Final Evaluation

Advertising is a division of the Communications Arts. It is the visual communication a company uses in order to get a story, message, and altogether brand across to the consumer. In advertising you must be memorable, unique, and bold. Every week I learn something new, I love that we were given examples from real life situations and watch Mad Men in order to understand the history of advertising and also how creativity is used to boost a company’s sales. By having an advertising class along with branding and marketing research classes I’ve learned how they all interact with each other and without one of the pieces, everything can fall apart. I loved the final project; I got to play with my photography, styling, and photo shop skills. I also think that I really got to show the potential that I have and what I’ve done for the final is only the beginning. I’ve impressed myself with all the work I put into the advertisements and how they turned out. I've already told Pinto this but I'll say it again. Thanks to Mr. Pinto, I now know what I want to do in the world of fashion. Visual communications is my passion and the wheels are now in motion to get me there.

Advertisements

Analysis of Project in the Real World

The concept of my advertising campaign is something that could really make not just Report Signature money but any company. I believe I have successfully set this footwear company apart from the other ones that are out there and have even surpassed some fashion companies.

"Explore. A lot. Even after you think you've got it. Start again. You'd be surprise at what come up. Even better, have several people look at the same problem. The solutions will astound you." Page 163, Advertising by Design.

I'm not against an outsiders opinion, this is one of my greatest strengths. I'm willing to take in what others have to say and if it could make my craft better, use it to my advantage. In advertising we have to be forever progressive and open to change, we have to be differentiate ourselves from the competition, fresh ideas and consistent development is key.

Creative Content

"If 99 percent of TV ads are in color, then why not think of utilizing black-and-white or duotone film? They're ponging, so you ping. Take the least traveled path." - Page 182, Advertising by Design.
My creative content will consist of two models that will be consistently used for months to come. This is so the Report Signature consumer gets familiar with a face and starts building an emotional connection with them. The models will of course be wearing Report Signature shoes, I knew I had to stand out of all other footwear ads especially Steve Madden and Christian Louboutin. So, I came up with a concept that would be used season to season. Each season the marketing and advertising departments of the company will pick an iconic trend of a historic milieu. The first will be modern pin-up, this will create a story that will be told each collection and will help to maintain and inspire the client to come back to the brand and take a look at what's going on.

"Other elements that are maintaine might include the color palette, style of images, work from the same photographer or illustrator, or font family. I call that type of campaign "triplets"..." - Page 169, Advertising by Design

I want to use this method of advertising for Report Signature. In fashion especially this method gives the strongest and boldest statement. Repetition is one of the elements of the creative content, I want to use this not literally but to hit the consumer repetitively with the same type of images so they become familiar with our strategy.

Promotion

"If an ad doesn't communicate on an emotional level, it is almost deinite that it is worthless. An ad with no emotion is like a message from a cement block..." Page 165, Advertising by Design.

To create and establish a strong emotional connection with my client we will first go through print ads. We will bombard the consumer will advertisements on billboards in fashion centers of the world, ads in fashion editorials such as Vogue, V Magazine, Nylon, and Harper's Bazaar. Promotion will continue through the Marketing department to get product placement in editorial spreads in fashion magazines. After the season we will measure our success by an inclination in sales, clientele return, and a rise in receiving editorial contact.

The Big Idea

"Using elements drawn from popular culture, particular social groups, or a certain cultural milieu may appeal to select audiences." Page 97, Advertising by Design. My product is footwear, I've already positioned my product in the market, created an image, and analysed my competition. So, when thinking about what my big idea is going to be I know it has to be unique. The market I chose is not niche at all, it's quite big rather. Using secondary research from other classes I've had I know that young adults ages 21-30 tend to have less shoes than their younger counterparts. Even though they have less shoes they also tend to have less brands. Knowing this I want to come up with an advertising campaign that will be relatable to this market. I also want to use a historic milieu that will be easily recognizable season to season. This is why I picked to use the 50's pinup girl, for this first campaign. Each season the company will pick a different historic milieu to use for the advertising campaign. This will create a relationship with the customer and also a sense of anticipation to see what will be used the next month.

Report Signature: Step Out Of Normality and Step Into Your Signature

As I was researching the brand Report Signature I looked at the ad campaigns that they've had, the ads are kind of dead and regular. Looking at the shoes I came up with a theme that was reminiscent of 50's pin up but still modern day. I shoes to do the shoot inside of a house so that a fantasy can become somewhat a reality. The everyday person can step into a fantasy when they put on their pair of Signature's and become a iconic beauty hence, the pinup. I wanted to keep with this when creating the slogan. I wanted a thought that when you see you would dream, you would get an overwhelming feeling of motivation to be effortlessly unique.
"Overemphasizing a product's quality drives home a selling point quickly." Page 80, Advertising by Design.
I want to use this element of design to tell my consumer to "step" out of the crowd, stop blending in, and "step" into a life where you only matter to you, you feel great, you are successful, and you live life to the fullest.

Competitive Analysis

I want to be able to position the brand Report Signature in a unique spot of the market. Right in between high end luxury and more affordable and mass produced shoes is where the company will fit. In researching large shoe companies and looking at their market share and advertising efforts I believe that the two main competitors are Steve Madden and Christian Louboutin. Both of these companies have a very strong image in the market and people know who these brands are. Their advertising efforts are very strong, consistent, and clear. The main strength that these two brands have that my brand doesn’t is an actual brick and mortar location to sell their shoes exclusively. But to counter this problem we will show the client that by only being at a very few select boutiques, this makes Report Signatures that much more valuable and unique. A challenge that both of the companies are facing is wholesale sells, companies are now wanting to have more direct branding than outsourcing. Louboutin is suffering because they have turned more of their focus on their own retail stores and advertising, Steve Madden is suffering because the consumer now wants more of a unique quality to their wardrobe so they are looking to companies that don’t mass produce.

"He who writes the stories defines the culture... We are given a voice, and we have to be responsible in how we use that voice." Page 122, Advertising by Design.

I will define and revolutionize the high fashion footwear industry with my advertising efforts. Today, I feel that many advertisers don't understand that. I will tell a story that my consumer will fall in love with and we in turn, will love them.

EOC Week 9: Triplets

I took advantage of this EOC in order to research my competition a little more, I picked Christian Louboutin. There is definitely a consistency in their new Fall 2010 advertising campaign, it’s called Winter Tales. First of all I think that Christian Louboutin is an amazing company not just for their designs but also for their unique branding concept. They have a trademarked red sole that everyone knows, this was an innovation that wasn’t seen before in high end footwear. In each of these photographs they have come up with a fairy-tale concept, taking themes from movies such as Alice In Wonderland, The Little Mermaid, and Sleeping Beauty. If you walk into a Christian Louboutin retail store, you will see the signature red color everywhere. You automatically feel like you are in a red dream world where shoes grow from trees and whatever shoe you pick is unique and unforgettable. This is exactly how this advertising campaign makes you feel, if you have a pair of Louboutin’s, once you step into them it illudes that your life will become a fairy tale, very unforgettable. The ad is very visually driven with no text at all, and it doesn’t even look like an ad, just like a page ripped out of a book. The composition and formatting of the ad is great, there is just enough negative space that you don’t feel like you are being ambushed with a

cluttered mess. There is no asymmetry in this which I think works and is a good thing, they are all very symmetrically balanced with digitally inserted environments.

EOC Week 8: Really Good Example of Chapter 8

Graff London has always had the same premise around their advertising campaigns. All of their advertisements have a dominant Emerald Green tint to the picture. Green is seen as the color of money, it arouses envy, passion. In my opinion, there were two ideas behind having a colored tint to the ad. One is to arouse emotion while looking at the ad, this creates an immediate emotional connection with the consumer, it’s a statement. The second reason is in order for the diamonds that are being advertised in the picture to stand out more. In looking at prior campaigns, it seems as though the company uses the same model for each of the advertisements. She is the company’s spokes model which is a positive, this puts a face to the company and helps to establish and build their image with consumer. It looks like the company used three typefaces in the ad, two for the company’s name which is very curvy and classic, "The typography is the primary performer on-screen, while images and color are edited in the background to flow with the muscial dynamics of the song" and one for all the rest of the information. I like that they put where the store is located in the ad, I think it strengthens their luxury image in that it’s located at the Wynn. Also for the obvious reason, people will know where to get the jewels if they do in fact want to purchase. There are two jewels placed in the advertisement on the model. Another thought that comes to mind while looking at the ad is, by making everything else around the jewels all one color, it makes it seems as though nothing else matters… but my Graff jewels. Another things I thought that was interesting about the ad is that they placed a little logo at the bottom right hand corner of the ad with type that reads “The Queen’s Awards For Enterprise 2006.” This also helps to reaffirm their luxury image and lets the customer know that client service is at the top of the list at the company and nothing but the best is sold from the company.

http://www.graffdiamonds.com/flash.php

EOC Week 8: Authority

In reading through the tips given by each of the professionals, I think I agree most with Denise M. Anderson, DMA, New Jersey. The first tip she gives is to make your choices appropriate to project objectives in respect to the client, market, and the period. This is one thing I think a lot of people forget, amateur and experienced professionals alike. You have to remember, unless the campaign you are designing is for your own company, it’s not about what you want. The second piece of advice she gives is to keep things interesting, you have to know how to have a good balance between numbers one and two. Finally, she says to make fonts easy to read and not to use too many which I think is a very good point. I will want to use a easy to read, rebellious, yet sexy font for my company.

EOC Week 7: Exciting Ad 4 Elements

The ad I chose is the newest campaign from 7 For All Mankind for Fall/Winter 2010. I love looking at fashion ads, this is one of the most powerful ways in my opinion you can convey your message and who your brand is to your target market. The ad campaigns for the brand always create a asymmetrical balance between light and darkness. They always strategically position the models in a way that the sun hits the photo to create a cool Californian light and shadow effect.

EOC Final Project: First Thought

The company that I want to do my campaign on is Report Signature, a high end footwear company for women. The company designs several different styles of stilettos, boots, and sandals that range from $100.00 to $500.00. I’m going to take the high end luxury image of the company and intensify, I’m going to research the market and client of the company a lot more because I want to do something edgy, risky, sexy, but still very fashionable. The campaigns already have a sense of sexiness and appeal to them so I’m pretty confident about using these words when describing my campaign and not offending the company or the clientele. I’m going to redefine the company starting with the slogan, “Kiss My Signature’s.” This will make a lot more sense when I do the photos and insert the slogan.

EOC Week 6: Make 'Em Laugh

One of the funniest commercial concepts I’ve ever seen are the ones for Progressive insurance. I think that was one of the best moves that the company could have done. In all of the commercials they have one female actress named Flo that everyone knows as the Progressive girl, she is overly energetic, overly excited, and overly quirky about her customers getting to save money on their insurance. She has become the face of Progressive insurance.
How the hell do you shop for car insurance? Where do I go? Why do I have to call every single insurance company in the yellow pages? Progressive took all these questions and answered them with their advertisements and in a very unique way. The commercial sets up a retail kind of environment with insurance that comes in various sizes of packaging. All of your questions are answered by Flo and she shows you all of the features they offer that make choosing an insurance company and package easy.

EOC Week 5: Ad Categories

The first ad I chose to do was a French Connection ad, back when the campaign first came out I remember seeing it in the mall. This was the first time I’ve even noticed the French Connection stores since they did their infamous “FCUK” campaign. But this one pulled away from their obscene brand image and created mystery also a campaign that focused more on the clothes and not just a brand statement. This campaign and this particular ad would fall under the Declaration division of advertisements. The ad simply states, “This is the woman. She turns lines into curves.” Each different advertisement that French Connection put out has a declarative statement like this. I read through each of them and in my opinion this one has a real powerful message and says the most while saying not much at all. The beginning says “This is the woman”, the ad isn’t just saying she’s any woman. But this female that you’re looking at, she is The Woman, the only woman. Why is she the only woman? The ad gets you wondering about the subject. The reason of course is because she is wearing French Connection. The second statement is that “She turns lines into curves.” This woman takes a simple element of clothing design, the line, and it turns it into a curve. The shape of her body, the way she moves her body, turns lines into curves.


The second ad I chose was from Carnival the resort cruise ship. When I saw the Adventures and Escapes theme for the topics in advertising this company came right to my mind. I think this company does such a good job at promoting vacation and escaping your normal life to an extravagant sunbathing vacation. This picture embodies what the promotional ideals that Carnival uses, all they do is show you a crystal clear blue ocean with a huge boat and you already know, only Carnival.











Image or Lifestyle goes perfectly with the brand I picked for my third choice, Nike. Whenever you think of Nike you automatically think of a total brand lifestyle. This billboard posted in New York City is the perfect statement that demonstrates the philosophy behind a company like Nike. This simple statement is motivating and powerful.

EOC Week 4: Who is Bob Isherwood

Bob Isherwood was born and raised in Melbourne, Australia in one of the harsher areas. He dropped out of school when he was 13 and eventually was accepted into The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. The head of department named Victor realized Isherwood’s potential and had a lot to do with Isherwood’s acceptance into the university. In playing several dominant and high ranking roles in advertising agencies in Britain and in Australia he came to take the position he is most known for at Saatchi & Saatchi.

“Isherwood tried to push the idea that Saatchi & Saatchi is an ideas agency, not an ad agency. (In 1992 they removed the word "advertising" from the agency's nameplates around the world.) Isherwood is respected for his ability to find and marshal talent, and he has overseen the creative output through a major expansion in the agency's revenue and thousands of awards victories.”


http://creativity-online.com/news/bob-isherwood-leaves-saatchi/132362

Isherwood spent a total of 22 years advertising agency with 12 of them in the role of Creative Director reinventing the agency to the world and gathering big brand clients around the world and reinventing them too.

“Bob took ultimate responsibility for the communications ideas the company created for some of the world’s major corporations including Procter & Gamble and Toyota.”

http://www.abeopartners.com/bob_isherwood/

Bob Isherwood is important to advertising because he helped the trend of storytelling in advertising become a law that consumers buy into. He helped very well known brands become more than just that, they became ideas that the target market had an emotional connection to. All the time this was happening people took notice at what he was doing for not only his company but for advertising as a whole.

BOC Week 4: Jerry Della Femina, The Big Idea

Jerry Della Femina was a “street kid from Brooklyn” at an early age but soon grew into an advertising tycoon. Della Femina was one of the first advertisers to understand that if you deviated from the norm in the advertising industry you could get mounds of attention and so that’s exactly what he did. He constantly took on clients and made iconic themes for their brand, making not only the client very successful but also making a name for himself. By the time he published one of his most notable book, “From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor” he already was known in the industry. But this publication raised him to celebrity status.
“in 1967 I started my own agency and became, as my assistant told me, a publicity slut. I became far better known than I should have been. I was the first advertising person who people could identify with.”
http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/people/features/2439/


Jerry Della Femina constantly talks about how the way the advertising world has changed since he was at large in the early 60’s. He says that a normal day would include the scent of cannabis filling the office, three martinis for lunch along with half a bottle of liquor. Sex was a big part of the office in his day; even though it wasn’t widely talked about… it definitely was happening, even during office hours.

“If I were truly dedicated to my research and had consumed three martinis over lunch, I’m pretty sure the room would be spinning… But would life be more fun, more spontaneous, more joyful, more creative in certain crucial ways?”
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/145766a2-8fb1-11df-8df0-00144feab49a.html

Della Femina owns a restaurant now in New York and has also picked back up a few accounts for advertising such as Newsweek. He says that the industry is a whole new game these days, it’s immature, but he still loves it.

EOC Week 3

•Interpret the problem – Getting the market share of smokers to smoke Newport cigarettes and relate smoking them to a positive and pleasurable experience.
•Understand the creative brief – The creativity in the Newport ads is usually always about doing something other than smoking, doing something that people find joyous such as: skiing, being at the beach, being with friends, playing cards, etc. Even when the ads do include a person with a cigarette they are always doing something fun.
•Say it outright – The ads are consistently creating a connection between not the cigarettes themselves, but the brand of Newport to pleasure.
•Know your audience – Newport wants to attract younger people in their 20’s and early 30’s, people that are successful and know how to have fun.
•Write your objective – Newport’s objective is to create a conscious connection in the consumers mind between the brand and pleasure.
As I looked at all the Newport ads I noticed two things that stood out to me most. The first was that in hardly any of the ads did you see anyone actually smoking a cigarette. Secondly, in all of the scenes Newport creates you always see the people doing something that normal American people would enjoy doing. This one caught my eye the most, the ad reads “After all, if smoking isn’t a pleasure, why bother?” and “Alive with pleasure!” When I saw this I looked back to all the ads and noticed a third thing, all the ads have the word pleasure in them. Newport is trying to disconnect the fact that smoking cigarettes can kill a person by creating a scene of young healthy people having fun and with putting alive in their ad and not just that you’re alive but you’re doing it with pleasure. To me, it seems that Newport isn’t worried about people thinking of the act of smoking as pleasurable yet just the brand Newport represents pleasure.

EOC Week 2: Ethics in Commercials

A few months back in April, General Motors put out an advertisement on television that stated the loan bailout they received in the amount of $50 billion from the American government had been paid back in full and also in advance. After this commercial was put out the Obama Administration would come out to back the ad in press releases and speeches. But, little by little, truth started coming to light by people that were working closely with the whole loan and also by people that worked in the American and Canadian government. "It appears to be nothing more than an elaborate TARP money shuffle," Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, said in a letter Thursday to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.”

After some investigation of what the “payback” really was it turned out that not only had GM lied when they said they paid back the government in full. But, that they had also tried to lead the public to believe that the money they used to pay the government back was money that they made by selling cars and making profit which was also not true. The money was taken from an escrow account that the government gave the company when they were in bankruptcy. “As it turns out, the Obama administration put $13.4 billion of the aid money as "working capital" in an escrow account when the company was in bankruptcy. The company is using this escrow money—government money—to pay back the government loan.”

EOC Week 1: VW Lemon

“The take-away was obvious. If this was Volkswagen's idea of a lemon, the Beetle must be a well-built car.” Volkswagen proclaimed that since the chrome piece on the inside of car was blemished that it was a lemon, meaning the car was useless. The Doyle Dane Bernbach ad agency was the first to use some kind of tact in order to persuade the public to purchase the product. The Volkswagen was the exact opposite of what Americans were out to buy; the war had just ended so thousands of men were back and were ready to make families. These families were looking for big automobiles which is the exactly what the Volkswagen is not. To make things worse the car is manufactured in Germany and was brought into existence by Adolf Hitler. But the way that they went about doing the ad would win them brand loyalty with the people of that time and ultimately won over the hearts of Americans for decades and decades to come.
“Before the advertising campaign for Volkswagen Beetle, ads were either information-based and lacking in persuasiveness, more fantasy than reality, or relied on the medium's ability to deliver a repeated exposure. Being breathtakingly simple, Beetle ads, connected with consumers on an emotional level, also conveyed a product benefit in a way consumers could relate to.”
The relay of this message was so impactful on American society that it revolutionized the way we as consumers were relayed messages by advertising companies. This was known as the creative revolution in the advertising industry. Companies began to create stories around their products and brands, causing the public to have an emotional connection with the company.