There was a LOT of briefs to choose from. Hannah and I decided we would both read through them and pick out our favourites and compare them with each other.
When we came back together to decide on a final one, we had a few similar choices. Originally we had decided on 'The Partners', but when we spoke through it with our tutor Neil he thought we should keep it to do for our portfolio and to try and choose a more advertising based brief.
The Umbro brief was the next one to stand out to us so we all agreed that it would be suitable.
It asked that we show that there new Umbro 'A Frame' trainer range could be worn more than just on the football pitch. We somehow had to include '1350' within the campaign. This stands for how many minutes are left in the day after a 90minute football match.
Neil had said to us for this brief he was going to set every creative team up with a live client. I was really looking forward to this because I thought it was a great opportunity to have. Hannah and I were partnered with Richard Walters.
Our first task was to write a 1500 word (max) proposal to send to our client. I have to be honest, I had no idea what one of these were. Once Neil had explained what it was, it didn't seem so daunting. It was basically just explaining the brief and our intentions, along with any visual reference material which would support us.
The second task was to have a short presentation to show our client 2-3 concepts for the brief, so they are able to choose their favourite and for Hannah and I to go away and develop that chosen idea more and to produce our final idea.
Our original idea was to go down the obvious route of showing where abouts you can wear your Umbro's after football. We wanted it to be quite humorous so we showed places you wouldn't usually wear shoes, like the bath.
Our visual ideas were terrible, but I really did like the strap line which we came up with 'Wear them out' and I thought it suited the brief and rough ideas of the visuals.
The second route we chose was to do a pinnacle/limited edition product to launch the range. This was a bit more of a creative way to do the brief. We both decided to collaborate with Vivienne Westwood as we felt it was a brand a lot of younger people are involved with now and can afford. This suited the age range set for the brief which was 16-24.
Also I'm quite a fan of Vivienne Westwood work so i already had background knowledge of her and her products. Hannah and I picked out one of Vivienne's iconic fabrics, which is called Squiggle. This would be the fabric used to make the limited edition trainers.
The time came to present to our client Richard Walters, Hannah and I were both nervous as it felt like a big step for us. We had practiced our presentation countless times just to make sure we got it right. We went into class before going to see our client as it wasn't until 2 o'clock later that afternoon.
It was good that we had though because when we got into class Neil had told us that Richard had to cancel on us. I must be honest I was a bit upset, but I understood that he was a busy working man, so we took the time to reschedule with him but he once again canceled on the day of the presentation.
By this point Hannah I were pretty angry as we had been looking forward to it so much. We didnt have time to find a new client because that day was the start of the summer holidays and Hannah had arranged to go back home to Wales so we decided we would be ok just presenting to neil. He chose our limited edition idea.
Our initial thought was to use the Vivienne Westwood iconic squiggle fabric on the 'A Frame' trainers. The fabric comes in a range of colours so it would be able to be used on more than one pair of the shoes. I made these up on photoshop and Hannah and I were pleased about how they looked. I used a brown pair of shoes and a white pair. I discovered there was three ways in which the trainers could be decorated with the fabric. We could cover the whole shoe in the fabric, just the 'A Frame' design one the shoe or the whole shoe and leave the 'A Frame' the original colour of the shoe.
We didn't end up using this in our advertisement, but it is still how the limited edition shoe will look.
We came up with a whole new idea which was to blend both the Umbro logo and the Vivienne Westwood orb log together in a hologram like logo. I drew up the logos on a piece of paper which was made into a concertina to show how the logo would look. If you tilt the paper one way you see one logo and if tilt it the opposite way to see the other logo, this will be our main focus point for our teaser adverts.
Next we needed to think of a strap line, this was the most difficult, we had came up with words we liked and think could work but couldn't think of the right context we could put them in. our final line is 'An Iconic Fusion'. We then went on to decided how the adverts will be shown I wanted to do a window display in Selfridges to show that something iconic is coming soon, we though we should show the advertisement in tube stations and Metro papers also.
