Learning About Building a Brand:
During our lockdown lessons with Lewis, we started to learn about promotion. The worksheet linked above was a task we completed about how companies use promotion effectively. The first page is an example. This was Lewis’ choice of brand (Apple). In the first box, we had to write the company’s tag line. The company I chose was Vans. Their tag line is “Off the Wall” and this is linked to skateboarding terminology as they are seen as a mainly skate themed brand. This is emphasised in the second box, where the logo represents a skateboard.
Next, we wrote down their message. This was something I didn’t know even being a fairly loyal customer so I went to look for it. I found out that they are all about “embracing creative self-expression” on their careers site (Vans Career Site | Welcome, 2020). This also helped me to answer the next 3 boxes of reputation, emotion and belief.
Personally, I find that their belief as a brand is what keeps people coming back. I feel included in their brand by this statement alone, which is, “More than just delivering great products. Self-expression through youth culture by promoting sports, music, art etc.” (Vans Career Site | Welcome, 2020).
Then, we moved onto design. This was an easy box to fill in and I used my own knowledge of the brand and my own experience which is how I came up with the 3 C’s; checkerboard, comfort and casual. This links to the language and tone box as I know that their language is very colloquial and based on young people as that is their targeted demographic.
Then I linked the values to the beliefs and discussed how the brand image effects their standing with competitors and their impressions on customers. Due to the fact that they are the world’s number 1 skate shoe, they clearly lead the competition which leads to people coming back time and again.
So how did this help us to learn about promoting our live stream? It got us thinking about how we wanted to brand ourselves. It shows how choosing a logo that is eye-catching and tied in with our identity we can build a solid brand that our audience (the correctly chosen demographic) can get behind.
Doing Our Own Promotion:
Although I was not on the promotion team, I did hold a big part in helping them out. A lot of the time I was there to assist in decisions or to be the face of the brand as the event manager.
One of the things I did, was an interview with James about my role. This was filmed to be used as a behind the scenes look into what we had been doing but it did not get used on the social media promotional push at any stage. I do feel as though it was still important for me to do this as it prepared me for the other interviews I had to do with BCB Radio and Bradford College’s marketing team for an article to go on the website and in the Telegraph & Argus (A local newspaper). Please go to the Being An Event Manager tab for more information on those.
Bibliography:
Sites.vans.com. 2020. Vans Career Site | Welcome. [online] Available at: <https://sites.vans.com/careers/corp/usa/our-brand/> [Accessed 27 February 2020].
Smith, A. and Peel, J., 2020. Bradford College Virtual Concert. [online] Facebook.com. Available at: <https://www.facebook.com/events/1698228413664945/> [Accessed 17 November 2020].
Smith, A. and Peel, J., 2020. Bradford College Virtual Concert. [online] Instagram.com. Available at: <https://www.instagram.com/bcm_virtualconcert/> [Accessed 17 November 2020].
Smith, A. and Peel, J., 2020. @Bradfordcollegevirtualconcert. [online] Linktree. Available at: <https://linktr.ee/BradfordCollegeVirtualConcert> [Accessed 17 November 2020].
Smith, A. and Peel, J., 2020. Bradford College Virtual Concert. [online] YouTube. Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCM832Lp_mry31qtx-iCN_MA> [Accessed 17 November 2020].