The Brief
Aim – To grow Clapton CFC women’s football team following
Brainstorming/ Initial Meeting
To start the process, we analysed the brief individually and came together with our ideas. In our first meeting we were unable to connect via Teams due to technical issues, therefore we communicated via messenger. This change in plan meant our discussion took longer than expected as we weren’t able to speak over the phone. When beginning a project, I prefer to speak with my teammate as it is more personable and is easier to understand how the other person feels about plans. Despite this difficulty, we wrote down our ideas and collaborated them to make a strong final concept.
My ideas:
1 – ‘We are the future‘ – the client mentioned not being attached to the history of the team. There is a divide/ bitterness between the women’s and mens team (we could create a bond between them, or make the women’s team unique and stand out). If connected, the slogan could be ‘Work together, play together, live forever’.
2 – ‘Stray Dog‘ – The Old Spotted Dog is the name of the teams home ground, which fans feel connected to and call it the ‘stray dog’. We can play with this concept and hold a match with dogs. The football match would be with the female players, manoeuvring themselves around dogs on a pitch (laughing, having fun, and showing their skills). This would be funny, entertaining, advertises teams and skills, and involves the audience . The hashtag could be #ClaptopStrayDogs
My partners Ideas:
- The improvement of different kinds of fans – There are many white followings, so black people can add some hip-hop elements or commentators, and carry out some lottery activities to increase the number of fans. The star effect of Asian people has great influence, and endorsement can be invited to increase different types of fans. The periphery of the team can also be made of different national styles, such as Asian Oriental elements.
- The women’s club has fewer fans than the men’s club.
Tagline and Title Ideas
My tagline ideas:
- Join the pack! (like the pack of dogs)
- We play to unite, you watch to change lives.
- Borders are no barriers, we play.
CTA idea – Stray from your average game with the Stray Dogs
My partners ideas: The star effect , Stray dog attack back
Charity Idea
In the initial meeting with the client, she mentioned how the team is very active with volunteering work, and is passionate about working for a good cause. Considering this, we believed raising money for a charity in the football event would reflect positively on the team and would reflect their ethos. We chose to support the RSPCA for this campaign as it is the biggest UK based animal rescue company and we know its effectively.
Advertisement Platforms
I made a list of potential platforms to cover for the campaigns advertisement and discussed them in a team meeting. We filtered through the options and decided to create posters, a live stream event, social media advertisement and influencers (celebrity as mascot) for the project.
The main idea we decided on was to create a strategy and clear art direction for the teams campaign, which would also help instigate further projects in the future. The idea wasn’t to over complicate the project by choosing many different platforms as examples, but instead to target a few options to give a sense of where the campaign could go.
Mood-boards | Ideas and Potential Art Direction:
During another meeting, we discussed what our final concept and how to bring it to life. To further clarify the direction of the project, we decided on our audience, call to action, tagline, title, social media and posters.
This meeting was very beneficial as we were able to clearly outline our ideas and put our thoughts into action. During each call, we set tasks for each other to complete for the following meeting. This meant we enforced productivity and kept our creative ideas flowing throughout the creative development. At times we struggled with language barrier issues, however it was great practice using simplified English and finding ways of communicating without over-complicating ideas. Personally I find working with people who speak english as a second language a helpful and enjoyable challenge as I used to teach TEFL prior to this degree. In the working world, there are always issues with language barriers, so discovering ways of over-coming them is great practice.
In order to better understand each other, I chose to frequently type the information discussed not only to make a record of the topics, but also to clarify our decisions.
This was a successful communication method as we were very clear about the progression of the project and the tasks we were expected to complete.
Our Final idea
The main idea is to effectively engage audiences through a live stream event called ‘The Stray Dogs’. The stray dog will partake in the event as a mascot, and a surprise celebrity will wear the costume and play in the match. At the end of the game, the celebrity will be revealed. This will be comedic and will increase audience curiosity and numbers. The event will boost Clapton CFC’s profile and popularity while building the team image.
The teams home ground is called ‘The Old Spotted Dog’, which fans feel connected to, so we decided on the idea ‘The Stray Dogs’.
The Stray Dogs campaign is family friendly and reflects the positive ethos Clapton CFC lives by, therefore targeting football fan families worldwide. Throughout the campaign, donation options will be available for the audience to give money to the RSPCA, and will consequently make a positive impact on the stray dogs in the UK. Clapton CFC are very focused on helping the community, therefore the strong ethos behind the campaign will reflect this.
Creating the Logo
Before creating sample ideas for the campaign logo, we discussed the important assets to include. We agreed that the stray dog needed to be the central focus, to include a football (to highlight the sport) and to contain the teams’ colours.
Clapton CFC has two uniforms, one for home and the other away. We chose to use the teams home colours to emphasise the teams grounds being at home, and consequently linking with the name. The logo needed to be simple and yet represent the campaign in its entirety. Therefore we created three examples each individually and came together in another meeting and confirmed our favourite sketch.
My teammate chose to create her logo digitally and found an example on the internet and changed the colours. I challenged this decision, as we could struggle with copyright issues if the client accepted our proposal. So my partner agreed to recreate the image and make the image quality higher.
As you can see on the right, the final logo is simple and yet highlights the main points within ‘The Stray Dogs’. Personally I wanted to make the logo even more basic, without so many colours, however due to the time restraint, time difference and language barrier, it wasn’t possible to keep changing ideas. The logo is fun, youthful and will cater to the target family demographic.
Advertisement | Posters
For this part of the project, my teammate was adamant to create the posters and had many ideas off-springing from the logo ideas. During a meeting we talked about what the client wants and needs from the project. We brainstormed how we could cater to these factors while creating visually appealing posters. My partner said how using flags from different countries will attract a global audience, and the posts can be forwarded on social media.
We made different posters with examples of different country styles to attract viewers globally. Considering our main goal was to increase the diversity of our fans, we chose to target three multi-ethnic countries in particular – China, England and Brazil. In the poster, we joined the team and countries colors with their national flowers.
I wasn’t sure about the initial visuals as the colours and patterns were too confusing, so i suggested making them simpler and sent a few examples online.
The posters overall are very colourful, contain the main message, however look a little over crowded for the client. Due to having received these visuals later than expected, we decided to keep them despite the uncertainty.
Social Media Advertisement
The social media advertisement was created by myself and represents what viewers will see across platforms such as Instagram and Facebook. Our younger demographic are active on Instagram more so than the older generation which are more reachable on Facebook, therefore we wanted to cater for both audiences. Having a consistent art direction with regular eye-catching posts will engage and attract new audiences.
The image above is a first draft example I created which was referred to when deciding on what we wanted to include in the visual. Below you can see the final visual used in the client pitch.
The live stream will be accessible across Instagram, Facebook and Youtube, and regular posts will advertise a countdown leading up to the event.
The outcome of this campaign will show a considerable increase of followers on social media platforms. The hashtag #CLAPTONSTRAYDOGS will connect activity gained across platforms to use for further advertisement after the event. It will attract global awareness of the womens team and their skills. Furthermore, the event will support the RSPCA and attract a more diverse crowd. This positive message will convey the spirit of football as well as bring attention to the stray dogs themselves.
Presentation Write-up/ Pitch
During a meeting we broke down the different powerpoint slides we would be presenting and decided who should talk about which section. When deciding on this, we weighed up our strengths and weaknesses and agreed to talk about the sections we created within the project. I offered to introduce the presentation and my partner chose other parts she felt most confident with. We made a draft of what we would mention and practised the talk until we were completely confident with what we were going to say.
To bring charisma, we practised our vocal intonation and fluidity in order to keep the client interested. My partner struggled with the pronunciation of some words throughout the text, so we highlighted them and I taught her them correctly. This gave her more confidence, and improved her side of the pitch.
Reflection
Overall this project was a fast-paced, eye-opening experience. During the process, there were challenges we faced due to communication, however as a team we worked well and enjoyed each step of the journey. My partner was positive and eager to learn, and was a great team-player. The design aspect of the campaign wasn’t as visually appealing and coherent as I wanted it to be, but the overall experience working with my partner was rewarding and worthwhile. In future projects, I need to find better ways of communicating my artistic vision in order to feel more satisfied by the final outcome.
KatiesBlog 