Capstone

Part 1 Assignment

Walmart was the first of our two Capstone projects. Working on a brief given to us by Saatchi & Saatchi, we were asked to come up with a holiday campaign for Walmart in two weeks.

Research

For this project, we did secondary research online and social listening using Sysomos. We also did various forms of primary research like asking potential shoppers what they thought about buying Christmas Gifts at different retailers, and interviews with millennial moms in our networks.

Insight

We had a few insights for this project but I think this was the main one

Walmart shoppers are last minute shoppers and Christmas time is the worst time of the year to be a last minute shopper.

Solution

More Time for More Christmas

Our solution was to highlight Walmart as a one stop shop to help shoppers save time this holiday season. Our campaign was done in two phases. The first phase was to try and get shoppers to start their shopping earlier by doing things like putting gifts on layaway and thinking about gifts while they did their weekly grocery shopping. The second phase was to designed to highlight Walmart as a destination for last minute gift shopping and highlight what Walmart shoppers could be doing instead of waiting in line at other retailers.

In Retrospect

This was a fun project and we even got 20 min to present it at Saatchi & Saatchi. Even though we didn’t win the pitch, I think this was a very strong project, especially for me as a planner. It was also interesting to see some of the work that actual agencies did when tasked with the same project. The Martin Agency did a pair of videos that fit very well into our two phase strategy.

See those videos here: Commercial 1 & Commercial 2

Part 2 Assignment

Bravo

Bravo was the second of our two Capstone projects. Working on a brief given to us by 360i, the challenge was to come up with a platform to help Bravo grow into something that people would potentially pay for as a standalone app, sort of like HBO.

Research

For this project, we did secondary research online. We also held a small focus group for viewers of Bravo, went out to a huge food festival in Syracuse and interviewed millennials, and hit the bars to talk to millennials again. I also watched more reality TV than I have in my entire life.

Insight

The insight for this project was that many millennials had creative side hustles and that Bravo could be more relevant to them by embracing their creative past.

Solution

Where Culture Pops

While looking into the history of Bravo, we saw that their programming was sometimes boring but it focused on high culture things like Opera and Jazz musicians. Their more recent platform was the opposite. It was interesting but being reality TV it had a lot of low culture moments. So we came up with a platform where they could combine their past and their present to create something new from the future.

In Retrospect

It’s interesting to see that Bravo did actually go through with a rebrand, so we weren’t just given the project to give us something to do. The one thing I like about the platform we created is that it would probably work well in today’s media landscape where cable keeps losing subscribers.

See their actual rebrand here: Bravo Rebrand