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.