30th August - 20th September 2023 / Week 1 - 4
Alana Sofia Othman / 0353451 / Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media
Creative Brand Strategy
Task 1
LECTURES
Lecture Slides 1
Introduction
What is Brand Strategy and Why Do We Need it?
Brand Strategy is about planning out your brand messages. The who, what, how, where and when are planned out to create a well defined brand strategy. This is important to keep a consistent brand message, strong emotional connection and a higher brand equity
Strategising your branding roll out also means to study the competitive landscape, market position and customer expectations. Which all help to build marketing targetted to a specific audience and in so, creating a strong brand image.
Lecture Slides 2
The Branding Process
Branding Now
Branding can be applied to basically anything now: a person, business, country, or even an idea (George Bush’s ‘War on Terror’ or Britain’s short-lived ‘Cool Britannia’ in the 1990s).
The Basic Brand Development Process
Formulating a brand strategy: Important to understand the direction of the brand such as, target market, vision, objectives and so on. Essentially, it is the absolute baseline and core of a brand.
Creative execution: Creating the look and feel of the brand such as language, logo and name. This will be the section where the average consumer will interact with and remember.
Creative implementation: Execution will be nothing without the correct implementation. Choosing your platforms and implementing your brand presence for the world to see.
Communicating the brand: This should cover both the employee and external communications execution for the brand
Brand Experience
Human development has brought on the need to plan the brand experience through 'touchpoints'. Brand experience is important to ensure the target audience is constantly engaged with the brand and the messages/items stay within their brand values.
As humans, we are drawn in and hooked by having an emotional connection with anything and everything, branding included. Thus, the emotional aspect is important within branding and falls under the brand experience. Emotional connections are created through a variety of brand aspects such as the behaviour, style, voice of the brand and so on.
Type of Campaigns
Campaign: A continuous attempt to communicate a specific message to an audience.
Concept: An idea or a thought.
Concept Campaign: A hook or idea that convinces your audience that now is the time to take action. It gives the target market the idea and specific message.
Cause: A person or thing that gives rise to an action, phenomenon, or condition. A principle, aim, or movement to which one is committed and which one is prepared to defend or advocate.
Cause Campaign: Seeks to increase profits as well as bettering society with CSR. Usually is in collaboration with activists to further the message. Instead of marketing a specific product or service, it would be promoting a charitable idea, cause or goal.
Event: Something that happens or takes places, especially one of importance. An occurrence of a noteworthy happening often planned as a social occasion or public activity.
Event Campaign: a.k.a. expreimental marketing. Usually to teach/demonstrate/show customers about your products, services or business. For example, tech talk, weekly book club, etc.
Launch: To initiate and gain growth and traction ASAP. It would promote new items.
Launch Campaign: Usually part of a larger marketing strategy and tends to aim at capturing new customers, increasing revenue, creating product awareness, etc.
Personality: The characteristics and behaviours that make a person. The combination of characteristics or qualities that form a distinctive character.
Personality Campaign: Promoting a person's reputation and career. A modern personal branding strategy is strongly rooted in content marketing.
Social Media: Online applications where users are exposed to content and can share. It is about conversations, community, connecting with the audience and building relationships.
Social Media: Social media not only allows you to hear what people say about you, but enables you to respond, building emotional connections with your customers.
The Creative Strategy
The Brand Story
Created to convey to the audience who and what you are along with how and why you exist. It is important to define a specific reason that is simple to be understood by everyone. The brand story becomes the basis of the brand, existing as the core of a rband.
SWOT
A way of analysing to fully understand all the factors of your own brand. This helps with better decision making and discovering what else you could/should be doing.
Strength: What the brand does particularly well or what distinguishes itself from the competitors.
Weaknesses: What the brand does not do well in. The limitations of resources, skills, systems, etc. It allows one to understand where, how and why competitors could be better. It must be realistic and brutally honest to be useful and effective information.
Opportunities: Something that can be utilised and pushed to make the brand better. Usually comes from external situations outside of the brand, like a domino effect. Things such as marketing trends, technology advancement, changes in social patterns, etc. can create new opportunities.
Threats: Also refers to external factors outside of the brand. These are the challenges the brand may come to face by simply existing. It is important to know these as it can help with planning ahead.
Customer Journey Map
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| Figure 1.1. Customer Journey Map Example (Medium, 2017) |
A visual representation of the journey your customer will go through. Each step will show what they want, how they feel, what they do, what they need and so on. Each step should essentially lead them to the next step, this is done through touchpoints of the customer journey map. A comprehensive customer journey map consists of customer actions, motives and experiences but also of organisational activities and roles that are responsible for these activities.
This helps with identifying a customer's experience with the brand across all touchpoints and stages. It is useful to know these to better plan the touchpoints, messages and objectives of each item the customer interacts with.
Brand Positioning
It is about what the people think of you and where they hold you in their own minds. It is about the benefits you offer that they should them to remember.
INSTRUCTIONS
Task 1a: Case Study
Research
The City of Melbourne
Attachment 1.1. Melbourne City Branding Case Study (Week 1-2)
We were given a week to choose and complete our case study on a city
brand. I went through the reading link recommended by Ms Lilian on
famous city brandings. I decided to study Melbourne's city branding as a personal
preference to the city (Simply because I have visited Melbourne and
enjoyed it).
Researching the City of Melbourne brand was fairly simple as there
were many articles on it. I even found the actual design company that
worked on their branding,
Landor & Fitch. I discovered alot about Melbourne as I did more research on their
branding, such as the many events they host for their citizens and the
projects they have done to make Melbourne a more sustainable city.
In terms of branding, I truly love how the City of Melbourne is able
to be versatile and dynamic. Their brand identity is able to stay true
to itself while also extending their identity and personality to
different events and projects, allowing them to not continously have
the exact same repetitive look. This becomes extremely useful because
as a city brand, they aim to partner with a variety of businesses and
host many different events. Being able to have extentions of their
brand identity is what I find truly captivating about the City of
Melbourne Brand.
Attachment 1.2. Melbourne City Branding Case Study Slides Progression
(Week 1 - 2)
Final Submission
The City of Melbourne Case Study
The City of Melbourne Case Study
Attachment 1.2. Melbourne City Branding Case Study Final Slides
(Week 2)
Task 1b: Campaign Proposal
Planning
Progress
Attachment 2.1. City Branding Proposal Progress (Week 1 - 3)
I thought long and hard about what city to brand. It was a tough
decision because there is no ONE city that I truly know or love,
so I decided it would be easier to stick to something local. Even
locally though, I dont know or love many cities. I decided to do
George Town, Penang as it the only city I somewhat know and always
enjoy being in.
I wanted to push George Town away from the image of food, Nyonya
and heritage because it feels old and tired already. I thought of
the time I stayed in George Town, how I was always able to keep
busy but in a relaxed way and how being there exposed me to more
creativity and artistry. I was inspired by Melbourne's city
branding too, where they made their city represent their local
residents, and I knew immediately that I wanted to do something
similar and have it talk to locals.
The idea of George Town as a creative hub came easily as I knew
there was a bunch of creativity already in the city, not just from
the heritage of Nyonya culture but even now, there are plenty of
other artistic people and events. George Town has always been a
place that accepts creativity and art. After more research, I
found out about many other plus points that could push the idea of
GT as a creative hub, such as the 'things to do' and 'community
hub' list.
Final Submission
George Town, Penang City Branding Proposal
Attachment 2.2. George Town Campaign Proposal (Week 4)
FEEDBACK
Week 2
Task 1a: Case Study
- Task 1a Key visuals are supposed to talk about their colours, logo usage, typography, etc. How/why it's used to enhance their designs
Task 1b: Campaign Proposal
General Feedback
- Social Media needs to be 9 posts. Could have some carousels too
- Touch point = when customer will look at the website, soc med, promotional video and receive map brochures (if any)
- Customer journey map = timeline of when/how customers will experience/interact with the brand. What do they gain and when?
Progress Feedback
- I have to do a lot of research on Penang to be able to bring out their creativity better
- It's an interesting launch strategy but need to dig deeper to understand them better
- Create the customer journey map
- Need to show the full framework next week
Week 3
Task 1b: Campaign Proposal
Proposal
- Can expand on objective & purpose
- In Brand Value 'Vibrant & Lively' is good but 'Simple & Free' not so much. It won't be able to support the idea of penang being a creative hub
- 'Appreciation & Inspiration' is more of the city but it needs to be about the campaign. Think of it as a person and their principles. What are the things it needs to stand out? eg. accountability, openness, inclusive, welcoming, etc.
- Psychographic is about ‘what you think is important, how you grew up’
- Organisations are the ones I’ve already listed in ‘Research’
- Brand positioning is very clear
- Can have more touchpoints. eg. when they move to penang they can download something (collateral), like a starter kit for living in penang
- Transport map can highlight the creative spots and/or stationeries shops
- Don't need to think about food just focus on creativity
- Good idea to redesign the parking app to be in theme
REFLECTION
Experience
This assignment was very confusing to begin with because it was confusing to seperate the city from the city brand when the city brand is the city. It took awhile but eventually, I understood what it meant to seperate them and things started clicking in place easier, specifically the Brand Values & SWOT. Task 1a was just as confusing because I did not understand the difference of key visuals from brand experience. However, I enjoyed doing the case study as I learnt a lot about Melbourne and why and how their city branding is one of the best in the world.
Observations
My work started off quite rocky since I was mostly confused but I do believe I learnt a lot already in the first few weeks. I do know I could improve alot in my Task 1a: Case Study, however, with the rush of the deadline and the rush to work on Task1b & Task 2, it was the best I could do at the moment. I do feel that if given more time, I could have done better but alas, it's all about time management.
Findings
I learnt about a customer journey map and why it's important to do when planning out anything. It helps ensure there is a strategy and objective for everything done in a simple and organised way. Overall, this assignment thought me to be more organised when planning and to understand the objective of each step taken. This is something I can take out of the module context as well and into anything I do in future work or personal life as it is simply about having a plan and knowing why you do something.
FURTHER READING
Bloom Consulting (n.d.) The Basics of a Successful Country or City Brand Strategy [Online] Available at: https://www.bloom-consulting.com/journal/the-basics-of-a-successful-country-or-city-brand-strategy/
emfluence Marketing Platform (2021) How to Build a Customer Journey Map with Microsoft Dynamics [Online] CRM Software Blog. Available at: https://www.crmsoftwareblog.com/2021/05/how-to-build-a-customer-journey-map-with-microsoft-dynamics/
Columbia Road (2017) Why and How to Create a Customer Journey Map — Download Free Template [Online] Medium. Available at: https://columbiaroadcom.medium.com/why-and-how-to-create-a-customer-journey-map-download-free-template-b832a614cbe0
Venngage Inc. (n.d.) Online Shopping Customer Journey Map Template [Online] Available at: https://venngage.com/templates/mind-maps/online-shopping-customer-journey-map-dcd17e82-5d77-4d0b-8424-d35f131b1d26
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