Aphroteasiac( Hearbal Tea)
In module 240MC we were asked to write a critical analysis of our own 3-fold advertising campaign. For this task, my group and I decided to research the consumer market and come up with an idea that we thought meet and match a consumer’s expectations in the tea market. We had an idea but wanted something a little different to an ordinary tea campaign. We created a random survey and 8/10 stated they would prefer a tea used for intimacy than pills. After many hours of brainstorming, we came up with the idea to advertise the herbal tea used for a sexual boost during intimacy and is healthy. The name Aphroteasic was considered because we thought it was catchy, sexy and will target different ethnicity groups in the society because of the term “Aphro” simply meaning, “A mussed, tangled, ‘hairstyle’ donned by sexually active women who prefer vigorous sex (Algarin 2010).The flavour of our herbal tea is Cherry and Gokshura. Gokshura is a herb originated from the Far East and was used by the ancients to increase sexual performance and fertility. Scientifically proven, Gokshura helps increase the sexual drive and enhances and boosts your drive enhancing the males and females strength during intimacy. (Buddhadharma, 2016).
Aphroteasiac herbal tea campaign was created to work in a wide marketing mix simply by understanding and representing the product to the public, price, place and promotion. Starting with the product, the tea is represented as a healthy beverage that is used to boost and satisfy consumer’s sexual needs during intimacy. We carried out research on the tea market and looked towards are competitors such as Twining’s, PG-Tips Tetley and Yorkshire Tea. In our research, we came across how tea sales in the UK have reduced by 6% in the last 5 years. With our findings, we concluded that consumers are demanding products that are linked with promised health benefits as opposed to the regular, seemingly boring builders brew. This is what motivated us to come up with the exotic herbal tea idea. We also thought about a different type of tea, something that has its benefits and will sell more to a wider mix of audiences. A tea that can help intimacy and at the same time is healthy for the body is not common in the tea market and we wanted to change that. In developing this product we thought about the targeted audience, the features of the packaging, a catchy name and how the product will look different and better from other tea competitors. In the campaign, we made these points visible and easily communicated. This campaign was targeted to a wide diverse audience span. Brierley (1995) stated in The advertising handbook that within the marketing concept, consumers have the power to shape their own needs and wants without persuasion. This meant that as a company we had to identify consumer’s wants and create a campaign and product to satisfy them. Firstly, as the Public Relations Manager for this campaign, it was my job to design a strategy plan that will appeal to this audience, before this, we had to decide who the herbal tea will appeal to and why. A customer profile was created; we decided to target matured couples because they always tend to prefer to try something new in their sexual lives, mainly to couples that are finding it hard to satisfy each other in the bedroom. We believed that older couples between the ages 30-65 years old could benefit from this product and help save their marriage or relationship. This product through effective branding was able to engage consumers in the co-creation of its values and identity. Branding has been classified as ‘the process which commodities are given an obviously self-promotional form (Lury, 2004:36). With this definition, we as a group were able to see the way that marketing and promotion are built into the commodity itself. During our branding strategy brainstorm, we as a group came up with our targeted audience as being a huge span of various diverse groups in the society like married couples struggling to satisfy each other’s needs sexually, couples between the ages 30-65, homosexual couples and people from different ethnicity groups who are sexually active. We also had to think about the consumer’s benefits given from the brand that enhances the boost in sexual performances and a health benefiting tea. Branding in our campaign showed and produced a different feature that distinguishes our brand from others. We decided to make the packaging more appealing by adding the body abstract of the male and female on the packaging, create mobile apps for the tea providing daily alerts and updates of exotic ‘eastern inspired’ intimate positions which weren’t common in the tea market. Values and personality of the brand were represented to our consumers clearly through branding. We achieved this by producing a simple but accurate campaign to show our consumers the importance and values of the brand and how the brand supports those values. Co-creation occurs when the company and the consumer join and create value (Ind and Bjerke, 2007).Prahalad and Ramaswamy, (2004) stated that co-creation simply means the process where more than one party analytically joins together to learn and share information. The co-creation of a brand involves consumers entirely. It’s up to the society to speak about how brands add value to them, because of these co-creating solutions with the consumers is a process many companies are doing now to enhance the better value of the product. In our campaign the product engaged effectively with our consumers through our mobile apps we created for the tea and utilising social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook were created so that unity between the consumer and bring values.For the packaging, we decided on a small, simple but sexy packaging since the tea helps with intimacy and provides a boost in people’s sexual activity. The tea is packaged in a black and red paper bag with easy instructions on how to make the tea. Because this tea business is new to the market we didn’t want to put a high price on the item. Karishma, (2015) stated that pricing helps shape the perception of the product in the eyes of the customer. The price of the product was set for £8.00 simply because we wanted a larger audience where everyone and anyone could afford the tea. The price of the tea wasn’t put up on any of the campaigns. Vrchakovsk, (2014) stated in an article putting a price in an ad may discourage a visitor from clicking or paying attention to your ad. We didn’t want our consumers to run away when seeing the price placed on our campaign so we decided to avoid putting a price up and rather focus on catching our audience’s attention.
In the digital strategy, we considered the tea will be sold online due to the concept of discretion and ensure consumers are comfortable when purchasing the item discreetly. Because we care about our consumers we thought of advertising our healthy herbal tea online on health websites such as Holland And Barrett due to the fact that its quick and you wouldn’t have to go in store to purchase it. In addition, the promotion component of the item was outlined in our campaign were we concluded the tea will feature extensive advertising on health websites and utilization of certain social media forms such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram would be used to help build a strong media representation and also help us as the company to check KPI’s and customer responses / feedback to help further develop our product. We also came up with the idea to launch the tea brand by on an interactive mobile phone and tablet app. Features in the mobile app were introduced so that consumers can get the chance to receive daily alerts and updates on eastern inspired intimate sex positions and keep up to date with updates and information regarding the tea.
Semiotics is the study of signs and sign-using behaviour (The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica, 2009). A Therorist Ferdinand de Saussure came up with the Linguistic Sign where each word is a sign and is made up of two parts: signified- mental concept agreed and the signifier- the written or sound image (De Saussure et al., 1995). Relating this to our Print ad we notice the signifier is the ink on the paper, the image of the male and female body abstract and the signified is the abstract forms together representing intimacy in a sophisticated look on a product the un/subconscious consumer is looking to stimulate your sex drive and is healthy. The package of a product is an appropriate attribute to attract attention and communicate with consumers (Garber, 1995). There are several ways to use product features to communicate certain symbolic meanings. Looking at the print ad we see that the first sign the consumer can see is an abstract figure of a man and woman interlinking, representing the male and female body and sex. Past research shows that consumers mainly use package shape and package colour, to match the design of a product or package with the characteristics of the product itself (Smets & Overbeeke, 1995). In the adverts poster and all over the packaging the abstract of a male and female was used to help attract a specific representation in the society for sexually active and health conscious people. This logo has a clear representation of sexual intimacy with a flair of exoticism. Although the image is man and woman our campaign also features same-sex couples to help promote a liberal but tasteful approach to intimacy as seen in the TV advert where a gay consumer talks about his experience with the herbal tea. We didn’t choose to settle for a small target of audiences we decided to base our campaign on a wider range not only targeting sexual active couples but also health conscious people. That’s why we decided to advertise on other health websites so consumers who are looking on health websites would come across our product, creating a wider audience span. In semiotics, denotation and connotation are described as the relationship between the signifier and signified. Denotation is the representation of a visual image that all viewers from any culture and at any time would recognise the image as depicting (Panofsky, 1970), this theory was considered when designing our print ad. We came up with the idea of naked abstract forms entwining together because it calls out to our audience representing clearly what type of tea Aphroteasiac is also depicting the use of the tea and the abstract form of the ethnic male and female was a perfect match. The term ‘connotation’ is used to state the socio-cultural and personal relations with the sign. Connotation and denotation merely follow the same concept of the Linguistic model. It is hypothetically stated that when consumers are shopping for everyday foods or beverages such as tea, the physical appearance of a product help consumers base their decision whether to consume the product or not. (Bloch,1995). Noth and Nöth, (1995) states that shapes communicate with its consumers in semiotics, When the un/subconscious consumer looks at the print ad he\she will be able to communicate with the ad, understanding the use and benefits of the tea. With this logo, we are able to distinguish the categories of consumers. Colour gets consumers to pay a lot more attention than you might think and plays a huge part in influencing decision making, colours influence mood and just might influence energy levels (Maan and Adams, 2013). The colours we decided to use were merely dark colours to enhance a sense of sexuality and intimacy. The warm and cool colours used were red, black, and dark blue. In research, red activates your pituitary gland, increasing one’s heart rate and causing you to breath faster. Red representations evoke a passionate response such as sex (Williams and more, 2007). For the title, black was used because in color semiotics it is also proven that black when represented predicts a sense of seriousness, boldness, powerful and signifies sophistication, with this theory we decided this is what we wanted the consumer to feel like every time he/she looks at the Ad hence, promoting more sales (Williams and more, 2007).The mood and emotions the Print ad conveys is relaxation and love. It’S important to depict a logo to its consumers that conveys its categorised mood. In the Print Ad campaign, a spiral expression was used coming from beneath the abstract figures. Spirals are expressions of creativity. They suggest the process of evolution and growth and is mostly found in the natural growth of patterns (Bradley, 2010). The concept behind the spirals for this campaign was to show a projection of heat coming from the naked abstract reflecting a message to the consumers when they look at the logo that the abstract form is ‘smoking hot’. Falk, (1994) stated that the modern consuming self is a representational being. The body surface is the target of advertising and self-promotion. In the TV Ad campaign where consumers speak about their personal intimacy problems with their partners and how the drink has improved and helped their problems. We later decided to change the concept and use someone who prefers the same sex (homosexual) to speak about his embarrassing problem and how the drink also helped in the bedroom. In doing that we were able to create a whole new different audience span in the campaign. People who have been married for many years often find that trying something new can improve and add enjoyment to sex. It was clear after this that our targeted audience were couples between the ages 30-65 who find it difficult to perform in bed, married couples, sexually active people, health conscious people and homosexuals. The TV advert for Aphroteasiac used a British style and attempted to keep things tasteful however add a hint of dark humour and irony to relate better with our target audience e.g. homosexual and heterosexual people. SLATER, (1997) stated that a consumer’s culture is simply the meaningful practice of everyday life in the modern society. To understand the consumer’s culture you have to understand the modern experience and modern identity of the consumer. This comes to picking out the audience’s lifestyle and how the tea is linked to those certain groups. Looking at the Aphroteasiac campaign we see that the drink is mainly represented to people who are sexual active and health conscious. As the Public Relations Manager, it was up to me to identify the main client groups and determine the best way to reach them with an effective digital strategy plan. In the digital strategy plan, we came up with the idea that the app’s features will have daily alerts and updates of exotic ‘eastern inspired’ intimate positions to try out in the bedroom to help add passion to relationships alongside games to keep you occupied during the day. This is important in the modern media society because creating and understanding your digital strategy will enable you to be able to promote your business and attract the right targeted audience. Our targets audiences all have common and important needs and those are intimacy and saving relationships. Aphroteasic herbal tea was set a good market price whereas anybody can afford this drink from a wide range of consumers. In the 3-fold campaign, Aphroteasiac tea contributed to a cultural discourse around its subjects matter. This was achieved by using various linguistic devices such as the catchy slogan used in the campaign such as “You’re the only one I need” to help attract consumers in the market. In addition, the language used in the campaign in the study is referred to as ideologically contested. Certain vocabulary carried out the certain ideology of what constitutes incredible intimacy with the app features that give consumers exotic ‘eastern inspired’ intimate positions to try out in the bedroom or increase fertility.
The advert portrays what married couples who’s marriage are falling apart merely because there is no sexual boost during intimacy or woman who is unable to conceive due to the fact their partner is not able to contribute sexually but Aphroteasiac tea has improved their sexual lives and saved their marriages. Advertising is involved with our everyday lives, it’s the reflective mirror of society and culture, and it transmits meaning and message that also help people consider it as a discourse due to its social significance (Cook, 1992). This cultural discourse of this campaign is helping marriages and increase fertility. Brown and Yule, (1983) stated that the analysis of discourse is the analysis of language in use and its analyst is committed to an investigation on what the language is used from. In the 3-fold campaign representing the discourse and the subject it’s representing was achieved. This contribution was merely achieved by simply making the Tv advert clear on what the tea does and how its benefits including it being a healthy beverage. The showing of the woman physique holding the tea in the TV ad also contributed to the discourse the advert is representing by showing the characteristics and representation of people who consume the product. Showing the females physique and playing east Asian romantic and sexy theme song in the background also represents a sense of sexiness and youthful lust east Asian way. The audience’s responses are important to newly branded items that are put in the market esp if it has something to do with a personal or sensitive topic such as intimacy. Looking at the TV ad we see that it was quick, short and simple due to the fact talking about sex may be an uncomfortable topic. Getting straight to the point is the approach we used for the TV ad. Although the tea is associated with a theme of exoticism and sexual inclinations alongside health benefits, the response we hoped to achieve from the consumer is a positive and professional approach.
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Media And Communicataion Studies 