Final Outcome. . .

Our final outcome for our presentation exam would be done through the use of promotional advertising throughout university hotspots e.g outside the union shop etc. Also, with a student subscription gift idea based on the current existing "i for christmas gift".
The 'out-of-newspaper' promotion  that will consist of  a flyer, poster and stack flap. All will be helped by an i newspaper PR (hired within the union) who's job would be to stand at student hotspots wearing the "i" logo t-shirt , handing out flyers and placing them with free copies of the newspaper at different areas you would expect to find other promotional flyers e.g bar tables in the union. Most importantly during freshers week, becoming a major face of the kind of products students should look out for in their university career.

A major point we needed to consider with our idea was "What was in it for the university union to work with the independent newspaper?". We emailed the event department at the DUSA with our idea and if they would be interested if it was to happen but their was no reply. . . . However, me and viv believe that if the university hired these i pr's and used  i in its promotional spaces it would only give students another reason to visit the union as they would go and purchased the newspaper. Also, the possibility of holding i based 'intelligent' events inspired from the newspapers content.

Stack flap: This is a little add-on to our idea which will help i's point of sale once the student is inside the shop. An existing problem gained from our field research about how i is sometimes hard to find. Even though these flaps do exist in some shops, ours will be made of cardboard rather than plastic and will have a small description of i's concise purpose. 

Flyer: These flyers will be handed out by the i promoters, to students themselves or layer on tables , inside flyer stands etc. Each University will be given its own flyer with its crest on the top right, this will help promote the university campus and also making it seem more official to the students , making it an important tool to have as a student.. Instead of using the newspapers content headers we devised our own way communicating better to the students by using University subject fields. Each having its own colour code which in the future could be development into having a themed flyer for each subject. Next to the header is an exciting story which will grab the interest of the student. This idea came from  what we learnt with our questionnaires personas. 

Poster: The posters will take the same layout as the flyer but more bolder and eye-catching which will attract students into the shop. We continued the idea of "missing out" on something by not reading the i. We , also added the price boldly to the bottom left corner. The poster fits the briefs demands as it shows that the newspaper is a concise and cheap tool that a student shouldn't miss out on. 

Subscription: For the subscription ad, it will feature inside the newspaper itself will target the parents or any other relation to a student. It will ask them to subscribe the student to i for the university term time as  gift idea. The ad features the flyer to show the idea of how i's content has information for everyone and again to not let them 'miss out'. We felt using the actual newspapers contents headers along the "Don't let them miss out" helped fit this this idea more into the brief, as we didn't wanted to stay away from altering the newspapers layout/contents. We have used the same structure as its current christmas gift subscription, giving away a free student diary or luxury notepad but worded it to suit University term times etc. Giving the buyer the option of the full 40 week Uni year for 35 or to re-new the subscription but semester, £20 per each. 

Me showing off the i PR's t-shirt which i wore during the presentation. Possible future development with this use of promotion by changing the logos colour to match the different subjects identity which would be seen on the flyers and poster. 

Development / Part 2 . . .

After gaining good quality information about what students want from i and how to sell it to them. We started thinking of ideas towards our final solution.

We started out with an idea for an i 'student website page' based on the problems with the current i website and adding more of a link between social networking and the i website:

- Organisation & better navigation form the independent website needs to done so that students can easily access i because the current i website is found just through as mall section on the.

- Being able to post regional Facebook events through i website, showing how many people like it, when its on etc.
With every friday having an 'Editors choice' picking his favourite events happening the following week which would feature inside the newspaper itself.

- Show clearer what articles are in today, tomorrow & previous i newspapers , trying to pick storys and news which appeal more directly to different student university subjects.

- Subscription page for a free weeks worth of issues, Add 10 friends to news feed Facebook page for free poster & receipt for 10 free issues.

After discussing these ideas in our tutorial with other groups and our tutor we discovered a lot of flaws within our idea as it wasn't sticking 100% with what the brief was wanting us to do. Eventhough, our ideas of what i needs was clear, the whole concept of changing too much of i's content was going against the briefs demands. Also, just handing out free copies was defeating the purpose of the brief  which is trying to increase sales of i.

We needed to promote the power buying a newspaper. .
 "Leader than a follower" "Readers are Leaders"


Thus, we decided to turn our final outcome into more of a  promotional campaign which would describe clearer of what the newspaper has to offer to students, alongside other beneficial perks.

Here is a mind map me and viv constructed based on what we learnt from our tutorials and mistakes:

Development. . .

After the initial ideas and thoughts had been discussed between me and Vivienne we decided the next suitable stage would be to use some marketing tools to help us develop a strong final outcome.

Firs of all we discussed Rational / Irrational points on the newspaper to make i newspapers properties clearer before moving on to our final outcome.

Rational
Something you read.
Vivienne described a 'mess mat' like something a mum would use to put under something messy.

Irrational
Look intelligent.
Influencing others to read.
Cheap method of ganging information.
Lifestyle choice
Making it apart of your daily routine, buying a newspaper along with your lunch
(possible add-on to our final outcome, for example giving i free away with purchase on another product or just simply the newspapers shop placement)

Next we used the 4 p's to gain a better direction in our idea (Place, Price, Product, Promo) :

Place: The main student hotspot shop for students on campus.
Price: 20p - make sure this cheap price is informed to the students with our idea, showing its price pays for its short concise read.
Product: i newspaper - A good quality concise newspaper, meant for the reader with no enough time to tackle the independents "3 course meal" read.
Promo: Idea of using a subscription system, involving online communities. For example, on Facebook, get 10 friends to like i newspaper and share it and then you'll get a weeks free subscription. Also, giving away free handouts during freshers week in the 'goodie bag' you normally receive when walking around the campus. Thus, in the future making i one of the big faces of freshers like Pizza Hut etc.

The next stage was ti gain insight into more direct personal needs of types of students. To do so we constructed an online google questionnaire for students to fill out. Me and Viv posted this on our facebooks urging all student friends to please fill it out.

Heres the links to our questions & answers. . .


Questionnaire: 
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?hl=en_US&formkey=dE9xdjBvNFg2VjdkR01IR2RlSlc2X2c6MQ#gid=0


Link to Questionnaire answers: 
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Aj04J8dbf2KwdE9xdjBvNFg2VjdkR01IR2RlSlc2X2c&hl=en_US#gid=0

From the Questionnaire we came up with with two personas: Young Students and Over 25 Students.

Name: Amanda
Age:19
Interests: Gym, meeting friends, using social networking, drinking & going to the cinema
- Only reads newspapers sometimes and if someone has bought one.
- Put off by newspapers stereotype business/politic articles. Nothing directly appears to her.
Overall: Has little time, but always socially in contact with friends and other news that can be viewed through Facebook etc.

Information gained: Tap into the whole idea of using social media to connect to the students and try get them to be readers rather than followers and actually buy their own physical copies of i newspaper.
Also try appeal more directly to different kinds of students when promoting i.

Name: Johnny
Age: 26
Interests: Word issues, likes watching news on Tv (when he has time).
- Not enough personal appeal in physical newspapers to spend money on them.
- Doesn't go out as much as younger students but would still like to know more on student based events happening around him.

Information gained: Again, i promotion needs to be more directed towards his area of study. Possible use of subscription to help him read more rather than watching tv. Also, the idea of having a organisation within the union or i website (Facebook page) where students can post their events for publicity and to inform people who selectively go out whats happening around them.
Possible link between universities and i newspaper itself. With the union running i based events within its union?

Initial thoughts . . .

Aim : Create an idea for a campaign that will get more students to buy 'i' newspaper. 

Yesterday me and my team mate Vivienne met up to discuss our initial thoughts on the newspaper. Before this, we had decided over Facebook we were to each buy a copy of the paper to find any obvious problems, paying attention to whereabouts on the shop shelf it was located and its placement next to other news papers. 

I purchased my paper from the supermarket Tesco. It was located on the bottom shelf in-between the newspapers The Independent and The Herald. At first i found it hard to find because it was about 4pm and by this point all the newspapers had been shuffled around, making the "i" logo hard to spot as it only takes up the top right corner , rather that the usual straight across header of other newspapers. Also the back cover is just one huge advertisement , with no inclination of what newspaper it is.  This could potentially help us promote sales if in our campaign we added a small proposal of changing its placement on a shop shelf and back/front layout. 

   Mobile photo of Tescos Magazine rack. 

 I had previously heard before that the whole point of 'i' was that it is a quick snappy read for those who had little time to read full articles in other papers. This point was addressed by a header along the top "Britain's first and only concise quality newspaper' , however personally this was not obvious enough. 

Inside the paper i found the concept of splitting the information into different colour coded sections (News , views , TV , IQ , Business & Sport) a nice touch when it came to ease of reading. However, as a young student (target audience)  these headings lacked excitement and could be more specific. For example : "Games&Movies" or "Nightlife" or anything that an average student would do in their spare time. 

After we discussed the paper itself we did some research on i's online facilities. We found that they had a twitter and a subscription only website. However, they had no facebook/youtube/website/blog committed to 'i' alone , only a page in The Independent's website and youtube channel. We thought this wasn't enough, especially if you want to promote student sales. Even more now with the new Independent , Herald and other newspaper Facebook app a lot of my friends and i are now using that allows you to read articles online and see what others are reading too.