A Girl About Town

Within this document, I shall be going into depth about the process my partner Tom and I went through to be successful in our agency brief. There will be an understanding of how hard it was to find our value proposition in relation to our target audience, and the creative strategies we used to find it, and implement it. There will also be discussion of the application of branding, marketing (and what it actually is) and strategy, from what we leaned in our Enterprise lectures. We will see how Tom and I learned to see ourselves as a ‘product’ and how we can sell ourselves through our skills as well as our value proposition.

Marketing is “the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements”(brassington,Pettitt:P146) With this knowledge, we tried to cover all the points within this statement within our process.
Tom and I found it incredibly hard to pin down exactly what it was that we ‘are’ in terms of our USP or ‘Value proposition’. Because we are so many things, and a lot of this is important to us, it was hard to pick the most important thing. We work hard, and we enjoy that, we get on very well too. We also have balance because we are opposite in so many ways, but are good enough communicators to use this to our benefit. The question was, how to turn this into a ‘benefit’ for the target audience. This was a struggle. There is also a need to be different to everyone else. “To be successful you need to be unique” (Nordstrom,Ridderstrale: P.238). In lecture 1
We also had to try to understand our target audience, in this case our agencies we want to target. In one of our lectures, it was said that we must ‘Identify customer needs to develop new products’. What was it then, that our agencies want from us? And if “deviance from the norm is the recipe for survival” (Norstrom,Ridderstrale:P.238), how can we be different from everyone else? Within this exercise, we “must look at ourselves as a company” (Norstrom,Ridderstrale:P.240). So this is now ‘business to business’ marketing. “Whatever the type of product or organisation, the focus is the same, centred on exchange, the flow of goods and services that enable the other organisations to operate, produce, add value and/or re-sell” (Brassington,Pettitt:P.146). Based on this, we will look at ourselves as a product that they don’t have, that will benefit them culturally and financially (in the long run). We should be viewed as a product to enhance their business.

To try to find our value propostion, or USP, we employed various creative strategies. Research was also a large part of finding out what is important, and individual. We broke down the key factors of us, (practical, social, ego and sensory) and looked at what we had yielded. We decided that we are a ‘resource of knowledge’. We are both into everything, and have a vested interest in learning things. We both have hobbies and an attitude of intrigue in other people’s hobbies and interests. We read a lot and generally know what is ‘current’, also what isn’t. We can offer an ever evolving and deep pool of information to our agnecy. This in turn would save them time too, and ensure that concepts we develop for them would be rich and relevant. I think this would make us highly employable in the future also, as we are “constantly updating our skills, so that we are desireable to potential employers” (Norstrom,Ridderstrale:P.241).
We would like to promote this through various media. A website, maybe a video of some sort that supports our ‘resourceful’ knowledge and also technical skill. I think that showing technical skill would be beneficial to reinforce our message of our ‘knowledge’, and likelihood of contact being made. We want to keep it simple too. The incorporation of digital media would appeal to our target audience, this would be a signifier of our knowledge of ‘them’. Adam and Eve, our agency, are based in TV, and digital media mostly. So an understanding of how to engage people through visual impact is important as well as editing and digital knowledge. This would also show a consistency of our message, based on that we ‘know about a lot’ and can offer that to them. Consistency is an important factor to reinforce our value proposition. Everything we say/do/tell should ‘sell’ us. We will also be free, as one of the four P’s, price is always something to consider. Because we are free, it shows that we have a strong work ethic, and have willing. No aspect of the promotion should be surplus to requirement. ‘Keep it short’ was the message we had in our lecture. This is also something we have learned on our course too. We have also been specific with the message, there is no room for confusion of the TA. We understand our TA’s needs (needing information to complete work), we developed our concept (we are a resource), we want to test our concept through sending out our website/video to the agency and see if they respond with a brief, this is how we will market ourselves too, and hopefully we will gain feedback, in the form of a brief and possible agency visit to show our work. These aspects are outlined in the ‘innocent smoothies’ marketing strategy. I feel we have fulfilled these aspects, and/or set up a way to fulfil the ones that we have not progressed through yet.
We would also like our concept to be ‘personal’ to our target audience as “they want to be seen and recognised as indeviduals” (Norstrom,Ridderstrale:P.258). This would also increase the likelihood of our being noticed by them. Even if our plan doesn’t go ‘to plan’, we will have networked, let our presence known to them, and successfully networked.

In conclusion, I feel Tom and I have come up with a USP that is individual. I am sure everyone will be showing how “creative” they are through their value propositions, to me, this will not stand out enough. Obviously we should be creative, but this will come out in our execution of our concept. I am happy with what we have done, I feel it fulfils a need that our agency will have, knowledge is power, and we can give them that. Hopefully, we will make contacts in industry, and gain experience from the excersise too. I found the application of marketing strategy beneficial. It gave structure and validity to what we are doing. Things are more concise as a result, time is saved, and messages are more potent.

Bibliography:

1. Frances Brassington & Stephen Pettit, Principles of Marketing (1997), 4th edition 2006, Essex, Pearson Education Limited

2. Kjell A. Nordstrom & Jonas Ridderstrale, Funky Business (2000) 2nd Edition 2002, Stockholm, Bookhouse Publishing AB