MARK 30243: CUSTOMER INSIGHTS
Film Project: Sensory Marketing
Purpose of the research project: This project aims to help you understand the role that touch, taste, smell, sound, and sight plain in marketing. Whether you are selling a car or a stay in a hotel, all 5 senses play a role in the consumption experience. The goal of this project is to better understand how consumers process information taken in by these senses and how marketers then can utilize these senses to better communicate their message, establish their brand, and enrich the consumption experience. Each group will be assigned one sense to study in depth. Of course, studying a sense is still too broad an area to tackle in depth. It will be up to your group to figure out an interesting aspect of your sense, what questions it raises, and how it is/can be applied to marketing.
Your ultimate deliverable with be a 5 – 10 minute film to be viewed in class. You will complete the projects in groups of 3-4 colleagues of your choice. The exact size of the groups will be determined by course enrollment. Your grade will be based on the film as well as the deliverables leading up to the final film, including a 15 minute in-class presentation of your initial secondary research and project idea. The film should be a stand-alone documentary that tells a coherent story. It should not be entirely descriptive and should most likely include some insights you have learned through the synthesis of the information you have collected throughout the process. All project information is to be submitted electronically to me via email and is due by the beginning of class. Films must be in either .mov, .mp4, or .wmv format.
The New Media Writing Studio (www.newmedia.tcu.edu) should be a great resource on all aspects of the project and film production and editing. They have both online tutorials as well as a wonderful staff who should be able to help you in person with your editing needs. They will have some editing facilities in Rickel 038. Alternatively many of you have software on your own computers that you can use. Be careful! The New Media Studio time will probably book up quickly so this is not something that can be put off until the very end!
Since this is not a marketing research class, these projects are designed to acquaint you with the concepts from the course and familiarize you with the initial steps of the marketing research process. The project involves secondary research and qualitative research techniques only (no quantitative data analysis is required).
Part 1: Project Idea
Deliverable: PowerPoint Deck submitted via DropBox
Due Date: September 6
Part worth: 10% of grade
Topic assignments: Project topics can be developed by the group independently. If you cannot think of a project assignment, your group can meet with me and we will develop a project topic.
This is really the brainstorming phase of the project. Your goal is to come up with a focused research question that relates to your assigned sense. It can be anything that relates to the sense and has a marketing and a consumer component. For example, for “sight” it could be “How does being colorblind affect consumption” or “What visual aspects make a waiting room more pleasant?” or even “How do optical illusions affect packaging decisions?” Obviously, you’re initial sensory questions are limited only by your creativity and curiosity. You will think about what questions you’d like to study and answer and compile them into a PowerPoint slide deck. The first slide should include your proposed film title and your group member names. Your second slide should consist of a one sentence tag line that captures the essence of the topic you wish to study. Your third slide should contain an elevator pitch (a 2 minute summary) of what you want to find out in your film. (Think about this elevator pitch as what you would give a movie executive in the two minutes you might have to tell him your idea if you bumped into him in an elevator). It should tell me who/what you are studying, why this is interesting, what you hope to discover, and why I should care about this. Additional slides could consist of alternative research questions/areas of interest in case you come up with multiple ideas or are uncertain at this point.
Initial Topic Ideas are DUE on or before September 6. The sooner your group decides on a topic, the sooner secondary research can be collected.
Part 2: Secondary Research
Deliverable: PowerPoint Deck submitted via DropBox and in-class presentation.
Due Date: September 20
Part worth: 30% of grade
The first step in a successful research project is to get to know the topic area which you plan on filming. You will accomplish this through (1) familiarizing yourself with the sense; both the physiological process and current utilization of the sense in marketing practice (2) reading research such as news articles, academic articles, database information, and research reports from other secondary sources and, (3) web searching such as blogs, chat rooms, online forums, dedicated websites. Through secondary sources you should be able to gather quantifiable information (e.g. sales figures, buying power, market size, growth rates, coordinated actions, likeliness to buy and so on). DO NOT RELY SOLEY ON WEB SOURCES.
This may be the most important part of the project. In my experience, if you skimp here and don’t collect enough research, your final film will be weak and unfocused. You need to become experts on your sense in order to approach your topic from an interesting perspective and teach us something new. The first slide should include your sense and your group members. The next slides should be a general explanation of how the sense “works”. The next slides should tell how this sense is generally utilized in marketing. After these introductory slides, now focus on deeper research that relates to your specific topic of interest. These slides should contain all the interesting facts and statistics you have uncovered about your topic (and what questions this information raised in your minds that you wish to explore in your film). Include all of your references directly after the information it refers to or have the information footnoted on the slides themselves. For example, you could say, “the population of the United States is 350 million (2000 census, census.gov)” or you could have some fact such as “New Jerseyians are a proud group with strong attitudes regarding footnoting and pies”[1].Then on the bottom of the page, you would list the full source where you got that information. Also, make sure that all tables and charts are also directly footnoted. (and you should have many, varied sources).
HELP: The library staff would probably give you some guidelines on how to search the databases for relevant information. (For example, statistical information can often be found in online sources such as Business Reference Suite and census.gov). You should also look for information in the popular press by utilizing databases such as Lexus/Nexus.
· You may use Wikipedia as a source; consider using a search engine (e.g. Google) for locating other material such as blogs, podcasts and the like. You should also use Google Scholar to see if there is any “academic” information on your topic.
· Your secondary research must include some quantitative information such as market size and growth and spending power.
Again, the final deliverable should explain what you’ve found out about your consumer group, what research questions you wish to answer, how you’ll accomplish this, and what the overall arc of your documentary will be. REMEMBER – a good documentary tells a compelling story, gathers information objectively, but has a distinct point of view!
Part 3: Storyboard.
Deliverable: PowerPoint Deck submitted via DropBox.
Due Date: September 27
Part worth: 10% of grade
By now you should have not only conducted your initial secondary research, but you should probably have started some of your rough filming (of events, initial interviews, etc). You should have identified key project informants (such as heavy users, key influencers, thought leaders, or marketing practitioners) and conducted some interviews with them and have recorded these interviews/conversations (e.g. have email documentation, screen captures, or digital video or audio footage) so you can incorporate this information into your final film and project.
This information should now be enough for you to figure out what story you want your film to tell and what will be your point of view. You now will develop a detailed storyboard that lays out your proposed film. Again, you will hand in a PowerPoint deck. The first slide has the film name, film tag line, and group members. The next set of slides is the storyboard with one slide per frame. THIS IS SIMILAR TO A STORYBOARD FOR A COMMERCIAL. Include on each slide details such as camera shot, who is filming, what is being filmed, and a summary of the action. After the storyboard slides, include a detailed timeline that lists when each part of the film will be shot (as well as where and by whom), as well as a timeline for film editing. Remember, the construction of the actual video is EXTREMELY time intensive – do not underestimate how long it will take to actually make your film!
Remember, every good presentation/film has an “arc” and a point-of-view!
Part 4: The Film
Deliverable: Film submitted via DropBox and brought to class on flash drive.
Due Date: October 18
Part worth: 50% of grade
After you complete your filming (and you could have hours and hours) you will need to edit together the film. You may use I Movie (Apple) or MovieMaker (Windows) or any other relevant software. This is where your creativity comes in. MAKE SURE YOU ALLOCATE A LOT OF TIME HERE. ESTIMATE WHAT YOU THINK IT WILL TAKE AND THEN DOUBLE THAT. Your movie should tell as story – not just be a conglomeration of interviews.
The films are mini-documentaries and can be a combination of pictures/charts/overheads narrated by the group intermixed with edited clips of your collected primary data. Focus on the most interesting findings in the film and make sure to use plenty of illustrative examples. There are no other deliverables, so the film must make sense when viewed by itself!
ALL FILMS MUST BE SUBMITTED IN ELECTRONIC FORMAT IN CLASS ON OCTOBER 18. PLEASE BRING THE FILMS TO CLASS ON A MEMORY STICK
CHECKLIST: You should keep the following in mind when working on your project. Consider this a checklist. A good project will probably should be able to address most of these concerns.
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Grading
The above checklist covers the areas that will primarily determine the overall grade for the film. Additionally, the films will be given a “holistic” grade based upon how interesting, informative, and entertaining they are. The final grade will be a combination of both of these grading systems. Content is important and is a main driver of the grade. However, even though this is not a film-making course, I expect that you learn how to use this valuable skill and you will be docked considerably for films that are incomplete or have technical difficulties.
Grand Prize Jury Award: My top three films will be viewed by an independent jury who will pick a winner for the Grand Prize Jury Award. The group that wins this award will receive an automatic A on the project, as well as the option of an “automatic 90 and exempt” for the final exam.
People’s Choice Award: In addition, your peers will vote on a film to win the People’s Choice Award. Winners of this award will receive 5 additional points on the final exam.
Individual Peer Evaluations
Remember the final submission is subject to peer evaluation. Peer evaluation can cause grades to go up as well as down. Peer evaluations are confidential and detailed comments help me assign course credit where credit is due. This project is a lot of work and requires everyone to work hard, and communicate with each other. There are no excuses for bad communication.
If you have group problems you need to work it out early on. If you have someone who is truly not doing the work, have the group leader give them a warning in writing (copy me on this). The second warning warrants a firing. If you are fired from a group, you will lose 20% of your final grade. There are no individual projects.
