CREATIVE BRAND STRATEGY - TASK 1A & 1B

CREATIVE BRAND STRATEGY - TASK 1A & 1B

Week 1 - Week 4
Chen Nan / 0363533
Creative Brand Strategy / Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media
Task 1A & 1B: Case Study & Campaign Proposal

LECTURES

Week 1 Introduce

In the first class, Ms. Lilian introduced this module to us. Unfortunately, I was not present. I learned a bit about the content by studying the slides.

This module introduces students to the building of brands with in-depth visual strategies, which is required to establish brand in the minds of consumers. You will learn to justify problems or developing a best solution for the brand by studying the relationship between the brand and its various target audience.

To understand brand strategy, one must first understand branding.

Branding is the process of defining the value and authenticity of a product, service, or organization, helping to differentiate it from competitors. It is crucial for business strategy and creates a lasting competitive advantage. The digital economy allows small businesses easier access to branding expertise.

A brand strategy, on the other hand, outlines how, what, where, when, and to whom brand messages are communicated. A strong brand strategy results in consistent messaging, emotional customer connections, and increased brand value.

Why you need a Brand Strategy?

Brands reflect customer perceptions of a company’s credibility, products, reputation, and customer experience. A brand strategy is vital for understanding the competitive landscape, market position, and customer expectations, which helps develop effective marketing strategies. Strong branding improves market performance and profitability by enhancing name recognition, building trust, boosting advertising effectiveness, and inspiring employees.

Week 2 The Branding Process

Branding is not simply about creating a logo, strapline and graphic to ‘paste’ onto a company, country or person. A ‘rebrand’ will not instantly change the way an organization or entity is perceived or behaves.

A brand includes its perception, reputation, and tangible appearance, reflecting both company behavior and customer experience. It influences both customers and employees, and its impact is measurable. 

Successful brands are adaptable and evolve with market changes. Branding goes beyond just appearance; it's about staying dynamic.

Branding Now

A brand encapsulates both the tangible and the intangible and can be applied to almost anything - a person (like David Beckham), a business (Apple, Coca-Cola, Microsoft), a country, or even a nebulous idea.

Global consumption, new technologies, and enhanced communication have transformed branding and brand awareness. Brands must adapt to societal shifts, like the rise of social media and global issues like climate change and pandemics. 

Over the past decade, the relationship between brands and audiences has evolved, with audiences now seeking dialogue, influencing brands, and co-creating. Despite these changes, the core principles of branding and brand management remain essential.

Fig 1 Brand Development

This is a picture of the various roles that fit the brand at different stages of development. It starts with the briefing process and goes all the way through the development of the brand strategy to the creative execution phase. An ongoing strategy is needed to keep the brand relevant in the market.

The basic brand development process

• Formulating a brand strategy 
• Creative execution
• Creative implementation
• Communicating the brand 

The Brand Experience

It brings together the tangible and intangible elements of the brand through different 'touchpoints'.

Campaign: A continuous attempt to communicate a message to an audience, a marketing strategy that engages the target audience in a unique way.

Concept: A concept can be an abstract or general idea, it is usually a thought or idea that arises in the mind.

Concept Campaign: Tie all the elements of the campaign together - it's a hook or idea that gets the audience to take action.

Cause Campaign: It can both increase profits and improve society according to corporate social responsibility, which is more inclined to promote a specific idea, cause or goal than directly promote a specific product or service.

Event Campaign:It's also called experiential marketing, and it's all about leveraging experiences. Introduce your product, service or business to potential and existing customers.

Launch Campaign: Used to accomplish specific marketing goals.

Personality Campaign: What it does is take a person's reputation and career from relative obscurity to high visibility.

Week 3 The Creative Brief

The Onlyness Test

OUR (offering)

IS THE ONLY (category, frame of reference)

THAT (benefits)

A competitive reference frame is a definition of which other brands a brand competes with, so those brands will be the focus of analysis and research.

Fig 2 Competitive Frame of Reference

Big Idea

A campaign needs a central "big idea" that resonates with the target audience and encourages recall, sharing, and action. 

This idea, rooted in key insights and campaign objectives, bridges strategy and execution. It should work across all media platforms, ensuring an integrated, cohesive approach rather than separate, isolated efforts

Fig 3 Big Idea

Big idea emerge in the process of narrowing the focus.

Fig 4 Idea

Clarifying Strategy

Fig 5 Clarifying Strategy

In this phase, all the learnings from the research and analysis are distilled into a unifying idea.

Developing a Positioning Platform

Fig 6 Positioning Platform

Subsequent to information gathering and analysis are the development and refinement of a positioning strategy.

Uncover Brand Essence

Fig 7  Brand Essence

A brand becomes stronger when you narrow the focus.

Week 4 Touch Points

A brand is a desired perception: A brand is the desired perception or gut feeling formed by the various touchpoints that create a brand experience. These touchpoints shape the relationship between the company and its audience.

Brand Touchpoints: Brand touchpoints are the interactions and exposures a consumer has with a brand, from websites to retail spaces and products. Each touchpoint contributes to the overall customer experience and shapes the brand's perception.

Fig 8 Physical and online

A cohesive Visual Identity & Brand Experience

Three-step process

STEP ONE

Fig 9 Customer Journey Map

STEP TWO

Fig 10 Priority attention graph

Prioritize your touchpoints based on the potential for impact AND the degree of ease for implementation.

STEP THREE

Add your prioritized Brand Marketing activities and touchpoints and map them

along the consumer journey map .

Fig 11 Customer experience journey

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INSTRUCTION

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1. Case Study (Task 1A)

In task one, we need to find a rebranded brand. We need to analyze its brand strategy, brand experience, and its main visual effects.

I chose my favorite beverage brand - Pepsi Cola. When I researched this brand, because it has a long history, I found that it has gone through many reinvention activities, and I chose the most recent and latest one to analyze.

Fig 1.0 Pepsi brand rebranding PDF

Task 01(B): Campaign Proposal

We need to choose a snack brand for a rebranding exercise. and plans to come up with a proposal. I chose my favorite snack, Green Arrow gum. Although Chewing Gum has a wide audience, Green Arrow doesn't sell a lot, and I hope it can do better.

Below is part of my draft.

Fig 2.0 Draft PDF

After Ms. Lilian's feedback, I should drop some content such as health. There was so much I wanted to make. So I modified it.

FINAL

Fig 2.1 Campaign Proposal

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FEEDBACK

WEEK 2

1A:

• The speech is too slow. I should speed up my speech.

• For the brand rebranding, the whole framework is very consistent.

• In the visual key part, deviating from the topic, the actual study is the 2008 to 2023 version, but in this part, the study is the latest version, which is confusing.

• The speech is too slow. I should speed up my speech.

• For the brand rebranding, the whole framework is very consistent.

• In the visual key part, deviating from the topic, the actual study is the 2008 to 2023 version, but in this part, the study is the latest version, which is confusing.

• Older sites are hard to find, and maybe you should focus on the latest version from the start. The old version is out of date, and the new version should probably be used for all instances from the beginning. We're talking more about rebranding, the purpose, the vision, and so on. I want us to move forward and understand how we think about brand strategy.

1B:

To remake a brand, come up with a new scope, a new concept, or a new strategy. If you want to reinvent a brand, you need to figure out what the purpose is, the new brand values, and all of that needs to be conceptualized.

WEEK 3

• It is recommended to expand the brand market and let people choose this brand instead of smoking and eating nuts.

• Forget health, because smokers are not very healthy. I need to simplify it a little bit. I want to express too many things and it is too complicated.

• The brand value can change health to healthier than smoking and healthier than eating other things.

• Brand positioning only considers the audience, maybe you can consider other things.

• Touch points should have some practical examples and add some details.

REFLECTION

Experience

Completing Task 1 was a little easier for me who had been exposed to brand analysis last semester. But in the process of studying brand rebranding, I also learned new knowledge. If a brand wants to keep up with the times, it must make changes to adapt to the times, so that it can win more consumers. The process of brand remodeling is not simply changing its appearance, but more about making systematic changes to the core and brand strategy of the brand, so that it can be successfully rebranding.

Observations

The reason for choosing Pepsi is that its blue appearance is deeply rooted in people's hearts. This color can represent its brand very well. Through the study of Pepsi's brand remodeling activities, I understand how a brand is updated and what they do. These contents can clearly see the methods of brand remodeling activities to help me with the next stage of the task.

Findings

I discovered how to create a customer journey map and use it. Customer journey maps help us understand touchpoints. In terms of brand remodeling activities, when I looked up information, some brand remodeling was not always successful, while some brands won a lot of consumers after a brand remodeling. I think that when studying successful cases, we can also study some of the failed cases to learn from their strengths and weaknesses.