Concept Ideas

We want to prove how even 1 person can make a difference for the enviornment, if they make changes in their own lives. Finding out some statistics will be important.
Things such as showing them the effect their efforts will have, in comparison with the effect it will have if they don't change, could make quite a big impact on the audience and make them feel inspired that they can make a difference.
Alternatively another way to go would be making them feel as part of a team, working together, supporting eachother and showing how a group of people doing it together will have more of an effect.

Either way, we want the audience to want to GET INVOLVED, and feel inspired.

A useful tool that I found out about on the WWF wesbite is the footprint calculator that can be used online to see how much you, as an individual or in your home, are effecting the environment, and then you will be able to track your progress when you begin to make changes.

To do

Some things I think are relevant to the brief and would help us to make more informed decisions if we research them and find out more about them:

Plan A champions
5 Pillars
Reward Scheme - loyalty cards - incentives [1]
Go to M&S - put myself in the customers position, see if there is any information on Plan A.
Find out some statistics relating to how little things that people do, can help the environment.
Carbon labelling
Carbon Neutral
Other companies who are already making the way they do things more environmentally friendly - and show what is working and why.
Context - pro's and con's
Sustainable packaging/design
Recycleable materials
Environmentally friendly ink
Recycleable packaging
Go to an M&S store, and see if there is any information on their Plan A scheme.

Brief Analysis with Fred

Some good notes taken from this briefing to help us put things into perspective and understand the brief abit better.
We will re-write the brief to make sure it is not as vague, and get it down to the core problem.
We must also consider the concept and context.

YCN - M&S Plan A

In collaboration with Maya Srivastava

What is the brief asking you to do?

Our challenge is to take Plan A's corporate success and use it as a springboard to inspire consumers to follow in M&S's footsteps.

Create a visual identity for the M&S Plan A campaign and develop campaign elements to bring the identity to life.

What does the brief require you to do?(Mandatories, deliverables, etc.)

Create a logo, icon or family of identity elements to use across all consumer communication channels.

Keep the identity and campaign simple, clear, relevant and practical.

Campaign must be inclusive, grounded and inspiring.

Tone of voice - authoritative, humble, complicit, honest, engaging.

Include artwork/logos provided.

Submit online to YCN website.

What problems are you being asking to solve?

M&S customers have said that they feel like it's all about M&S talking about themselves to them. They want to be involved and want helpful advice on how they can start to do the right thing for the environment in their own lives.

Who is the target audience?

M&S customers

• those who want to know how they can get involved in Plan A to do their part for the environment.
• inspire the other customers to do the same (get involved and make a difference).

What are the functions of the deliverables?

To advise, inform and inspire the customers on how they can make changes to make a difference too.

M&S have achieved many of their set goals and aim to achieve all of them in the next 5 years. So, they want to inspire customers to achieve their own goals and advise them on how to do this to make a difference.

What are the contexts in which the response will exist?

The campaign will run across all manner of channels. We can choose one or more to bring the identity to life.

• Advertising - TV, press, outdoor, radio
• Windows - interact with customers
• In store - where? how?
• M&S magazine - 6 issues a year
• Online/CRM/PR/Social media - engaging, simple and makes common sense
• Packaging and carrier bags - corporate media vehicles

Why have you chosen this brief?

Maya:

"I'm interested in creating and applying an identity as this is one of my main design interests. I think that this brief allows me to experiment with type and layout a lot as well. Also, I feel that what the Plan A campaign is promoting is a worthwhile cause."

Me:

"It gives me the chance to explore type and logo design for creating a brand identity to then be used across a broad range of media. I will then be able to work with layout design."

YCN Brief

Why have you chosen to work with your creative partner? What are your aims?

• She has a set of skills that vary from my own and I think we will be able to tackle our chosen brief with our range of skills.
• I have seen and liked her previous design work and feel it has fulfilled the briefs.

What are your specific areas of interest?

• Type investigation
• Layout/editorial design
• Brand identity
• Advertising

What specific design skills do you have to offer? How do you intend to use them?

• Photoshop
• InDesign
• Idea generating and concept building
• Craft

What specific non-design skills do you have to offer? How to you intend to use them?

• Organised
• Commited
• Calm
• Hardworking
• Motivated

These skills will be used to drive the production of the design work, making sure it is clear and focused.

What will your specific roles be in collaboration?

• Idea generation and concept building, and making them clear to Maya
• Researching and producing work - set to deadlines to ensure quantity and quality of work
• Time Managent
• Using my skills and creative interests, alongside Maya's to push the brief to it's full potential.
• What will your individual responsibilities be?
• Researching specific elements from the brief (e.g. company, brand, style)
• Documenting/evaluating all work on blogs
• Type Investigation
• Layout design

What will your joint responsibilities be?

• High standard of design work?
• Attending all crits and being punctual
• Pushing our ideas as far as we can
• Splitting costs

Collaborative Pair

We had to create a poster to prove that our collaborative pair is better than any other.
If you were to look up Kirsty and Maya in a dictionary, the reference would be that we are a perfect collaboration.

YCN Brief - Marks & Spencer

Create a visual identity for our Plan A campaign and develop campaign elements to bring your identity to life!

Background

Marks and Spencer is one of the UK’s leading retailers with over 21 million customers visiting our stores every week. We sell high quality, great value clothing and home products and outstanding quality food.
We source our products responsibly from over 2,000 suppliers across the world. Over 76,000 people work for M&S in the UK and in 41 territories overseas.
We launched Plan A in January 2007 – ‘committing to change 100 things over 5 years, because we’ve only got one world and time is running out.’
Three years on, we have made good progress against our five Plan A pillars: Climate Change, Waste, Natural resources, Fair partner and Health and Wellbeing – achieving 62 of the original 100 Plan A commitments.
So, in March 2010, we unveiled and expanded a more demanding Plan A, setting out 80 new commitments for the next five years and our ambition to become the world’s most sustainable major retailer by 2015.

Plan A Achievements

Plan A has helped us to innovate and start changing the way we do business.
Since 2007 we’ve:

• Cut carbon emissions from our operations by 80%.
• Improved store efficiency by 19%.
• Reduced amount of waste sent to landfill by 33%.
• Reduced weight of packaging on our Clothing and Home products by 36% and in Food by 20%.
• Used 400 million fewer carrier bags than in 2006 / 07.

The Creative Challenge

Despite very high awareness of Plan A and the achievements this has delivered, our customers recently told us that it felt like, “It is all about M&S talking about themselves, to us. We want to be involved, and we want helpful advice on how we can start to ‘do the right thing' in our own lives.”
Your challenge is to take Plan A’s corporate success and use it as a springboard to inspire consumers to follow in our footsteps.
We need an icon, logo or family of identity elements that can work and come to life in all of our consumer communication channels. This will be the shorthand through which our customers identify our Plan A products and services. We want this to be evocatively engaging in the way that the WWF panda logo is.
A campaign would run across all manner of channels; these would include:

• Advertising – TV, Press, Outdoor, Radio.
• Windows – Can we use them in an interactive way with customers in 530 stores across the UK?
• In Store – Where should we communicate? How should we communicate?
• M&S Magazine – We produce 6 issues a year with a 1m circulation and 4m readers.
• Online / CRM / PR / Social media – An approach for Plan A across all activity that is engaging, simple and makes common sense.
• Packaging and carrier bags – What could we do with our corporate media vehicles to communicate Plan A in an inspiring and engaging way?

You should choose one or more of these in which to bring your identity to life. How will you create clear and captivating engagement with M&S consumers?

Creative Considerations

The principles for the identity and campaign must be simple – we need to make the complex clear, relevant and practical – we need to tell emotional stories that people can act on:
Inclusive – we want to show that we’re on this journey together.
Grounded – Our call to action will be grounded in everyday life.
Inspiring – We will always be finding new ways to do the right thing.

Tone of Voice

Authoritative, humble, complicit, honest and engaging.

Our Website

For more information about M&S Plan A go to http://plana.marksandspencer.com/

Submission Guidelines

The deadline for submitting work is 6pm on the 25th March 2011.

There is no entry fee to submit work.

All submissions must be sent, or brought, to:

You may respond to as many of the briefs as you wish.

All submissions must be in the English language.

You may submit work as an individual or as a team. Teams can consist of as many people as you wish.

Submissions are welcomed from overseas.

Logos and other information listed in individual briefs, can be found online in project packs that accompany each brief.

 

Key dates

Submission deadline: 6pm, March 25th 2011.

• Initial round of examination and assessment: April and May 2011.
• Commendations published June 2011.
• Student Awards Ceremony - September 2011.
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 http://awards.ycnonline.com/