home.

•   Straight talking – we won’t bamboozle you with jargon. Nuff said!

Target Audience

Our primary customer summary: she is a ‘style confidence seeker’ (25 – 44 years of age, the demographic classification of C1C2DE) but is very fashion engaged. In fact, when it comes to working out what’s right for her, she’s a little bit fashion-shy. Whilst on the face of it they’re the life and soul of the party – beneath it’s not all so easy.

Truth be told, they find it confusing (and a bit stressy) to pick out a style that works for them. They’d like a bit of a guiding hand. Some have always felt a bit like that – they rely on fashion forward friends to help them kit out their wardrobe.

The main thing is that they lurrrvveee fashion... reading, learning and chatting about it (and wearing it of course!). Don’t go picturing a super-dedicated fashionista though (you won’t find any little dogs in Gucci handbags here).

For one... they have more important areas where they need to spend their money. For two... the stresses and strains of real life means they’re too busy to be overly obsessed with fashion. For three... even if they had all the cash and time in the world, the whole fashionista thing is just a bit over the top. “When it comes to fashion, lighten up and have some fun!”

And don’t be fooled into thinking they don’t love their home and tech. They want the full package, and that’s what we give them.

It’s really important that others; her friends and family, see that she’s got it right – their approval matters. She feels under constant pressure to keep her wardrobe and home up to date with the latest styles. There’s just so much advice, so much choice but none of it seems to be relevant to her – and the pain of getting it wrong can be gut wrenching and costly! Maybe it’s because she’s juggling a busy life, just had kids, just hit her 40s or maybe it’s because that’s just the way she’s feeling at the moment. Either way, she’s craving a helping hand in a fashion world she can sometimes find rather scary.

Big name brands can often be a short-cut she takes to get this thumbs up and she must feel like she is shopping at the most fashionable places. The celebs she spots in her magazines and on TV are also a handy tool for her to work out what could be a good style for her and it’s our job to help her be brave and give her the confidence to try something new.

The Creative Challenge

Create a piece of communication, or campaign, that decodes the year of Very style. The Calendar year is made up of a series of seasonal style events that our target customer wants to understand in her terms: new season colours for her home, holiday essentials, new winter trends, the perfect Valentine’s are just a few of the seasonal ‘events’ for which Very wants to offer the perfect/relevant advice and style tips. Your creative challenge is to devise a campaign or concept that decodes key style events through the year, in a visually distinct and engaging way.

We want to inform and surprise our lovely customers with something amazing once a month. It can be tiny or epic but needs to be packed with tips and advice and have bags of our personality. Lots of competitors have ways of offering style tips (for fashion and home) so your solution needs to be distinct and a truly ownable way of decoding style for the very customer.

We don’t expect you to be an expert in next season’s trends but your concept should visually demonstrate a way of delivering seasonally relevant stories, with the relevant advice... just don’t get bogged down in trying to demonstrate the detail ! We also don’t expect you to illustrate the entire year, just pick a key story from one of the months to bring your idea to life, but consider the overarching concepts of flexibility and longevity.

Your concept can take any format you can dream of, just bear in mind that we are a multi channel brand (online, mobile, and social are key) so ideally you’ll be able to demonstrate that the idea is executable across multiple channels.

Creative Considerations

Feel free to form a team of creative genius’ who can tackle this project from different angles: product/illustration/design/photography/music/new media.

For print: don’t exceed six colours (unless you can justify it of course!)

Brand guidelines: please see our brand bible for the rules of engagement, but feel free to evolve, like all fashion brands do... as long as you don’t reinvent the wheel!

Tone of  Voice

If you haven’t realised already we have a distinct TOV (you can find the rules for our TOV in our brand bible). It’s as important as our images and graphics in bringing the brand to life and should be a factor in your concepts.

Mandatories

•   Logo, with URL

•   Our tagline: “Whatever you do, do it in style”

In Conclusion

A clear articulation of a creative idea which brings the challenge and the brand proposition to life. All formats are in scope: Apps, social, experiential, viral, mobile, print, digital, film, outdoor, press, product, or perhaps you’ll present a whole new category.
reasons why i have chosen this brief: