Developing an Advertising Campaign for Blue Sky Outdoor Living

Question

Task: For this assessment you will need to perform the following tasks.
TASK 1-PART A
Scenario

The following Tasks are based upon the Blue Sky Outdoor Living Stores. The chain has 16 stores in your home state and has a strong customer base. Blue Sky Outdoor Living Stores’ primary customer base is caravanning, camping and hiking enthusiasts. Ten of the stores are located in a major city or a large regional town and six stores are located in smaller country towns. They are all located on major roads. Each Blue Sky Outdoor Living Store is located in an area where there is a major natural tourist attraction, including The Berry Falls, Row Back Mountain and the Happy Valley Lake Fishing Resort, The Excalibur Ranges and the Blue Gum Forest. They are the number one retailer in one stop shopping for their customers caravanning, camping and hiking needs.

As part of this year’s strategic plan for The Blue Sky Outdoor Living Stores they are adding cycling gear, including bicycles and all associated equipment and apparel into their range of products. Bicycles, equipment and apparel will be sold at all 16 stores. They now require an advertising campaign to be developed to launch this new range. They have called this new area of the business the Blue-Sky Cycling Freedom.
Blue Sky Outdoor Living are renowned for excellent customer service, after sales service, competitive pricing and that old world feeling of a local store.
You will develop an advertising campaign, including an; an advertising plan and a creative brief.
The organisational structure of Blue Sky Outdoor Living Stores:

Student Instructions
For this Task, you are to develop an advertising campaign to introduce cycling and the associated bicycles, equipment and apparel into the Blue Sky Outdoor Living Stores.

You will develop an advertising campaign which meets Blue Sky Outdoor Living Store’s purpose and objectives as specified in the attached advertising brief, including:

• Specified timelines for task completion
• Resource requirements
• Budgetary allocations and justifications.

For this advertising campaign Blue Store Outdoor Living want to communicate that it is now selling cycling gear and equipment. Managing Director Elizabeth Jump has appointed you as the Marketing Manager to lead this advertising campaign. The management team have worked together to develop the Advertising Brief.

PART B
For this Task, you will develop a Creative brief as part of the advertising campaign to introduce cycling and the associated bicycles, equipment and apparel into the Blue Sky Outdoor Living Stores.

• You will develop the creative brief using the template included. If your organisation has a template, you may use that instead. Ensure you read all information included before attempting this Task. Information you require is within these Tasks. Include the advertising copy for the each. You are also required to develop and submit an ad for the chosen media option (newspaper, magazine, banner, hoarding etc.)

Answer

TASK 1
PART A: Developing an Advertising Campaign
Developing an Advertising Campaign, tailored according to the purpose and objective, would be crucial for Blue Sky Outdoor Living Stores’.

1. Introduction
Blue Sky outdoor living stores’ is a one stop retail outlet for apparatus related to caravanning, hiking and camping and also cycling and other outdoor living and trekking activities, corporate head office of which is based in Canada.Blue Sky’s primary customer base includes people who do caravanning, hiking or camping. They have 16 stores in the home state, out of which 10 are based in major cities and 6 in smaller towns. Blue Sky is infusing a new product in their portfolio which is a cycling gear including bicycles and all other required equipment and apparel.

2. Campaign Goals
o Announce the launch of this new products and all equipments
o Acquire new clients
o Make sales
o Reach the Break-Even point

3. Key areas to be promoted are
o The new cycling gears
o Bicycles
o All other equipments and apparatus related to it
o New bicycling trends in outdoor activities

4. Resource requirements
Blue sky outdoor living would be focusing more on social media campaigning and will require a presence on multiple social media platforms and make network with similar businesses and their target audience initially. Traditionally Blue Sky hasbeen using print media but now as big chunk of their target audience is turning tech savvy they have to be present and promote there too.

5.Market research
Product demand
Since 2009-10 there has been an evident growth in adult cycling and bicycle sales. Import figures across Australia shows increase in sales by 21% since then. Eventually there was an increase in units sold in between 2010 to 13 as figures rose up from 1.2 million to 1.4 million units (Donald and Parente., 2014).Also around 30% of car journeys are less than 4-5 kilometers which can be easily traveled on a bicycle.

Competitors
In case of mountain and road bikes Goldcross, Avanti, Trek are a few leading competitors.
There are no direct competitors for the 6 outlets in the country side towns. Our retailing strengths
i. Exquisite customer service
ii. After-Sales service
iii. Competitive pricing

6. Target audience
According to Demographics, the gender segmentation of our target customers who cycle to work would be 80% men and 20% women.
The ratio would be quite different, which is 70% men and 30% women, if cycling is done for recreational purpose.
Also 22% of the cyclists are aged between 15-24 years old, 31% are aged in between 24-34, 26% in between 35-44, 15% in between 45-54 and 5% in between 55-64 years old.
Also a large part of the audiences are social media users.

7. Campaign time frame and scheduling
The advertising campaign should be feasible and prepared in 2 months and shall run for 1 month.

In the preparation phase the advertising plan should be prepared in 1 week after commencement, followed by budgeting which is expected to be prepared within 2 weeks.
Also all the meetings with advertising agencies are expected to complete within 2 weeks of commencements and the decision of selecting one of those in the following 1 week.
The creative brief which is an important part shall be prepared within 4 weeks and on air and in distribution within 8 weeks and it shall remain in the same state for 2 weeks.

9. Campaign budget
A definite budget must be set before putting any activity on board as it is a very important part of the process.

Blue Sky outdoor living has a budget of $ 200,000 which is 10% payable after 4 weeks signing the contract and after an agreement of all parties on the expenditure and timeline.

10. Campaign theme
The theme of the campaign will be “The Blue Sky cycling freedom” as required by them for this new area of business.

11. Advertising medium
Blue sky outdoor living would be freshly introducing social media marketing into their list of Advertising medium.

Social media advertising
This is a very strong approach to advertising since every other person nowadays is present of this medium.Blue Sky can use various platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for general, pictorial and video promotion and also take feedbacks, YouTube to advertise video Ads, Pintrest can also be used to advertise through pictures..

Mobile marketing through search and display networks

Making the website mobile friendly optimize it according to search engines like Google through a process called as Search engine optimization or Search engine marketing (SEM) will boost sales and brand awareness.

Blue Sky will put text advertises on search network and pictorial advertises on display network. For example: Google AdWords and Google display network.

Social media and search engine Ads are managed very efficiently because we can calculate the success through metrics.

Catalogues
Catalogues will be distributed within proximity of 5 to 6 kilometers of all 16 stores.
Newspaper and magazines Saturday and Sunday editions of popular magazines will advertise by introducing our product and newspapers will advertise at least one time a week on the front page and on subsequent pages the rest of the says. This traditional way of advertising on print media will be done for a month only as planned because it is costly. Whereas advertising digitally and on social media is free.

12. Legal ethical requirements of advertising
Blue sky outdoor living will abide by truthful advertising practices and proper legal documentation work and process.

13. Brainstorm for fresh ideas
The message should primarily add value to the person on the receiving end of the advertisement.

Personal experiences of people who have used will be filmed and documented and will be shared via advertisements.A local celeb will be endorsing the product. All the employees’ will be educated about the product they will be the potential brand ambassadors for Blue Sky.

14. Communication (the message)

Tone of the voice
Acasual tone in the message of Ads which would be friendly and sophisticated.

The message
Blue Sky wants to narrate its story of 30 years of experience to gather trust from the audience in order to sell its new product.

It will stick to communicating the launch of new Cycle gear and its equipment in all of its stores and is a leader in justifying a reasonable price.

15. Contentdesign
Sky Blue would be using a very simple and sophisticated format and design for both image and video ads. This will reduce the cost to make them yet maintain the sophistication.Sky Blue outdoor living would use a blue sky motif and orange color palette design for online pictorial, poster and catalogue advertisements.

16. Executing the campaign and delivering the ads
The campaign will start the execution after 2 months of planning and implementation according to the planned process and then ads will be delivered. Consistently throughout the course of the campaign, feedback will be considered and implemented to reach flexibility and progress will be tracked by analytical softwares.

17. Ask for and note the feedbacks
Offline feedback will be taken through direct contact and filling of a feedback form of customers who come to the store or get the product delivered at their home.

Online feedback will be collected by customer feedback surveys done by site, email marketing and comments sections of social media.

18. Tracking metrics and KPIs
Tracking and boosting metrics and key performance indicators (KPI) is a very important aspect (Tom Altsiel et al., 2020). Blue sky would keep a track on its online activities by analytical softwares like Google analytics. Budget spent on online advertisements would be controlled and tracked with the help of Google AdWords.

PART B: Making a creative brief
A creative brief is a short two to three page document regarded as the most important head start that a creative team would need when they’ll create an advertisement. This would outline the strategy for the entire creation process.

The creative brief for Blue Sky outdoor living stores’ is as follows:

PART C
1. Explain the principles of effective advertising for different markets. Answer.
The principles of effective advertising for various markets are:

a) Repeated catchphrases and taglines
The main catchphrases and taglines should be repeated and mentioned once at the end of the Advertisement. These tempting catchphrases should be mentioned repeatedly because if they’re catchy they will be remembered by people even after the campaign ends (Davis Joel, 2020).

a) Duration of the campaign
The duration of any ad campaign will be measured in early planning process and an Ad in itself should not cross over 30 seconds if its shown on TV and it shouldn’t cross 3-4 minutes if on social media. An overall Ad campaigning should be planned for 1 to 3 months.

b) Consistency in visual content
Visual consistency will makeBlue Sky relate to their audience. Consistent flow of colors, designs, types of images, and video filters looks sober(Makrinova, Eet al., 2020). If done properly a viewer will hold the images in memory for a long period even after campaign ends.

c) Simple ads
Simple Ads are the best to relate to broad scope audiences and also to stay away from ethical complexities and offending human sentiments.

d) Consistent positioning
This will differentiate Blue Sky’s product from its competitors and will position its various unique features and their uses and value in the minds of the customer at the receiving end of the advertisement.

e) Highlight the Unique selling point (USP)
There must be one or maximum two USPs for the products. It is important to consistentlyhighlight them in Ads

2. Describe contents of advertising briefs. Answer.
a) Client details
Name of the client or the organization and their contact details are to be mentioned.

b) Project description, requirement and purpose
The background of the organization and the product and campaign description should be stated.

What kind of final output is required for example: An Ad or a brochure or a catalogue is needed with other specified features. The purpose of the Ad campaign like, acquiring new clients, increasing sales, and introducing new product should be described (William D. Wells., 2014).

c) Target audience and positioning
The target audiences should be mentioned and required positioning of the product in viewers mind should be described.
d) Content, other activity
What kind of content is expected and other activities related to the product and the campaigns are outlined.
e) Budgeting and scheduling
A budget and a schedule for all activities have to be prepared with the acknowledgement and agreement of all parties.
3. Outline and describe ethical requirements relevant to the advertising industry

Answer.
a) Truthful message: the message should not be exaggerated and should be truthful with actual and proven data.
b) Promotion of values: the ad should promote good values while positioning the product.
c) Abiding to the legal factors: An Ad agency should abide to all the legal rules while creating or running an ad campaign.

4. Identify the products and services of this campaign.
Answer.
Tangible products and services: Cycle gear, bicycle, other equipments Intangible products and services: Brand recognition, Intellectual property (new name and logo made), recreational values

5. Explain principles and purposes of advertising, consumer behavior, and influences on buyer behavior. Answer.

Purpose of Advertising: To introduce the new cycle gear and to make sales.

6. Identify and give an overview of key provisions of relevant legislation, codes of practice and national standards affecting business operations.

Answer.
Objectives of codes of practice and national standards are:
1) Blue Sky will have to maintain generally acceptable standard of advertisements
2) Blue Sky will ensure that the Ad is not misleading, deceptive, either by statement or by implication
3) Blue Sky will establish and promote voluntary self regulation in advertising standards
4) Fund and establish the advertising standards complaints board (Advertising codes of practice, 2010)

TASK 2
*In the PPT attached*

References
Altstiel, T., Grow, J. and Jennings, M., 2018. Advertising creative: strategy, copy, and design. Sage Publications. Landa, R., 2016. Advertising by design: Generating and designing creative ideas across media. John Wiley & Sons.
Makrinova, E., Matuzenko, E., Rozdolskaya, I., Odnoral, N. and Grigorieva, V., 2020. Planning, Implementing And Evaluating The Effectiveness Of An Advertising Campaign In Digital Environment (Through The Example Of Telegram). Atlantis-press.

Parente, D. and Strausbaugh-Hutchinson, K., 2014.Advertising campaign strategy: A guide to marketing communication plans. Cengage Learning.
Pradeep, A., Nielsen Co (US) LLC and Neurofocus Inc, 2014.Intelligent and informed advertisement creation. U.S. Patent Application 14/023,323. Wells, W.D. ed., 2014. Measuring advertising effectiveness. Psychology Press.

www.ethics.iit.edu. 2020. Advertising Standards Authority Advertising Codes Of Practice - August 2010. [online] Available at: [Accessed 3 October 2020].