Final Designs

My final designs come from design 5. After creating the initial concept I went away and developed the idea further.

As you can see I have created a series of 6 different posters. After speaking to other members in my group it was decided that 6 was a good number as it was challenging enough to make collecting them entertaining and yet not too high for it to be a tedious task.

I have made the background colours bright and easily distinguishable to attract attention and so that it is clear for collectors to notice a "new" colour they don't have.

Design 5

My fifth design, arguably the most simple, is my favourite.

As you can see the poster is very minimal. It features simply a bottle of Skol with a glow around it. When I showed this to a few people their feedback was very encouraging. A lot liked the fact there was not much on there because all the focus was on the brand. It also quick and easy to view meaning it doesn't take much attention to absorb it.

I am most proud however of the concept for it. The idea is that the poster has a smartphone barcode (or number code for people without this access) to collect. Users can then go to the Skol app or website and redeem them for a voucher which grants access to extra bonus levels on the Skol game that my other group member has created. Hopefully this encourages people to look out for the posters and also get their friends involved.

Design 4

After looking at previous posters and adverts done by Skol I noticed that the majority used humour to gain their audience's attention. Therefore I decided to create a poster that would keep to Skol's humorous theme.

As well as being entertaining I also tried to sell an image. The tagline "Be the man you want to be" has been designed to imply that men who drink Skol are confident and exciting people.

Design 1: Re-draft

After creating my initial designs I took them to a selection of my target audience to gain their opinions. This provided me with a number of improvements that I could make:

• The general feedback that the colours needed re-thinking. The previous sky was too bright and blue. I decided to go for something more dramatic with more contrast than saturation.
• Secondly the title has been improved. I shrunk it down and pulled the font in thinner. It has also been moved so that the statue's head doesn't cover it up as much.
• I then opted for the "The Taste of Brazil" tagline. My feedback told me that this was more popular and that it sold a better image of the beer.
• The beer in the hand has been re-scaled so it matches the size of the statue better. It has also been moved down so that the logo on the bottle is clearly visible.
• Finally I have also added a drink aware website link at the bottom as I noticed other alcohol company's had done this on their posters.

Designs 2 & 3

After doing some research online I found this advert that Skol created. Although in a foreign language it clearly emphasises the point that lager is a light beer. This inspired my next poster.

These are the two new concepts I have created both based on the same design. The one on the left is in real image, whereas I have applied a cut-out filter to the right one. This was to emphasise the colours and to also make it look better edited in terms of lighting and shadows that should be on the bottle.

I searched for a font that was appropriate for my ad. I wanted something that would symbolise a feeling of lightness and innocence without even really needing to read it. I decided upon this one called Blackjack which I got from dafont.com. It's style looks calm and relaxed and so fits in with our product's image. I also decided that I would not capital letters on the posters. This was because it looked to harsh on the page and dragged unnecessary attention away from the product.

Design 1

I have started to begin Photoshopping my hand drawn designs onto the computer. Below is the first concept I have created.

As you can see this is my Christ the Redeemer poster. I have done two different versions, the only difference being the tagline. I have edited the photograph by adding in the Skol lager into the statue's hand and curling his finger's around the bottle. I have also given him a smile to create a more positive message.

I may further develop these and include extra information. I am also still unsure of the colours of whether or not the red and vibrant blue are too striking. I am going to show the posters to some test users to get extra opinions.

Design Idea 4

My final idea is perhaps the most controversial. However my research showed me that shock advertising can be the most powerful. I have tried to create a shock factor without stepping too far over the line. By challenging the taboo it will hopefully get people talking about the ad, therefore increasing the awareness of our product.

The poster is of the famous Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio De Janerio. I have also compared the beer to wine. This was for two reasons, firstly: it obviously relates to Christ and the last supper but also its a light drink similar to wine. This is designed to change people's mind sets about light beer. Instead of seeing it as "sissy" lager, people will view it as more of a casual drink. The slogan suggests that the lager is saviour from wine and simply gives them another choice of a light, social alcoholic drink.

My inspiration for creating a controversial ad comes from the reasonably recent Foster's poster. This was criticised for being sexist as it was originally a man holding the beer. However after complaints Foster's changed the model to a female.

Design idea 3

This poster focuses on the beer's popularity in Brazil. I have tried to create an action packed and colourful poster in order to attract attention.

The poster is basically an ordinary English street, decorated in the style of a Rio De Janerio carnival. It will have carnival flags draping the street, eccentrically dressed Brazilian dancers and musicians as well as little trademarks related to the country, e.g. the Christ the Redeemer statue placed subtly in the background.

At the top I have also done some bottle designs. The original bottle is already brown but in the interest of design I had an attempt at recolouring it in green. I showed this to my group but together we decided the brown sums up the beer better. Brown evokes a feeling of heat and summertime. Perhaps suggesting a tan too. According to my research as well, brown bottles don't filter in as much light meaning that the beers stay fresher and hold flavour better, particularly in hot countries (i.e. Brazil.)

Design idea 2

My research told me that Skol never really advertised the fact that it was a light beer. With the current drinking problem and people exceeding their recommended weekly alcohol limits my group and I decided that we could exploit this fact into our favour.

The poster I have created has been designed to portray the fact that its light by having the bottle resting in the clouds. It also symbolises innocence to highlight to people its not as bad for you (in terms of units) compared to other lagers on the market.

First design idea

My first drawing is a copy of Skol's iconic mascot: Hager the Horrible.

He was used mainly in the 80's but hasn't been associated with the brand for some time. My idea was to maybe bring him back but in a more up to date way.

Today his image out of date. An overweight, stumpy character may imply the wrong message about drinking beer and may instead incur negative connotations in a world when men are much more conscious about their image than they were 30 years ago.

Being a light beer its also hard to take seriously when a big, manly viking is advertised as drinking it. It almost looks sarcastic and a bit of a joke.

My ideas would be to slim down the viking and make him more muscly so that he's got some qualities the 21st century man aspires to.

My idea of bringing back the old mascot takes inspiration from an ad campaign ran by Tetley's Tea. Recently they brought back their old mascots which appeared in their ads in the 90s. Hopefully people will remember them and they will perhaps bring back old customers.

Mon 7th Nov

After our previous meeting it was decided that I would be in charge in creating the posters for our ad campaign. I have produced some rough paper based sketches that I plan on re-creating on the computer.

To make it clearer I will explain each design in separate posts.

Sun 30th Oct

Before Tuesday's lecture our group had chance to discuss our research and findings. I put forward my ideas for how we could market Skol and also explained my concerns regarding Brut. Fortunately my team members were of a very similar opinion to mine and were keen that Skol would be a good product for us to create an ad campaign for.

On the Friday (28th Oct) we organised a meeting to discuss our ideas in detail and how we could create our campaign together. Firstly we needed to find out and decide upon a target audience. Our studies unsurprisingly showed us that lager was most popular among males aged 18+. Although this information may of been obvious it meant that we could discuss the best mediums to advertise to them. We looked through a number of different male magazines and websites to get an idea of how brands already out there were catching the eye of their target audience.

We found that one of the most popular and increasing trends today is to create an app. Many brands have created little games for smart phones based around their product. We thought that if we could come up with a clever idea for a miniature game, it may be an effective way to advertise our product.

Our second idea was to create ad posters. A lot of male magazines included posters and it seems that they are still a popular way to advertise today, however the most effective ones were the ones that were eye catching and close to the line controversial. With a witty idea we could create an effective design.

Our final and third ad idea was to create a website. With the app that we are planning to include the website would make a nice addition to tie it all up. We also felt that this would be appropriate as many people may recognise the old brand name and be intrigued to find out if it was back. A website could provide them an opportunity to find out all about its re-branding and hopefully give us chance to persuade them to give our product another go.

In our group we decided that Bessam was going to be in charge of creating the app, Jack K's job would be to make the website and I am going to make the posters.

Above are the notes I have made from this meeting.

Tuesday 25th Oct

Over the weekend I carried out some research into Skol and Brut to find out which one I thought would be better to create a marketing campaign for. I will discuss both of them and briefly explain my findings:

Skol

• It was created in 1964
• It's name is based around a Scandinavian toast (as in raising glasses) "skål."
• It's mascot was Hager the Horrible - a large, manly looking viking.
• It's now the most popular selling beer in Brazil
• It is traditionally a light beer however its alcohol content has been increased

Brut

• Green is its identifiable colour
• The brand is most commonly advertised by famous sports people
• It has become known as a cheap brand
• It's sales have started to increase again and have almost tripled in the past five years according to the brut website
• It's aimed at "real men"

From my research I am personally inclined to push forward the idea of going with Skol. This is because I think that we have a number of different paths we could take to advertise it. We could pay particular attention to the fact that it is most popular in Brazil and have a number of ads exploiting this. We could also advertise the fact that its a light beer. With the UK's current binge problem this might be a good route to take.

I am put off by Brut by the fact that its advertised at an old fashioned, stereotypical view of what a "real man" is. The Brut website conjures up images of out of style middle aged men who drown themselves in the cologne. I feel that in comparison to Skol there are not as many exciting routes to take to advertise it.

Week commencing 17th Oct

This week we were given our major project brief. Our task is to create a new advertising campaign for an old/out of date product that is not as popular as it once was. Today (Fri 21st Oct) we had our first group meeting outside of lecture. We sat down and discussed the different choices we had and put forward any initial ideas. We quickly ruled out several of them and were left between Brut (a cologne most popular in the 60s and 70s) and Skol (a light beer, again most popular between the 60s and 70s.)

We have decided that the three of us will split up over the weekend and do research on both of them to find out some more information and how they could be marketed.

PowerPoint on Photoshop - Self Reflection

For our group project we had to present a PowerPoint to the class on the subject of Photoshop.

Once the task had been set we arranged to meet up the very next day so that we could work out a number of things to make the project run as smooth and efficient as possible. These included: what strengths people had and how we could play to them effectively (e.g. one of the girl’s in our group was confident with the software and so made her own picture with diagrams and labels explaining how she’d done it,) what we were going to put in the slides/what we were going to leave out and finally who was going to research and present each specific area. Throughout the course of the week we kept in regular contact via texts and Facebook to monitor each other’s progress. This helped us all to keep track of where we should be and also to provide any ideas and feedback if a member was struggling.

The slides that each member of our group was given were based on their own personal strength and how enthusiastic they were about their area. Each member was given four days left to their own devices to create their slide and prepare their own speech. At our second meeting we ran through what everybody had prepared and gave constructive feedback on points we liked and others we thought that could be improved.

The only real issue we had was arranging to get everybody together at the same time. Due to everybody’s difference in timetables, commitments and people living at home it was quite difficult to get a day that suited everybody. However, luckily this didn’t hold us back too much as people who couldn’t make it promptly sent us their work via email and the rest of the group were able to add it into the PowerPoint.

My slide was about the controversy of Photoshop. For my research I firstly went to the internet. I looked through old news articles about debates regarding the software and found a variety of exciting and interesting information. Some forums also helped me to gage an idea of what people’s thoughts and opinions were on the subject and also provided me with an opportunity to see if they were talking about anything that I might’ve missed. After that I then looked through real life magazines, trying to find clues of pictures that looked like they had been editing. YouTube also provided me with an interesting insight into how the Photoshop editing process worked and how powerful it could be. One particular video was very informative and interesting and so I added it to my slide to spice up the PowerPoint.

I feel that our presentation could have been improved by more rehearsal. Although we matched the recommended time of between 5 – 10 minutes, ours was just 5 minutes and 30 seconds, so at the bottom of the target range. I think that if we’d been able to meet up once more we would have been able to have a good run through of each other’s script to edit and improve. I also think we could have made our PowerPoint more interactive. We did have an original idea were we going to put a number of images onto the screen and let people guess which ones had and hadn’t been edited. However once we begun, this idea didn’t fit with anybody’s topic and so was cast aside.

Overall I am satisfied with how our presentation went, although have learnt a number of things that I will apply next time to improve upon this first attempt.