We are Core Beauty: Sam, Georgia, Bex, Phoebe, and Sydney
Seeing as we’ve previously presented our background research, business analysis and ideas to you, you know who you are, and we know who you are, so we’re going to jump straight in to it!
Slide 2
After our first presentation to you, we agreed that our initial sticker idea was the most exciting project for us to move forward with but we didn’t see room to push it much further. Instead we took this idea of guerrilla marketing and came up with a 3 part installation (which we’ll explain more a bit later) that reflected our seed, blossom, and apple audience profiles.
To refresh you on what those profiles were:
The apple seed is a woman who has never heard of Body Love NZ and doesn’t know what they do. She’s nervous and unsure about anything to do with fitness and wellbeing and she doesn’t fully understand the benefits to her.
Her needs are: Inform Me, Encourage Me
The apple blossom is a woman who has become interested in Body Love NZ through friends or social media. She knows she needs improvement in her mental and/or physical wellbeing but is very uncertain about how to go about it. She is intimidated by the group environment and sharing with women she doesn’t know, but she realises she needs the support from a group to make real changes.
Her needs are: Assist Me, Involve Me
The apple is a woman who has been a Body Love NZ regular for a while now. She has been attending their events and loves the support network of women that she has met. She can see all of the improvements she needs to make within herself and she is happy to continue her journey within the Body Love NZ framework, especially with all the friends she has made.
Her needs are: Connect Me, Support Me
Slide 3
With this new idea in mind, we reevaluated and redefined our tensions to 3 core ideas: Business size vs Reach, Making Profit vs Giving Back, and Online Promotion vs Real World Promotion. To flesh these out a bit more; we recognised that there is a tension between being a small business, and being able to reach a large audience so our idea is designed to play to the strength of small numbers but make a big impact. We recognised the importance of community to you guys, and so our idea focuses on this idea of giving, whilst hopefully also gaining new clientele and therefore potential profit. And lastly, with a lot of your current promotion existing in the digital world, we wanted to push it into the physical world and take it to the streets.
Slide 4
We also decided that in terms of competition, it was important for us to differentiate Body Love NZ from Motivate Me, their closest New Zealand competitor, and worked to develop and idea that would create a unique look and feel.
Slide 5
From the survey that we did back in Week 4, we recognised that the online platforms you use are really relevant to the target audience, however, despite these being the obvious promotional channels, we wanted to do something more outside of the box to catch people’s attention and create conversation.
Slide 6
Your challenge to us was: How can design help us to inspire New Zealand women to love the skin they’re in? And the thought leadership we interpreted this as after completing our initial research was: We will use design to promote body confidence and raise awareness of Body Love NZ.
Slide 7
So, coming back to our idea: We’ve designed a 3 part installation beginning with the “seed”. This idea is the first part of our promotional journey, and involves an apple core structure from which women can take “seed” flyers, promoting Body Love NZ with information about who they are, and where to find out more. This stage is all about informing the audience.
This blossom is the second part of our promotional journey, where “Blossoms” with compliments and the Body Love NZ tag on the under side are tied to trees in high foot traffic areas in an attempt to stop women briefly, brighten their day with a kind note, and inspire them to be involved with Body Love NZ. This stage is all about inspiring the audience.
The apple is the third part of our promotional journey in which an apple outline is drawn on public bathroom mirrors throughout the city with instructions asking woman to leave each other uplifting messages about body confidence. This is designed to allow woman to interact and share in the Body Love NZ values in a safe and private environment. Within this idea is the opportunity for a social media competition through the use of a hashtag to help generate more involvement. This final stage is all about interacting with the audience.
Slide 8
We started to prototype our ideas, but due to time and skill restrictions, along with being unable to give away branded flyers, we felt that creating and testing the “seed” idea wouldn’t be all that feasible so chose to mock it up digitally instead.
Slide 9
For our blossom we were able to prototype and test the idea on a tree outside the university cafe to see whether people would engage with this idea and take the compliments from the tree. In this test we hung the blossoms like ornaments from the tree. Whilst this looked quite pretty with the blossoms swaying in the wind, in Wellington this wasn’t actually ideal as they got all twisted. We had positive participation with the tree including some sharing on Instagram and Facebook.
Slide 10
We were also able to prototype and test our apple concept in two of the bathrooms here in Block 12. These were installed around midday on Tuesday, and by Wednesday morning one had a good selection of compliments posted, whilst the other had been completely removed. We were surprised at the extremely opposing responses and left the one with the compliments to see if it would continue to grow and the results were amazing! It grew over the course of a couple of days and actually extended beyond the outline we’d drawn on the mirror.
Slide 11
We piloted the blossoms on a section of trees in Cuba Street around 9:30am on Wednesday morning, and over the course of the day watched over half of the blossoms taken. Having learnt from our test on campus, we devised a better way of tying the blossoms so that they were close to the tree and easy to take. By sitting nearby we overheard some really great comments and saw some really interesting interactions which gave us great insights into the project. The word “cute” came up again, and again, and again, and again! People thought the execution was beautiful and that it was such a positive idea with a lot of ‘feel good factor’. An insight that we hadn’t been expecting was that a lot of couples stopped at the trees, and it was often because of the male noticing and encouraging his partner to take one.
Slide 12
To improve the apple for our pilot on Cuba, we decided to use a chalk pen to create the outline as the whiteboard marker was quite hard to see and rubbed off too easily in our first test. We also altered the instructions to try and condense the text, and purchased pink post it notes for more vibrancy. So on the Wednesday morning, we installed our apple on the female bathroom mirrors in The Old Bank Arcade, and the Wellington City Library. Within the hour, the one in The Old Bank Arcade had been removed. The Wellington City Library one however slowly grew, and as some women put notes up we noticed that this encouraged more to do the same. Having changed our instructions to try and condense the text, actually changed the results we received, and it had become less clear that we were talking about body confidence, and the notes seemed more generically inspirational. The apple we’ve got here to show you is a combination of the results from the initial university test, and the pilot in the Wellington City Library.
Slide 13
To work out the estimated budget we made projections based on approximate commercial production prices. You can see these prices on screen and in the dossier.
Slide 14
Our tests/pilots definitely taught us a lot and so moving forward we had some thoughts for each installation:
Despite the seed being our most expensive idea, it’s size packs a punch and create’s the impact required to grab first time attention. To reduce costs we would suggest sourcing recycled timber to build the structure and utilising any handy friends to reduce labour costs. It would be important to scout locations before executing in order to ensure the placement was appropriate and reaching the right audience. i.e. a high foot traffic area is not necessarily ideal as people avoid interactions when they are busy, whereas a relaxed lunchtime area may be more beneficial.
One of the main things we thought could improve the blossoms would be to build a larger sign and place it in a more obvious thoroughfare, as we saw a lot of people walk past on their phones or busy in conversations and not even register that it was there. We started the day with the blossoms quite spread out across the section of trees but as they started to get taken it became less apparent that they were there. So we clustered them together on two trees and noticed that this gained them a lot more attention and visually looked much more appealing, so we would recommend this method.
Our biggest learning curve for the apple was the importance of location. Our tests occurred in public toilets in The Old Bank Arcade and the Wellington City Library, however we hadn’t thought about whether these locations were appropriate for the target audience. Our results reflected this oversight and so moving forward we believe this concept would have more success in female bathrooms in mall’s and cafe’s.
We really hope you’re inspired with what we’ve proposed and that you believe we’ve developed a way for design to help inspire New Zealand women to love the skin they’re in. Thanks so much for working with us on this project and we hope you’ve had as much fun as we have!
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