Survey Link.

Finally done and it's activated! I've shared via Facebook, plus emailed to over 100 people, so I'm hoping I do get a good percentage of feedback... now to get back to housewife mode and get on with cooking dinner. Andy if you want to add to my results, please do and click the link below!

The Perfume Survey

Perfume Research.

I've looked at 7 different poster campaigns for inspirations in my ground work for my own advertisement.

Now to put together my survey!

Research on Current Perfume Trends..

I wanted to get a rough idea of what's being used to advertise male fragrances, what the trend is, etc. and I came across this article on http://www.articlecell.com/Article/Men-s-Fragrance-Trends-For-2011/1200291

I've highlighted some interesting points that could really help with getting the re branding ideas rolling. BRUT is all about masculinity, strength and tradition; the writer has talked about these key things coming to play in the latest trends of men's fragrances, and the traditional scent of wood is coming back, but not all designers have started yet... this could be a great area to puzzle through ideas, especially with the colour palette reflecting those scents. But, for this to work, I looked up what particular fragrance notes are used in BRUT:

BRUT has got some key notes in there: Sandalwood, Patchouli and the spice of Anis! The ingredients in the aftershave will be a great place to start for my ideas.

Major Project Brief!!

So excited about this! My group as a collective have all decided on the re branding of BRUT aftershave... I think it will be an interesting challenge, and I'm so going to enjoy this! I've had a look today at the BRUT website, and discovered they launched a new campaign for the aftershave last year (their 1st in 3 years) and their 1st multi-tier national campaign in more than a decade (I'm not quite sure what multi-tier means!). So the company is actively campaigning and advertising... but no change to the product packaging, or technically, who the product is aimed at. Of course it's for men, but it's aimed at the 'mans man'. A quote from their press release:

'The BRUT brand has stood for a classic, American definition of masculinity for over 40 years. With past famous spokesmen such as Joe Namath, Muhammad Ali, and Jimmy Connors, BRUT has positioned itself to live up to their tagline “The Essence of Man.” '.

This statement, to me says they are still somewhat living in the past... even the term 'aftershave' is giving it a more functional purpose for the 'rugged' man's minimal routine, that's reminiscent of the brands heyday (60's/70's) rather than it being a 'fragrance', which fits in more with today's market. In this day and age, the male grooming range is huge; anything from skin care, anti-aging products, fragrances to make up! I really can't see the current image that BRUT represents can make a strong standing today, unless it's image is brought up to date.

I've been reading an interesting article that I found on a newspaper website www.independent.co.uk about the aftershaves new campaign, and how that will (or not) fit in in today's market. One part I found interesting, was how the brand was a success in the first place:

'...it was Brut's arrival, first as a top-end fragrance in 1966, then in its better known, weaker mass-market version seven years later, that broke that mould.

"It was revolutionary," says Roja Dove, a fragrance expert and the man behind the development of bestsellers for the likes of Guerlain, Hugo Boss and Lacoste - who also notes the remarkable similarity between Brut and more recent designer bestsellers. "It was really the first men's fragrance that was marketed, that came with tempting packaging, but that was also much less expensive than what had come before. Its muskiness was new, making it all about sex. It is a classic, the first fragrance every man wanted, and every man could have, doing for men's fragrances what Charlie had done for women's. Today men want their fragrances to be fast, upmarket, successful lifestyle products, so it may be hard to see how Brut will fit into that. But in its time it was very important." .'

The article also gave the visual of how our tastes have changed over the years, and an idea as to why BRUT doesn't necessarily work today:

SPLASH IT ON ALL OVER: THE SCENTS OF THE DECADES

The 1970s

The smell: Hai Karate, Brut, Jade East, Denim, and Old Spice

The role model: "The man who doesn't try too hard". Kevin Keegan, Tom Selleck, Henry Cooper and a host of other muscle-bound machos

The image: Woodsy, musky - and always rugged. "Aftershave" accentuated Seventies man's masculinity and hinted he'd been out back chopping wood or indeed anything to disguise that he'd been attending to some personal grooming of all things.

The 1980s

The smell: Obsession for Men, Drakaar, Polo

The role model: Gordon Gecko, the slicked-haired stockbroker of Wall Street, Tom Cruise in Top Gun and Simon Le Bon

The image: Overpowering jasmine and amber toned scents - the perfect complement to Eighties excess - a man had to carry a whiff of pomade, red braces and severe black leather furniture. More was more - and the only fragrance worth talking about was the fragrance of money.

The 1990s

The smell: CK1 and CK Be

The role model: Pretty boys Damon Albarn, Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp and emaciated pre-teens in their underwear

The image: The era of heroin chic and Brit-pop saw a vogue for androgynous minimalism, and unisex fragrances. Every bloke on the tube smelt "fresh and modern", with hints of lemony freshness and baby shampoo - just like the Kate Moss wannabes sitting next to him.

The 2000s

The smell: Gucci Envy for Men, Comme des Garçons, Issey Miyake, Marc Jacobs

The role model: Real men with nicely buffed nails; Jude Law, Justin Timberlake

The image: Endless fragrance options are available for the millennium man. He can choose to smell of anything, from freshly cut grass to petrol fumes. Most important is that his scent be individual. Today's man is loved for his mind and his body.

  

(I personally like the 'rugged' muscle man with all the stubble and musky smell, Justin Timberlake and Jude Law do not do it for me! But each to their own I guess.)

As times do change, companies can either embrace it, or fall behind sticking to their old ways. Going back to BRUT's new campaign, they have tried to get with every latest trend possible in a way of making their image more 'cool' and have a wider target audience. Their current campaign, 'BRUTSLAP', I personally didn't understand at all! They had a link on their website to a game, where you choose to slap a parody of a 'pop-culture personality' (they have someone called 'The Incident', a play on Jersey Shore's The Situation.).

They also have something called the 'BRUTSLAP BEAT BOX', which enables you to choose a 'slap beat' of your choice against some music, making your very own cool tune!

I was really struggling to understand this concept, I just kept thinking, what has this got to do with the product?? Are they slapping the face of the metrosexual man and saying 'come back to the real man's brand!'?... is casual violence the new way forward for today's man? I didn't get it all, and to be honest, found it hugely cringey, with this whole 'down with the kids' style. I found an explanation to their campaign after much searching on their website:

Now I kindof get it, but it doesn't appeal to me much more now I'm more aware of the reason why... I'm in no way an expert on how things should be marketed, I just looked at this from a buyers perspective (even harder when you're a woman!).

I have an idea of how I can take this forward, I need to look at some current fragrance campaigns for men, and also look at during BRUT's decline in popularity, what was the 'must-have' fragrance and why.

Final mock up.

These are the final mock up slides for the proposed presentation. I feel they work well, they are clear in getting their point across, and hopefully my audience doesn't feel any overload of information. I found this quite hard to execute based on the information I gathered in the library, but I've thoroughly enjoyed the challenge.

 

 I chose the title font and colour, because I love the way it looks like it's rising from the background image.

My reasons for choosing the type-writer font for the rest of the text, is because it's neat, clear and stands out enough from the rest of the slide, giving the audience easy viewing. I think it appeals to my target audience, as I've tried to keep it as simple as possible, but still getting the relevant information and imagery in place.

Mock up of layout.

I've chosen slide 1 as the mock up on each of the background options so I have a clear visual of how they will look. One change I did make, the image of the machine I changed to black and white, as when I put the original image colour against everything else it just looked awful! But I think now it looks much more unified with everything else.

OK so here are the slide mock ups:

Even though I loved the first image as a background, now it's all put together I actually think the third image works the best. The second slide, I feel like it kind of blurs out the text a little... you can see it, but it's not quite as sharp as I want to be. So with that decision made, I'm going with the third image, so I can now finish the rest of the mock ups.

Powerpoint Visual Options.

OK, I've narrowed down my images to three, and since then I've had a play on Photoshop with them to make them fit visually as a background. The process to change them was the same for all of them, one example:

This was the beginning image, I wanted to change the colour as I wasn't really keen on this 'Sepia' kind of tone...

So, in Photoshop I duplicated the image as a layer, and just had a play with colour balances to see if I found a colour I liked, which I did! Then, I added another layer, but placed this underneath the duplicated image then filled the layer in black with the Paint Bucket tool. 

The reason I did this was because I wanted to change the opacity level in the new colour image. As beautiful as it is, I think that It's too bright and will attract too much attention away from the information displayed.

It's now gone from this...

To this!

The opacity level was changed to 50%, and I think it will work really well as a background. Here are the other 2 options:

Same Process, except with this one I changed to black and white, had a move about with the levels option to exaggerate the monochrome colours, then dropped the opacity to about 20%.

 

 With this one, I left the colour as it was, and just changed the opacity to 25%.

Now to fit them to the slides and see how they all work!

In production of the Pre Production!

I've mainly worked this out all on paper, but got my images from online and double checked my sources of information with a couple of websites.. it's feeling and looking how I want it to, plus I've kept some options open on how to place the visuals and text on the layout of PowerPoint.

I may execute the slides roughly on PowerPoint, just so I can see how they will look and feel to the audience.

I checked this information via a couple more sites, as the one I first looked at, technically because of the web address, it could have been written by anyone so therefore the writer can say whatever they want... but fortunately, the information is the same across the board.

I've decided I'll move the information on Bing Crosby to slide 2, pureply because if I don't I'll have too much information to cram in slide 3, while slide 2 looks too spacious!

OK, so with the 3 slides I'm going with the following layouts:

 

I've mapped it out in this particular way because I want to keep it neat so it's easy to follow, adding slight changes (subtle movement of being on left side to the right side of the page) so the slides aren't repetitive. I've also gathered some imagery to use against the text in each slide:

Slide 1-

These clearly outline what's written in the text, giving the audience a visual of what's being talked about.

Slide 2-

Again, give's the audience a clear visual of the written text (Love Bing Crosby's outfit!).

And finally, Slide 3-

I love the last one, it's more interesting and simple, almost contemporary in it's form instead of having a generic photo of a busy radio studio.

I've been thinking about background images, or colour to bring everything together. I need it to be simple, not too busy, colours fairly muted so it all goes together and nothing is fighting for attention, or eclipsing anything. I've found these images so far:

Love them all! But I need to try and avoid a 'Matrix' kind of look! So I think I'll narrow down my choice, have a simple play on Photoshop and then do some test slides with everything together.