Logos

I felt it was about time we got on with designing the logos for the cookery school and cafe, so this became our main focus for the day. Due to prior commitments, Jess was unable to attend today, so it was up to Kirsty and myself to knock these on the head. As a group we had already discussed how we would like the logos to look but never really in depth. For the cafe, we wanted to keep the kitchen element and we had previously said we liked the thought of hanging crockery and kitchen utensils off from the bottom of the logo. I suggested a chef's hat for the cookery school which we agreed would look good.

It is important that we keep to the existing brand guidelines, as we have discussed we already think it is strong, and we are only creating brand extensions. And so we are sticking with the current red and blue colour, uneven block shape and childish font as can be seen from the image of the existing logo to the right.

I created the block shape on Illustrator so we had the same base shape to work with. So we could get more done in our time we decided to do one logo each but help one another- I took the cafe logo and Kirsty the cookery school. There was much debate about the name of the cafe, originally it was meant to be "Ella's Kitchen Cafe", but I expressed my feelings that I felt this was far too long-winded for a name and it would only be abbreviated anyway. We did play around with the text when I had created the logo and decided "Ella's cafe" was better. I kept this to look similar with the above original logo but took away the strawberry and added kitchen utensils in blue to hang underneath. The cookery school is to always be located within the cafe, and to mix it up we tried the block colour in blue and the chefs hat with the red outline. 

I feel today has been productive and I am happy with the logos we have produced. We will just await tutor feedback and Jess' thoughts, hopefully they will be positive!


Below are the logos we produced today:

QR codes

Just researching QR codes and how we can do something a little different then just simply sourcing it to a digital flyer. This link shows a QR code found on organic food which sources where the food is from. I think this could be developed well into something for Ella's Kitchen as we are all about organic and using the best produce, so it would be nice to reassure mothers that the food is sensibly sourced; QR code: Bloggers findings. In our Brand Sector Analysis we did a lot of research with mothers and we depicted the different types. I think this QR idea would be best suited to the Home-Cooking Mother who sees baby food in a bad light and would rather make her own baby's food as she will then know exactly what is in it. As she is going to be the tough one to crack, we need to prove that unlike other baby food brands, Ella's Kitchen uses only the finest of organic ingredients and the cookery school can reinforce that homemade feel.

Another interesting article from Mashable on creative uses of QR codes.

Back to the library

Today we met up and showed what we had produced over Easter. Thankfully the others liked the copy I had produced and we all agreed that Kirsty and I would now work together on touching up and finalising the promotional concepts whilst Jess continued with Google Sketch. It's important that we work together and get everyone's feedback so we produce great work we're all happy with.
We had issues with having too many ideas, some too similar and others pretty weak. I saw obvious links between some of our ideas and how we could combine them together. The girls also agreed on use of QR codes and going further down the digital route, but we still needed to do more brainstorming for the cookery school promotion, as it was rather weak compared to the cafe. We thought it best to produce a quick powerpoint of our cookery school ideas and send them across to Gideon to see what he thought, as it's crucial to get an outsiders point of view.
It has been quite a struggle coming up with great promotional ideas, totally off the wall and innovative, as Ella's Kitchen is a tough brand to keep up with. In order to do the brand justice these ideas need to have some of the wow factor. It is certainly keeping us on our toes trying to catch up with them (every week the brand seems to do something new and introduce new advertising campaigns!) but it is a great challenge.
After today I feel happy that we are getting back on the right track, I feel I have contributed some exciting promotional ideas which I hope to be new and different.

Our new and updated set of cookery school promotion ideas can be found below. The majority of the idea generation came from myself but I always talk and ask for feedback from the others before making a finalised decision.

I felt the above would be a great way of reinforcing the message that Ella's Kitchen uses solely organic ingredients and this would be used in the cookery school too. Being 'green' and 'organic' is seen as quite fashionable these days so it could be a successful promotional tool.

We all agreed we liked my copy but we just need to find somewhere to effectively place it.

A simple and possibly effective idea. Parents and chefs like Jamie Oliver are always campaigning for healthy school dinners so why not let Ella's Kitchen sponsor that.

If we are looking at a brand extension into an older market later on for the lunch packs, we need to target them with the other campaigns too. I felt it important to try and come up with promotional ideas aimed at primary schoolers as they are our target market.

This idea came from experience as a young child. When I was younger I always tried "cooking" with whatever I found in the garden, for example mud pies and flower soup.

I thought this would be a fun and unusual thing to see, where you would expect to see hanging baskets, they would in fact be colanders with route vegetables growing in them.

We need to scrap more of Ella's traditional media and embrace digital!

I have been thinking over our current promotion ideas, especially for the cookery school, and I feel we have missed out on something original or remotely innovative. Our ideas are nice and will look lovely but there isn't a spark or anything truly innovative. Tomorrow we will all be meeting up to show each other the work we have produced over the Easter break so I will put this thought forward to the group. I've been looking around various online sites and I came across this article on New Media Age and how successful mobile coupons are becoming: Cover story: Brands see high returns from mobile coupons. This is a greener method than printing vouchers off from online sites such as Groupon and Voucher Codes so brilliant for Ella's Kitchen. Although we have a similar idea already for an app we are doing for the cafe, it is something I think we should definitely expand and explore further. I also think to make good use of QR codes, as this would be far greener then printing flyers and posters. I think developing our ideas more digitally is the right route for the brand.

Working back in Somerset

So the work has been split off between us; Jess working on Google Sketch to create the cafe areas, and Kirsty and I mocking up the cafe and cookery school promotion ideas.
I have taken the bulk of the copy, as the others feel more than happy for me to take charge on this and also because I do rather enjoy it. The cookery school involves a lot more copy for the print ads and flyers than the cafe. I think it important to keep with the current tone of voice as we aren't changing the brand's ethos and innocent tone- why would we when they already have it pretty much perfect?! As can be seen from the screen shot and from previous work, Ella's Kitchen has a young, friendly and fun tone of voice so that she communicates on the child's level- this is something none of their competitors do. I am also thinking up of tag lines to place under each sector. Ella's Kitchen already has "Good in every sense" and it would be ideal if the cafe and cookery school had one of their own too. So far I have come up with "For Mummys, Daddys and Little Big People", to show that it is a family business and orientated. This line could work for either cafe or cookery school. At present I think it best suited for the cafe.

Below is just some of the work I have been doing at home, as you can see they are mainly copy based as the group consider me the strongest writer. These are no way near complete, my aim was to put the context down and make them "pretty" later. For the child's letter and Organic Bake Off I have created a campaign of three.

Breaking up for Easter

And so we have Easter, which means we will be departing home for a few days. We thought it best to split up the work over the next few days so we can work at home and make use of our time- there is no time for a break!! Before leaving in our separate ways, we met today in the library to brainstorm more ideas for the cookery school promotion and whether we had more to add on developing the cafe advertising. I think there is still a feeling amongst us that we haven't quite cracked it yet, and I am feeling that nothing we have done is very innovative to Ella's standards. Ella's Kitchen are the leaders in baby food and new age packaging, so it is really important we keep to their standard. After all we don't want to take the brand backwards!

Bashing out the creative

Back to the time plan, promotional advertising needed to be done for the cafe so we don't fall behind. I expressed the importance to the group how I felt we should get on with this to bring us back up to speed so we had some creative ideas for the tutorial later in the day, which was agreed upon.

So we spent a solid day in the library throwing around ideas for the cafe's promotion. The three medias we wish to cover are print, ambient and web. I take copywriting very seriously so for a lot of the time I was trying to come up with catchy tag lines to accompany creative ideas. I'd say that we all pulled together on this as we all pretty much want involvement on everything! We managed to put together 30 ideas for all these medias in time for the tutorial, much to Gideon's delight. I am feeling really positive and pleased with the day as we are now back on track and doing what I love most- creating some fantastic ads and teaser campaigns. There is room for development on some of the ideas we have done already, so I will take it on myself to further develop these so we can start some executions. There is still a long way to go!

My favourite ideas here are probably the app (Kirsty came up with this after showing a similar augamented reality app of butterflies from China) and the Organic Bake Off (that was me!) as I think it is a simple idea which has potential to gain a lot of publicity- I think I watch too many cookery programmes but they are incredibly popular. In the tutorial I suggested we change the plane to a strawberry hot air balloon as this is more 'Ella' and fun, which Gideon thought a good idea.

Creative cafe research

Keeping children entertained in a cafe is a tricky business. I want Ella's Kitchen to offer something new and exciting as after all the brand's ethos is being fun, exciting and cool.
Cafes for children do already exist, you've got Disney, Rain forest cafe, Bojangles and the likes. But none of them really do anything innovative, it's more of a creative and experiential experience on offer. Not to forget, our cafe is mainly for mother and babies too, so services need to be offered which many do not.

Useful link:
Coffee House is the Netmums National Chat Forum where they openly discuss ideas and needs they look for in cafes suited to mother and baby.

Tumbling along the way...

It is becoming visible that the process of creating the cafe's branded areas is taking too long, and although the designs are necessary, I do feel like we are beginning to lag behind on doing something creative and I am starting to miss it!

In our tutorials with Gideon so far, we haven't really developed the cafe space as he doesn't have the knowledge in this sector to give us advice- so we are  following findings, talks with target audience and market research. A valid point Gideon did raise which I completely agreed with, was that it is lacking some creativity. Having already decided we want to use interactive tables within the cafe, this led us to think up new ideas and games to happen on them. For previous work commitments Jess had to leave after the tutorial, so Kirsty and I went to work on some creative ideas. I thought it best to send them to Gideon that day so that we could develop them further in time for the next tutorial.

Compared to the other group members, I would consider myself as more of a creative thinker, and so I usually generate the main creative ideas, to then be discussed with the team.

For the interactive tables I want to do something new and different- something only Ella's Kitchen could bring you. I have brainstormed many app and games ideas, although they are quite good and would potentially work- the "big" idea is still yet to hit.