Term 3 E&E Sessions


Session 1
http://www.makielab.com/
Introduction to makielab

Work in teams for produce a collection and promotional material for makiedolls

Create moodboards, toile outfits, review costing and manufacturers for products and ideas around the promotional strategy

Applies make-up well

Session 2 - Lesson Cancelled
Session 3

First meet meeting the group

Identify 4 different customer’s profile, who they are, what do they do as a job and in their daily life, how much they willingly to pay for a doll

-       Creative art student – animation student, broadcasting, make-up artist, fashion students, use to visualize their work, to experiment and develop their work.

-       Blogger – general bloggers, travelers, photographers, taking picture around the world with the focus of the makiedoll,

-       Older audience – 50+ women who like to take care of dolls

-       Younger audience – 20/30 collectors, dolls collectors or figurines, lookalikes 

Basic Demopgrahics

-       Media consumption points of engagement information

-       Brands

-       Interests, hobbies

-       Values and aspirations

Segmentation: dividing the market into useful groups to target

Focus group – type of customers, income, consumer, gender, size of household, demographics, ethnicity/culture, nationality, willingness to spend, invest

Discriminate customer by placing products aimed, etc. coke, diet, zero, male to female, calories Pepsi advert aim to female views and different ranges aimed at males

Psychographics – ‘guns and pick ups’ zip code

Family cycle- people have children have families, singles, full-nester, and empty-nester. What people spend money on?

Pink pound – double incomes with no kid

Generational cohabit – generation z-kid grew up with today’s technology with laptops, how you grew by generations

Baby boomer age appropriate

Forever 40’s category

Customer still buying from same shop while growing up

Bean pole family – people living with their family or moving back to their parents’ house

Multi-generation pester power.

Changing consumption, urbanization single households

Age appropriate

Mix of high and low income with mixed brands

New values people less interest in statues, sports cars from products to experience, age, and social background

Post-leisure, slow-tech, digital, hygiene

Mixing business with pleasure share ability and secondary market

Product service, redistribution market, collaborative lifestyle

Combing number of factors

Business to business demographics sectors, innovation

Target family

Targeting audience insights

Artist insights

Competition comparison

Different phrase

Profile customer

I’ve, myself have been a young collector myself as I have collected manga books at the age of 15  then Japanese rock magazine at 17 and postcards from as long as I can remember maybe secondary school and still subconsciously still collect postcards as they can become some sort of reference or inspiration I could use for my creative work. Like going to exhibition and being a good reference subject for your work but don’t have images of the exhibition as it’s been closed for some time so instead I would use the postcards to be my back-up reference. The mind behind to collecting postcards have evolved from when first started to buy postcards, I would buy them because they looked pretty but now it change my thinking and there is a strategy behind the collection now.

Now in my teens I had become interested in watching Japanese animation because I found it interesting and fun to watch and through this I found out that there were graphic novels (manga) visions of the animation which was far advance into the story then the animation so I ended up purchasing one manga book costing £6 per book with my dinner money and I enjoyed and the feeling of reading it of a book and wanted to found out what happens with the story and just ended up every week saving my dinner money to finish reading those story and when you have to wait for new volumes to come out, I would end up buying a different story and collecting the rest of those volume. Honest it became never ending, I gave up my lunch for those enjoyable manga books as a young teenager. This collection of manga books came to an end when I found out that you can read the chapters off line from the internet. I was still interested in the animation and manga books even after stop collecting but as I grew older, my need to want to watch anime has died down however occasionally I would read manga chapters whenever I would have time now.

Japan rock magazine we the phase where I became instead in visual kei (a j-rock style). First start when I first went a music concert, I though a japanese rock concert is happening in london, we don’t know if any other Asian acts will come to london to perform so why not. I ended up becoming a fan of the rock group, and that increase my interest to Japanese rock that I brought magazine just to look at their pictures and be amazed by it even though I couldn’t read the magazine. That ended in a year. That time I had my ema money from college to purchase those expensive magazine that were brought from overseas costing of £13 per magazine. I also subscribed a 6 month subscription. 

The amount of crap I have brought due to being obsession collector had become part of the past and a memory of my teens. As you grow older, you have to push yourself to concentrate to your build up future and leave the entire obsession behind. Now all the money you have will be spend on your lifestyle.

Makie dolls. Would I even buy them?

If I were still in my teens I’d think I would buy one to keep it as a collectable, untouched, unopened and just keep it as display because of it’s white feature and big eyes and head. The dolls kind of goes in the same category as visual kei, as they have make-up of clear pale skin with eye make-up and the spikey hair. It has a big similarity to visual kei so I would have probably brought one back then. However if you would ask me that question now I would say yes, when I have a career, something I can display, it’s a cute doll.
Session 4
Visited to Halmeys (http://www.hamleys.com/) to do some research on competitors. 

• Task : Hamleys evaluate other dolls, competitors
• How they are packed?
• How much does the doll cost?
• How much or do they have accessories or garments sold individually?
• Key/popular items?
• Materials used?
• What quality textile do they use?
• Size of the dolls
• Teddy bears?
• Collective items?
• Customers?
• Where are they manufactured?
• Any dolls ‘made in England/Britain’?
• Merchandising? Layout?
• Quantity?

I came across Steiff teddy bears (http://www.steiffteddybears.co.uk/) on the first floor. There were limited edition displayed in a glass display priced over £180 which in themed with smart clothing made of felt. There were also originals bears costing up to £80. However there were also cheaper visions of the Steiff bears costing £37. 

They have different ranges aiming at different customers based on the originality of the bears against the basic range. 

Steiff teddy bears consumer would be parents who has a stable income buying for their children. It would also aim at adult collectors who has own one of these dolls in their childhood and enjoys collecting this bears. 
Brand for over 100 Years, Germany
Then 4th floor there is a build-a-bear section (http://www.buildabear.co.uk/)

• Bears from £9-£20
• Outfit Clothing - £8 simple finishing jersey, cotton, ployester
• Accessories
• Shoes - £5, rubber and form for the base of the shoe
• Glasses – £4
• Hat/Caps - £4
• Bear Carrie - £5
• Individual clothing £4.50
• Comfy stuff (bed covers) - £5
• Made in China
• No knitted clothing
• Themed- Football, princess, normal, smart, leather jackets, hello kitty, avenges, star wars, toy story
• Customer – kids with parents
• Children’s’ friends also has build-a-bear bear
• Small fry – a smaller range from the build-a-bear

The doll house

• House costing £187 size is from head to waist
• Wooden furnitures- £25-36
• Figures - £8
• Dolls hair made of yarn
• Clothes in calico coloured, jersey felt
• Theme – plain, antique floral wallpaper teacakes slide swing, vintage house with vintage bath, horse-rocker, cupboards £29

• Pipi – figures costing £16
• Budki – figures £15
• Stockholm – furniture from £24
• Smaland – furnitures from £17

Sylvanian families – animal doll house

• House- £139
• Figures - £18
• Accessories- £14
• Canal boat - £64
• Tent - £26
• Doctor and nurse - £26
• Car £30
• Running track - £26

Animals- meerkat, beavers, rabbit, hedgehog, cat, elephant, sheep, Chihuahua, pigs

• Figure sets £12-£21
• Size boxes – smallest 2/3 of a A5 for items
• Packed in boxes or little cases
• Police box, piano, dress table, baby toys
• Hello kitty edition
• Twin set figures - £11
• Individual figure £5

Niche – the customer

4 p’s of marketing

-       Product – materials

-       Promotion – advertising

-       Place- where to sale, competition

-       Price – important, manufacturers, materials, positioning the products, sales

Choice criteria

1.     Technical

2.     Social – organic personal lifestyle

3.     Economic – emotionally decisions

4.     Decision making process

5.     Need to recognize problem, awareness

6.     Information search

7.     Evaluation

8.     Purchase

9.     Purchase post 

-       Secondary market

-       iconic brand

-       collaborations

-       swap shops 

Points of engagement

Decision marketing unit

Emotional, moral, personal

Values, benefits, attribute

Group work

Evaluation

Love story celebrity couples

When purchasing the two dolls to form the love story couple, their hearts will beat.

Session 5
Evaluate the idea to everyone in to those who were not in last week. pitching more technology ideas to the makielab doll such as voice chip into the dolls. 
Design a few outfits on the theme of courtney love and kurt cobain, brad pitt and angelina jolie, sex and the city cast. 


Session 6 - Formative Assessment
Feedback

• Good idea, however there will be a problem with the copyright of the celebrities full name
• sponsorship with makielab 
• good character choices
• good send-off statement. 'go live your movie'

Session 7 

• Studies of Emotional engagement with the bran
• Cigarette brands advertising on Formula 1 car
• Deep emotion, creating things
•  Good to have a not so direct advertising
• Lifestyle
• any emotion is good to engage people with
• music merchandising,
• commercials

Underground Logo as a

• Date – Jubilee, New year eve, Olympics, someone who takes you to places, dirty, takes you to crowded places
• Animal - Rats, Mouse
• Smell- Bad, Humid, Crowd

Key insights

• this target audience like to spend money on limited edition things
• Costing of making
• Knitting using a knitting machine costs less to make then to hand knit
• Specialist glues, anti-fray spray for fabrics
• Tell the concept then a more detailed information
• Sustainable handling strategy 
• Follow on/add on products
• Summary
• campaign you can pick up in the future 
• something that is a key
• evidencing, choosing different brand to work with
• branding strategy 

the fashion area came together and decided to stick with one couple and changing the first name by exchange the first character so Kourtney & Curt so we would have any copyright issues and we will each design a collection and meet up on Tuesday to make the outfits. 

Hand-knitted a few garments for the lookbook. One sweater for Curt and one dress for Kourtney. We did a photo shoot for the look book on Friday. 

Session 8 - Summative Assessment