II: Brand Values

During this week's session, we were tasked with exploring the benefits and brand values of luxury sports car maker Aston Martin and applying what we found into generating ideas for advertising the brand to a new foreign market. The city areas in India was where we were also tasked to explore in order to understand the market audience and problems the brand could face in releasing their cars there. This task is test our skills in research, speed in developing ideas, problem solving and understanding audience. At the the end of the session we were able to develop concepts and ideas establishing solutions that overcome the problem as well as going through processes of research that helped in acquiring group flow within a team, however there were definitive problems that we had to face.

Many problems were notified in order to prepare us for the task. We learnt that cities like Mumbai and Dehli are quite infamous for having terribly strict roads and so sports cars are not so popular. It also a very well developing city with young businessmen and entrepreneurs very present within the city meaning that comfort, luxury and having a visual statement may be a must for these people when it comes to buying new cars.

Researching Aston Martin (specifically their brand values) was quite simple but applying them in detail towards ideas was not so; the brand values we found were Defining Heritage, Tailored and Bespoke Craftsmanship, Power, Beauty and Soul, Forward Strides. The group I was in leaned towards the Defining Heritage aspect due to the novelty value of Aston Martin's british heritage and relationship to the Bond franchise being a good unique selling point for the people there and so we mainly developed ideas around this aspect.

Example of an Aston Martin Vanquish sports car

After throwing around and brainstorming multiple ideas, no finalised idea was made although most of our ideas related back to 60's britain and how the fun and prestigious nature of that era could be appropriate to the chosen target audience for Aston Martin. In whole, the whole exercise became more of a test of achieving group flow and group cooperation in order to get over problems faced.

Sources:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/apr/15/aston-martin-crowded-indian-car
www.astonmartin.com/
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3C9qq3avLI
www.autocarindia.com

I: Marks in Time (Redo - Unfinished)

Marks and Spencer's core principals: 
- Quality 
- Value 
- Service 
- Innovation 
- Trust

Marks and Spencer has quite a history when it comes to evolving with the needs and wants of their customers. These needs are governed by factors in culture and society that is contextually important to the business.
An example of this can be applied when viewing two ads from different time periods of the business.
During it’s run in 1950 film was becoming more prevalent in popular culture as well as having people more interested in this Hollywood lifestyle. TV advertisements were produced in the theme of Hollywood musicals, trying to capture the charm that those films had and the impact they had on style. The advertisements were also targeted mostly for young adult women with the cast of these ads reflecting this. Colour seemed majorly important in these ads as Technicolour had only been recently introduced and so the ads were more eye catching the more colourful the advertisements were. The style is flashy but maintains the wholesome image of the females making them relatable and that sexual imagery was not tolerated well especially for public viewing. In essence these ad were made to show a quality in lifestyle that people wanted at the time.
Comparatively in the modern day, Marks and Spencer (usually abbreviated to M&S) has now focused on this more affordable luxury image. As British culture has become more fashion oriented the introduction of designers for M&S’ clothing indicates how style is a factor to their customer also with the role of shopping being more unisexed, men’s clothing is now present for sale. This has been advertised in a famed series of TV ads in which famous models from different styles and eras would show this more glamorous lifestyle with some added celebrity and sexually charged imagery as this has become a common factors of attraction in society. In essence these ads focus primarily on style and attraction.