MICHELE
Branding / Ad Campaign
Project Challenge
Michele watches live in an interesting area of luxury, not the cheapest and not the most expensive. They can be seen as "entry level luxury". The brand had an identity issue because they strived to be high-end luxury, but doing this excluded many of their true customers. They needed to reconnect with their loyal customers while continuing to express the levels of sophistication that they had built over the years.
Additional Design Team:
Creative Director: Sara Hinojosa
Art Director: Jin-Ya Huang
Sr Designer: Sara Beukema
Designer: Josh Kitchens
Copywriter: Nicole Ido
Photo Art Direction: Laura Spindler
- SOLUTION -
"Make it Memorable". I lead my design team to creating an ad campaign that blended the authenticity of the customers life with moments of aspiration. We created a campaign that revolves around "Make it..." where the last word is filled in to represent the moments our customers remember for a lifetime.
Reevaluating the Customer
In order to find a successful solution, we desired to understand the real customer vs the customer the brand aspired to have. The real customers were fiercely loyal but just entering into the luxury market. The watches they bought or were gifted, were precious to them because they became the symbol of milestone achievements. We loved learning this and it lead us to our concept based around moments in time that changed the customers life (big and small).
Simplifying
We had a lot of wild ideas for this campaign but as we talked everything out, it was the simplest statement that became "North Star". The customer's story is our story. This decision led us to finding authentic ways to talk to our customer both from the website but more importantly to make the customer part of the conversation in our social channels.
Brainstorming
The team consisted of 3 designers, a copywriter, photo art director, and myself. We started with a week of brainstorming sessions that lead us down 5-6 distinct concepts that would guide us forward.
Ideation
We took each of those concepts and fleshed them out with messaging, tagline, visual language, and campaign examples. We used these to see what had the strongest impact and most ability to continue giving across a year or maybe two.
Refinement
Once we landed on the approved concept. It became time to put all the pieces in place. We created brand guidelines for the full season. This included print ads, POS signage, website, email, and social templates.