Monday 13 October 2014

OUGD504: Studio Brief 2- Brand Proposal

For the record, I didn't like doing this one bit. I felt uncomfortable and waffly and overly pretentious… I don't even think I've explained the proposal properly and I certainly won't be winning any clients from it. Proposals make me uncomfortable, formal writing always tends to do this to me…


Pints of Cake Brand Proposal

A brand can be described as a name; term, sign, symbol or design  (or even a combination of them) intended to identify the service of a company or collective. A successful brand by us will provide the company’s history, purpose, values and strengths as well as creating a unique identity for your one of a kind creative webpage.

Pints of Cake is new, it’s still in its fledgling stages and I believe that a strong brand identity can be an essential ally in a world full of new webpages and start up projects. The quicker a new company can communicate its personality to audiences, the sooner their loyalty can be gained and interest can be generated. A person will make a decision to come to your webpage and contribute based of what they see, so surely it makes sense to present consistent, thorough visuals that grab the eye and cement Pints of Cake in their minds.

I understand that Pint’s of Cake is aimed at bringing people together out of love things they are passionate for. Although the main focus will be the collecting and sharing of different artwork, illustrations and comics Pints of Cake clearly aims higher than most creative collective blogs and websites. By including reviews, writings, podcasts and editorials the potential for expression is increased and the number of topics for people to be passionate about opens up to a larger audience.

Pints of Cake is something that needs to be communicated as fun, as well as creative. It’s an enjoyable experience to immerse yourself in popular culture and artistic ideas and it requires people to function. That’s why we need to bring people in from the outside and approach this externally. The tone of voice for this company will need to be a friendly one, although one that’s clearly different from the mainstream terms of friendly, it needs to become something people are inquisitive about, that they want to explore and discover for themselves instead of serving everything on a plate right to them.

The use of social media has already been fully addressed by your collective and it’s wonderful to see a social media presence that is strong and well defined. Now we need to make it something that people want to share, to build up excitement. As well as using our previously designed logo in the webpage and on your social media I propose printing it out in beer mat formats placed in and around student pubs and potentially also within university environments (at least for the beginning). This could be a unique chance at guerrilla advertising as the context of a pub and beer not only suits the company name but it also piques audience curiosity. Especially when the beer mat is placed in other contexts or handed out on the street, it certainly covers the value of taking something familiar and presenting it in an unfamiliar way (a beer mat? In a coffee shop? What is this?). It will make people inquisitive, it will draw them in, it will make them ask questions.

This can then leads towards an upcoming launch of the Pints of Cake webpage. Not too long after releasing the beer mats, posters will go up in similar areas, the social media sites will have a makeover using the new logo and cover pages. There is also a potential for a countdown, and updates for different contributors, each day a new contributor is announced in the previous interview format demonstrated on the kickstarter pages. Make the art the star; show a slither of what some contributors will be providing, but not all so as to loose interest and give away all the content before the site is even up and running.  Example interviews or review highlights wet the audience’s appetite but keep them hungry.

After generating interest and displaying what you stand for it will capture the right kind of passionate creative person and draw in inquisitive minds. It will be down to promotion through social media and getting consumer participation to further grow the brand- allow for each item, article, image and review to be shared with others on social media so people can help generate interest for you.


All of this together should produce a fun, unique and creative brand that draws in audiences and represents the individual, creative, pop and art cultured, fun personality that Pints of Cake stands for.

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