forget pageone, move on with the story.

for the past week that i haven been blogging, alot of things happen. mostly good. but just one really bad something.. so i'll start with the bad.





if u do not know what pageone is, let me tell u what it is. it is a small and really plain bookstore with overly priced books all in the name of art. believe me, those books can be found anywhere, just cuz they say we're targeting the arty farty people.. it's all bullshit. kino and borders have the same books at a lower price and at a better, more convenient location.

as written on lionel's blog:

"Okay basically this is an Advertising project for a real client: PageOne, a bookstore in VivoCity. They've quite well known in some countries like Hong Kong, but in Singapore there presence is BLAAATTT. That means nobody knows who the hell they are.

So the aim was to come up with a campaign for them to 1) Raise Awareness, 2) Increase Patronage , 3) Increase Sales. And it was to be feasible and stay within a budget of $15k / 3 months.

My group identified that the problem was mainly because they didn't have a brand image. So we proposed a campaign that would work around the 'Green Dot' in the O of the logo. Basically our objective is to have consumers immediate think of PageOne when they see a circle with that particular shade of green.

We also played with the idea of how books transport you to another world.

In summary, we came up with a series of strategies, I'm only going to put a couple up. One is an outdoor campaign at Raffles Place to raise awareness which would look like this:



Another is Outdoor floor stickers at the MRT which look like this:

Also a print ad which would look like this:kay you may not think it's impressive, but we thought it was and we were led to believe that it was because when we sent in the proposal, this is what the client said about it:

- "Clear strategies and potentially interesting concepts"
- "The team is a bit more advance in their ideas, but need to work on how they can gel all the fragments together"


So naturally, we assume we're going on the right track right!??!


Here's what the feedback after our presentation was:


1) It's been done before like 6 years ago in HK, it was a flop.

2) Idea is too simple. All the other groups probably thought of it but decided to be bolder and do more adventurous campaigns.

3) Disappointing we chose to do this simple campaign, and not think out of the box.

WTF!?!?!?

Firstly, if it's been done before, why didn't you say so in the feedback which was like a month ago!?

Secondly, it's not too simple. It's simple because they simply do not have a brand image. You have to establish THAT before you go into other bolder campaigns, or nobody will know who the hell you are!

Thirdly, we're not NOT thinking out of the box, we're just being realistic and sticking to the needs and budget of the client. So we look FEASIBLE.

And the worst part? She said this is an academic exercise and we should have explored the full range of our creativity. KNN!! The whole point of having a client is to try to replicate an actual scenario wat..If it's purely an "academic exercise" , why give a bloody budget in the first place?!

Wahlau...and this project is 40% of the final grade!! Even though the client only determines 30% of this and the prof determines 70%...it's still very significant!

Anyway, even the prof thinks the client is full of shit. When the client kept going on and on and wouldn't shut up, (see previous post) he actually took the TA's camera and snapped a picture of him. And They were both sitting beside the client..HAHA!

So after class a lot of us stayed back to bitch abt the client, this group came up with an ad slogan for an anti PageOne movement. It'll read:

"Forget Pageone, move on with the story."

Haha! I thought that was hilarious!

I'm ESPECIALLY bitter cos i was up ALL NIGHT doing the presentation, I didn't sleep a wink just doing it up. At least the prof said the presentation looked really nice. He also told us not to worry about the client..he said "some clients are just like that..."

Damn Mofos."

yup. as u should be able to tell, our whole grp was really pissed. so were the rest of the class. we spent so much effort on it, sacrificing sleep and food, taking cabs here and there to print this and that, rush to meetings, rush home to change and what not, only to have a client that is full of shit and who keeps contradicting herself. great.