New Blood

It all began in one of the first Ad Campaign lectures when we were told that we can enter the New Blood Award competition with a chance to win an internship in London. My team and I were instantly interested as it was a great opportunity to our CV’s and test our creativity. And so we started to look through  the creative briefs, trying to figure out if we’ve got what it takes to create the deliverables requested. We all loved Asos’s brief but we realised it would be much too ambitious and complicated to do and so we settled on the slightly less interesting and maybe a little boring National Trust brief with hopes that we would  do it justice with our fresh ideas.The brief requested us to reintroduce the National Trust as the powerful connector between people and the beauty of places, nature and history, making it easy to reach as well as attractive and relevant for the audience proposed in the brief (25-40 year olds) that live predominantly in urban areas and adhere to a modern yet hectic lifestyle, have an interest in nature and culture but are unaware of the opportunities surrounding them. In addition, we had to do this in a maximum of eight images or a two minute-long film.

First things first, we had to find out why the National Trust is not appealing to the proposed target audience. After some research we discovered that there was nothing wrong with the National Trust’s image but it’s the fact that the audience don’t have a lot of time or discretionary income to spend, they are not informed about what the Trust does or the locations that are close by the cities they live in and there’s also the typical UK weather of which you can never be sure. Furthermore, even though the National Trust has an online presence through social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) it just needed a bit of a boost, a revamping in order to catch the eye of the audience.

After we identified how the target audience feels about the National Trust, we put our thinking caps on and started brainstorming for ideas of improvement that would help the Trust. We thought that they would need more modern events such as wine tasting, outdoor theatre and cinema, concerts, fairs with local products (cider, cheese, ales, fruit, bread etc.) and dating events in collaboration with various dating sites. The basis of these ideas was that they would be advertised online in more attractive ads with younger people, showing how they could benefit from visiting and making them understand it’s not all about history but about having a good day out with their partners or friends and having more options that offer good value for money when deciding where to go on a day off. But there was a fault in our thinking, and as our tutor pointed out, we did not need to come up with new ideas for events because that would be marketing; we only had to take everything that the Trust has to offer and make it attractive and exciting for the target audience through advertising.

As we settled on the right path, the real creative process began. We decided that the Trust, as a charity, would not spend large amounts of money on advertising so we ruled out TV, radio, cinema or print advertising. Visiting some National Trust places (Worcester’s Greyfriars’ and Hanbury Hall in Droitwich) and busy city centres (the Bullring in Birmingham, London Piccadilly and Bristol’s Old City Centre) enabled us to see how busy people are and how passive to advertisements and disregarding of nature they are. Therefore, we wanted to make the target audience aware of the multitude of unique cultural, traditional and modern perspectives by emerging them into an oasis of nature and relaxation.

After intense research on the subject, the idea of using guerrilla advertising became very attractive. We had seen previous successful guerrilla advertising campaigns for Ikea, Absolut Vodka or McDonald’s and it seemed feasible as we wanted people to have a real glimpse of what the Trust has to offer. 

                               Source: adweek.com

Source: creativeadssolutions.com

                                  

                         

                  Source: adsoftheworld.com

From there, we each decided to study the preferences in advertising of our friends and we saw that most of them would react in a positive way to emotional advertising and so we developed various scenarios depending on what we thought would impact the audience the most. We decided we would be playing on people’s emotions and bringing back childhood memories, pointing out the importance of nature for the well-being of a family, showing people the devastating impact that the lack of nature would do to them and the cities. Moreover, some of us were watching Dr. Who at that time and so the idea of creating a time machine that would take them to their favourite place of quiet and natural beauty came to mind. As we were talking, munching and drinking on, we discovered that Pepsi had a QR code which if scanned, a football player would appear and different options would pop up and so the idea of integrating augmented reality in the campaign was also proposed as it would give the tech-savvy audience the chance to easily connect, search, plan and comment.

As we are all very passionate about films, we discovered that Harry Potter, the Dark Night Rises, the Duchess, Disney’s upcoming Maleficent and some episodes of the Game of Thrones series were filmed on National Trusts locations the idea of making a connection between the National Trust and the film industry came into play as well.

However, as good and viable as all of the ideas seemed, we had to pick the ones that would be the most inexpensive and that would have the best reach. I must say that this was not easy; it was probably the hardest part of creating this campaign. Of course everyone was holding on to their ideas and was reluctant to compromise. So we decided that we sleep on it and when we met the next day each would decide on a thing that they were willing to compromise on. Luckily we managed to agree to disagree in some aspects, such as not playing on childhood memories or showing the impacts of not having nature in the cities but bringing nature to the city through street furniture such as bus stops and boxes showcasing unique historical and nature-inspired designs.

As the campaign would run in very busy cities, bus stops seemed as the best method to reach the majority of the target audience, as they are widely used. We then started sketching out the bus stops, agreeing to integrate pictures of various Trust sites, props and motion sensor-activated ambient sounds to recreate the oasis of relaxation we intended. This would give the audience a unique experience of what the National Trust has to offer. 

     

Moreover, we disregarded the augmented reality idea because it was a bit confusing and complicated but we still included QR codes. Even though we had a bit of an argument on what their use would be we reached the conclusion that they are useful because they are the key connector of the physical advertising to the social media. Moreover, as we realized that mobile phones will be required to scan the QR codes, we thought that it would be really useful if we also created a mobile app. Its use would be to gather information about the user’s mood and location, check the weather forecast and come up with results on National Trust locations, discounts, promotions and all of the events happening nearby. This way, the QR codes simply direct the user to the app.

In addition, we decided to create a hash tag as it’s one of the most trending forms of raising awareness at the moment. So alongside the campaign, the Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages of The National trust would be linked to the mobile application and the hash tag #timewellspent will give people a chance to connect with each other and with the charity, and to form a community where they can share experiences, advice and thoughts on what spending time well means to them.  

To continue with, we also chose the time machine box inspired by Dr. Who. This gives the visitor the chance to partake in an immersive 3D experience which will take them to the National Trust location of their choice allowing them to surround themselves with the beautiful scenery and the relaxing sounds of nature. Nature-inspired designs will cover the box, with the National Trust motto “Expect the Unexpected” being the tagline of the campaign. The iPad available in the box allows the visitor to select the location, take a photo of them and share it either to their own phone or to one of the Trust’s online media platforms under #timewellspent. However, we had to give people a reason to enter the box and here is where we introduced the film part. By sharing the photo online, there is a chance to win a free family pass to one of the Trust’s locations or a trip to one of the locations that has served as a filming set.

Even if the ideas we came up with were only in the stage of a conceptual campaign for the competition, we thought that they were quite straightforward and could be very applicable and easy to do so. As considered before, the National Trust is a charity so they won’t invest too much money on advertising. Our ideas can be done with minimal costs if using recycled materials, natural and hand-made props.

In the end, after we polished off our ideas, came the hard part of the campaign: creating the images. This was not an easy job because even if we did learn the basics of Photoshop, we had to make them look somewhat professional. We then spent a few nights trying to make everything look as good as we possibly could with good results, in our opinion. If something wouldn't work, or one of us had a problem, we would all chip in to help and find a solution to the problem. The experience was indeed very exciting and even though we were all very tired and at one point very uncertain that it would even work, the fact that we all worked well together and got along really good made it easier and more fun. These were the main deliverables that we came up with for the competition, alongside a 400 words supporting material:

                                           

Then came the time for the last changes and proof reading, and we put everything together to send off to the New Blood Award competition. We spent a lot of time and energy struggling to upload the main deliverables as the D&AD website was probably overloaded, but in the end we managed to upload everything and with a day to spare. And now we wait!