Time to Release it!

I was quite excited going into the creation of my PR ideas board, but also kind of overwhelmed. When it came to selecting my product, I knew I wanted to choose either my customised trainers or my range plan, as I didn’t want to leave this task until we did our business extension products, as I wanted to focus on products that I not only had had more time to familiarise myself with, but also had time to complete before our business week.

To contain my thoughts, I created 2 brainstorms; one for the trainers and one for the range plan. This helped me separate my thoughts and write them down, so I could then evaluate where I wanted to go from there. I noticed my trainers had more ideas and also some bigger ideas which I enjoyed, so in the end I decided to go for them.

The ideas I came up with were largely drawn from my research on Gucci PR methods, as I wanted to incorporate Gucci into my trainer ideas, as I feel they relate to my chosen brand well and a collaborative outlook produces more PR ideas. One of the main ideas from my board that reflects this is the Genies avatar approach, where the shoes would be featured as part of Gucci’s range of clothes on the app. I also thought this could then expand into Bitmoji’s as they’re quite popular on Snapchat. I decided to present a variety of ideas, as I think they all have merit and could be successful whether they small or large. My favourite would probably have to be the “amazing race” style idea, as I think it could be an interesting competition that would involve consumers in the product and is also quite relevant to the design of the shoes. I also feel it could draw a lot of media attention, further showing off and promoting the shoes.

For the layout of my page, I used Photoshop to create it. I initially was going to go for a mindmap/ infographic style of presentation but ended up shying away from that after using the pattern method we had learnt in Adobe to put a pattern of the Tube map into some circles. Furthermore, I included a large-scale image of my shoes in the background to have some semblance of the product there, although I’m unsure if the shoes should be made a further feature on the page. I’m also not too keen on the font and wonder if it looks unreadable or tacky. Going forward, I want to present this, as well as my press release to my Adobe class and tutor to get some feedback on its layout.

Initial thoughts for presentation

For my press release, I based the foundation of it off the questions we were given in Toolbox, as I wasn’t sure where to start. I made some notes of this, before adding my voice and creativity to it to expand it further.

I tried to keep a casual yet motivating voice, using the pandemic as a backdrop to promote the shoes and explain to potential consumers why they NEED these shoes in their life right now. My target audience spans wide, and I also included some USP’s like the trainers being machine washable and the diverse inclusion of potential customers. I also branded the shoes as a collaboration with Gucci and my artist to go with the PR ideas involving my brand. While I’m happy with the outcome of the press release, I think the layout could do with some work (hopefully I can get some feedback on this during the Adobe session this week) and I’m not sure if I should have included the PR ideas within the press release either or if they link together very well.

Overall, I feel like my understanding of PR and Communication has increased a lot doing this task and it feels quite rounding to have been able to apply my own product to this process and have it go from the design stage to the promotional stage.

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