Marketing Strategy: Case Studies
This was a really useful lecture from Alec, and it opened my eyes to all of the different possible options when marketing and new product and how early you should really start thinking about this side of the business. I particularly likes Michael Lester's world smallest portfolio and thought his marketing campaign of sending it out to selected people was genius - it makes people seem selected and special. The fact that he sent it attached to a magnifying glass was great and it clearly worked.
Something I hadn't thought about it until Alec mentioned it was the value of great documentation. The fact Michael had excellent photography of the portfolio ready to go, really helped with getting stories about him and his product into the worldwide press.
I think it will be useful to consider the different types of marketing discussed by Alec to see what would be feasible and ideal for Ümba the Space Whale.
Agency - While this would give the biggest reach and the most direct marketing in the long run. However, £2k per week minimum is a lot to spend if I am self funding this project. A possible solution for this is to use money from the kickstarter on this and build that into my overall goal. This would be an excellent resource to use so the most people know about my book.
Self promotion - This is the cheapest way of promoting Ümba the Space Whale although it will take the most amount of time. I think as well as the usual things such as social media, I need to come up with some inventive ways to reach the children who will be reading Ümba the Space Whale.
I think this has made it clear that as a first book and start-up I will need to down the self promotion route. For this weeks workshop challenge I am looking forward to coming up with a creative and unique was of promoting Ümba the Space Whale.
Communication design: Insights from the creative industries
While a bit of a dense read, this chapter [1] was interesting - especially in the context of collaboration. The idea that everyone has the potential to produce and contribute creatively is both a wonderful thing and also a challenge for designers. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has experienced someone in a workplace thinking they are a design expert because they can name more than three typefaces. But in the grand scheme of things encouraging creativity is a great thing and actually something I might try with Ümba the Space Whale - encouraging children to be creative and take part in the design of planets in the future.
In the chapter, the manipulation of intrinsic behaviour being used to influence decision making made me think of a project I did at sixth form many years ago about how a supermarket positions their groceries. They put the bread at the back so the bakery smell draws people in towards the back of the store, they put sweets at the end for impulse buying and the fruit at the front to make it look nice so customers will come in. I also found it interesting in this same paragraph that in the earlier 20th century it was assumed people were making decisions based on logic and reason, however, it is now understood that it is more based on impulse and stimulation. This is hat will make people buy Ümba the Space Whale, children seeing it, instantly (hopefully) wanting to know the story and asking their parents for it. I think doing some research about what makes children want books will be a good place to start.
Schiphol airport's nudge marketing of putting a fly in the urinal to make men aim when they pee was a funny case study - and illustrated perfectly that direct requests don't work as well as nudging people in the direction you want them to go in. I remembered seeing an article about this on the BBC [2] which says the UK government employed a team to research the idea of nudge marketing. It uses the example of Woolwich, South East London, who had a problem with vandalism of shop fronts. To try and combat this the council worked with local graffiti artists to paint beautiful portraits of infants on the shutters, knowing that hearts melt at the sight of a child. This reduced vandalism in the are by almost 20%. This is pretty inspiring stuff - that something that doesn't seem like it's directly related to the problem at hand.
All in all this was an interesting article that has given me some pause for thought when thinking about how to market Ümba the Space Whale.
Workshop Challenge
How do you build, promote and tell the story of your new product?
Ensure you utilise analogue and digital craft to explore the production requirements of your artefact.
At this stage we only require a prototype, a one-page outline or short video of next steps, and even production partners to support any future development. Please remember, prototyping exists to demonstrate the potential and functionality of your output – there are a number of methods / software tools to help make shortcuts so you can give a sense of the bigger picture.
This is about expediency, fast iteration, testing and development to help an audience or business partner to see the potential of your proposition.
This could potentially be picked up again in your final MA project.
Design development
The first thing I need to do this week is decide what Ümba is going to look like. This is quite an intimidating past as it has been in my head for 25 years... time to get sketching!
I started by doing study sketched of different kinds of whales, blue whales and orca whales. I've always envisioned Ümba as being an orca whale so I'm going to use this as a basis for her. This was a really useful way to start, looking at the anatomy, shape and movement of whales. I think the next thing to do is to look at the design of Ümba and how I want her to look for the book.
I quite like this design for Ümba so I'm going to mock up a couple of pages. I first made Ümba and the background in Adobe Illustrator separately and overlaid them in InDesign. I also added some lines of text to illustrate what the pages could look like.
I think this is a good start however it's not exactly the aesthetic I want to go for. I'm not keen on the way I have drawn Ümba, I think she needs to be a bit cuter. I also think it's a bit dull for the opening pages of the children's book. I'm going to (literally) go back to the drawing board and redesign Ümba and the background. I may also change the illustration style as this one is a bit flat.
I did some research into the most successful children's illustrations in the UK [3] and came up with this selection (above). What I realised from every single illustrator in the list (top left to bottom right - Nick Sharratt, Judith Kerr, Beatrix Potter, Quentin Blake, Raymond Briggs and E. H. Shepard) was they were all in a hand drawn style. Is this more relatable to children? The age range I will be aiming at is 2-5 years and a majority of these seem to be hand drawn rather than graphic. This is something to consider when redrawing Ümba.
I much prefer this drawing of Ümba. I think the slightly more cartoony shape really works in the context of my story so I am going to develop this further and experiment with styles and positions of the whale in the spread and on the cover. I also am going to redesign the space background from the above spread to make it more colourful.
I decided to go for a hand drawn look for my final Ümba drawing because I think this works well for the story - after all I am encouraging creativity in children and asking them to draw pictures of their planets. The copic marker effect works really well for my illustration style. The next step is pop Ümba on a space background brighter than the previous one!
I think this is a much better background for the cover, it is in keeping with the theme I want and the style I have committed to for the book. My next step is to put together the cover of the book. I will be including Mat's name on the cover as he is a creative writer and will be collaborating with me on the final book.
I started by pitting the title in the most obvious place - at the top left. I changed the typeface a couple of times to experiment however I still wasn't happy with it - I think it very much had the "title slapped on the top" look and wouldn't necessarily drive engagement with kids. As I discovered in my survey conducted in week 12, people do judge children's books by the illustrations (77.5%) and more specifically, the cover (left as an open comment). I think the fourth design is definitely the strongest however I am not happy with the names so think the names from idea 3 maybe the best way to go.
I am really happy with this cover for Ümba the space whale I will be carrying this forward to the prototyping phase. The next step is to look at an example spread from the book. Mat and myself have written the first draft so I will use some text from this in order to experiment with the layout and format.
I had fun trying to figure out the page configuration of this spread for Ümba the Space Whale, I tested out different fonts and researched what would be the best for a children's book. For the age group I have chosen (3 - 5 years) a sans serif font is best to aid with legibility and encouraging children to read [4]. The font I have settled on is ITC Avant Garde Gothic Pro. It's extremely clean and legible and I think it works really well for the book.
I started by having all of the words typed however I decided to illustrate the onomatopoeic sounds such as 'pop' and 'fsssshhh'. I think this adds a fun layer and hopefully guides the reader through the book and gets them engaged with the story.
This was a really useful exercise because it really made me think about composition and layout - from the position of Ümba on the page to the place of the text. I think my final design is successful and the one I will be taking forward to the prototyping stage.
Prototyping
I think it would be really useful to physically make the book to plan out the pages and see it in its desired form. For this I will sketch out the pages (and use the designed ones already pictured above) to show they format I want Ümba the Space Whale to have.
This was a really useful exercise not only to see how it would look printed out but also to lay out the pages and work out which ones will be double page spreads and which ones will be single. It also was quite exciting to see this book that I have had in my head for so long start to take shape! I think the story needs work and further development with my collaborator Mat Greenfield but I really feel like the bones of this project are there.
I also thought it would be nice to mock this up digitally to see a more professional version of Ümba the Space Whale.
If I wasn't already excited about this project I definitely am now! Seeing it mocked up in this way really shows the potential of this book. I think when I develop this further it would be better to have it in soft cover as it is the industry standard for books aimed at 3-5 year olds because it can cause less damage if they throw it or bite it (hopefully they won't!). I also need to consider the type of paper it is on - I want the last few pages to be interactive - so children can draw their own planets and send them in, so it will have to be matt paper to easily draw on. It will also need to be perforates along the left edge to allow them to pull it out easier and send it in.
These are all things to think about when developing the project beyond the prototyping phase.
Marketing
As part of the marketing and community engagement for Ümba the Space Whale I think it would be a great idea to make a sculpture of Ümba with a slot in the top to post drawings of planets and aliens. It would travel round the country visiting schools and children's libraries to encourage both creativity and engagement with Ümba. I think this is a really good interactive marketing tool, it would be something different and interesting that children will want to engage with.
Another idea I have for marketing is a travelling exhibition. One of my fondest memories from first school is having my drawings displayed in an exhibition, I was so proud and this is a feeling I want to encourage all over schools now. The community engagement of this would also be high and I think if used along with the sculpture it could be a really memorable and effective marketing technique.
This would require a reasonably large investment of just over £350 for the exhibition stand (https://www.flags.co.uk/pop-up-display-exhibition-stands/) and the giant bespoke Ümba mailbox would be over £2k. This is definitely something to consider however I think if I could raise enough from the kickstarter these would be very wise investment and would be great for engaging children in the story and the creative interactive task at the end of the book.
References
[1] Yates, D. and Price, J., (2015),Communication design: Insights from the creative industries, London: Fairchild Books
[2] Hooker, L. (2017). Have you been nudged?. Available: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-41549533. Last accessed 13/8/21.
[3] Little, C. (2016). Britain's 10 Most Iconic Children's Book Illustrators. Available: https://theculturetrip.com/europe/united-kingdom/articles/britains-10-most-iconic-childrens-book-illustrators/. Last accessed 14/8/21.
[4] Pattison, D. (2020). What fonts for children's books?. Available: https://www.indiekidsbooks.com/p/what-fonts-for-childrens-books. Last accessed 15/8/21.
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