Point Conceptions Creative Pitch Written Report

For UCSB Faculty Club

Introduction to Media Plan

We at Point Conceptions created several advertisements, each one designed to capture the attention of as many members of a specific target audience as possible.  Each advertisement will be placed in one of the media vehicles outlined in the Point Conceptions Media Buy Written Report.  The report in the following pages is divided up into four sections: description of target audiences, analysis of past advertising campaigns, copy platform developed by Point Conceptions, and mock-ups of advertisements along with analysis of those advertisements.  

The following report also addresses marketing and advertising goals in terms of Phase 1-3.  Phase 1 is the time during which Faculty Club will operate until Phase 2 begins approximately in September 2012.  Phase 2 is the 12-18-month-long construction phase that begins approximately in September 2012.  Finally, Phase 3 is the final phase in which Faculty Club re-opens its newly renovated facility with expanded features permanently.

Marketing Goals: Our marketing goals include: increasing membership by about 22% (adding 50 members to the current 225) in Phase 1, growing lunch revenue to generate a 5% profit in Phase 1, growing guest room profit by approximately 20% during the first year of Phase 3, and increasing the number of weddings that take place at Faculty Club by 5% within the first few years of Phase 3.  For more detail about these marketing goals, see “Point Conceptions Media Buy Report For UCSB Faculty Club.”

Targets: Our primary target for membership includes faculty and staff members and their families.  The secondary target for membership includes University of California, Santa Barbara graduate students.  The primary target for lunch services includes all UCSB students, the primary target for guest room services includes parents of UCSB students, and the primary target for weddings includes local brides, grooms, and their families.

Media and Vehicles: In order to reach faculty and staff to recruit for membership, we modified the Faculty Club’s weekly d-list listserv format and its monthly newsletter, which can be found online and is issued to members on a monthly basis along with their monthly statements.  We also suggest sending an electronic copy of the monthly newsletter to the d-list listserv to distribute to all UCSB departments so that non-members can see what the member-only benefits of Faculty Club included for the month.  In order to reach graduate students for membership, we created a flyer for the admitted student information packet.  In order to reach UCSB students for use of Faculty Club lunch services, we created a print comic advertisement comic for print in The Daily Nexus and The Bottom Line.  We also created a mock-up Faculty Club Twitter page, sample Facebook page newsfeed updates, sample Facebook albums, and set up a monthly raffle associated with one of the Facebook albums (to be explained in detail later in this report).  In order to reach parents of UCSB students for guest room services, we created a flyer to insert in the admitted student information packets for freshman and transfer students; this flyer can also serve as a mailer, i.e. for the copy of The Daily Nexus that is sent to new students at their home addresses prior to the first day of classes at UCSB.  In order to reach local brides, grooms, and their families, we created a print advertisement for placement in The Santa Barbara Independent, bridal editions of The Santa Barbara Independent, The Santa Barbara News-Press, and The Daily Sound.  

Membership Advertising Goal 1

1. Advertising Goals: Comprehension campaign.  We want to reach out to current faculty and staff that may be unaware of the Faculty Club, and we especially want to inform faculty and staff that may know of Faculty Club’s existence of the benefits that they can receive as members, such as discounts.  Furthermore, we want to rebuild a sense of community and foster a sense of altruism among UCSB faculty and staff as we build the Faculty Club brand.  Because our marketing goal is to add 50 members, we want to ensure that at least 100 of the 1,086 faculty members at UCSB comprehend the benefits of Faculty Club membership, such as pool privileges, regular discounts, and member-only events.  This means we want a little over 10% of faculty who are currently non-members of Faculty Club (974 UCSB faculty who are not currently Faculty Club members) to comprehend what services are available to members only over the course of Phase 1.  Additionally, there are over 4,900 staff (there are over 6,000 total faculty and staff members at UCSB according to dailynexus.com/advertising), and we want to boost comprehension among this group by 10% as well, requiring that we effectively inform approximately 490 staff members.  By boosting comprehension among the total 590 faculty and staff members, we think it is plausible to expect that Faculty Club can reach our marketing goal of adding 50 members during Phase 1 (of which some can also be graduate students). 

2. Target: Our primary target is University of California, Santa Barbara faculty and staff and their families.  There are 1,086 total faculty members at the UCSB (http://www.ucsb.edu/campus/campus-intro.shtml).  We want to reach out to current faculty and staff who may be unaware of the Faculty Club, and we especially want to inform faculty and staff that may know of Faculty Club’s existence of the benefits that they can receive as members.  Faculty and staff members at UCSB are highly educated, value higher education, and value research.  We want to rekindle a sense of community among faculty and staff members and inspire them to include their family members on Faculty Club membership plans.  We want faculty and staff members to bring their family members and form bonds strengthened by increased contact among likeminded scholars who all have a sense of pride in their research and work as well as for UCSB as an institution and campus community.  

3. Media for dissemination: We modified the Faculty Club’s weekly d-list listserv format and its monthly newsletter, which can be found online and is issued to members on a monthly basis along with their monthly statements.  We also redesigned the monthly newsletter so that it is more organized, less cluttered, and more visually appealing.  We also suggest that the monthly newsletter be sent to the d-list listserv to distribute to all UCSB departments so that non-members can see what the member-only benefits of Faculty Club include for the month.  

4. Copy Platform:

1. How Targets Make Decisions About Service: Feeling, High Involvement: Because the primary target audience includes people with high levels of education, it makes the most sense to run a high involvement campaign.  Also relevant to motivating a purchasing decision among faculty and staff members and their families is Point Conceptions’s goal to rebuild a sense of community and foster a sense of altruism among UCSB faculty and staff as we build the Faculty Club brand.  Rebuilding a sense of community in the Faculty Club is an emotional advertising goal, therefore a high involvement feeling campaign is ideal.  A strong high involvement feeling campaign will inspire faculty and staff members to purchase a Faculty Club membership because they are emotionally moved to do so.  An emotional campaign is strong for this target because in light of a struggling economy today, Point Conceptions wants to demonstrate to faculty and staff members that purchasing a membership is not just a financially savvy decision, but a mentally savvy one as well.  In addition, we want to demonstrate that including family members on faculty and staff memberships is financially and emotionally savvy as well; we want to show faculty and staff members that their families are also part of the UCSB community and demonstrate to these members that including family members in the Faculty Club is a key method of building a sense of community within the club as well as a way of providing faculty and staff members to deepen relationships with each other by including their families in bond-building.

2. Key Benefits: 

1. Physical: It is important to illustrate to potential members what the perks are of being a member; we want to encourage faculty and staff members to join Faculty Club in anticipation of member-only benefits, such as member-only holiday events in which food is greatly discounted.
2. Characterizational: In line with the goal to create a high involvement feeling campaign is the notion of focusing on characterizational features.  Point Conceptions advertisements geared toward faculty and staff members and their families will focus on positive experiences that will result from becoming—and remaining—a Faculty Club member.

1. Sense of community: We want to sell a sense of unity to Faculty Club members and make them feel that they are a vital piece of a larger academic community.  The ads will not just sell the product of membership along with tangible benefits of membership to faculty and staff members; the ads will also sell the experience of being a part of a campus community.
2. Retain exclusivity of members only: While it is important to send the message that the Faculty Club is a place on campus for students and faculty to mingle and communicate, it is also important to maintain a level of exclusivity.  It is imperative to reveal to the target audience that there are benefits of membership that create a higher level experience than non-members can enjoy.

3. Message strategy: Affective.  A high involvement feeling campaign with an emphasis on characterizational features contributes to the formation of an affective message strategy.  The ads geared toward faculty and staff members and their families will inspire them to feel a need to grasp the emotional connection to the UCSB campus and community of higher education that can only be acquired through purchasing a membership with the Faculty Club.

4. Ad Tone: We want to focus on creating an emotional tone that builds a sense of community, scholarship, altruism but that is still rational in the sense that it demonstrates why purchasing a Faculty Club membership is an economically sound decision as well.  We will not create a humorous ad to target faculty and staff members and their families; humor is not an effective tone for this target audience because it would hinder the establishment of the vitality of the depth of the feeling of connectedness to the university.  The tone for ads for this target audience should be serious in the sense that they will convey a serious sense of community, commitment to higher education, and congregation of likeminded people.  The ads will also convey the message that not purchasing a Faculty Club membership will leave non-members feeling as if they are missing out on a unique, vital, and fulfilling experience.  Additionally, we will focus on a soft sell (vs. hard sell); we will subtly send the message that not purchasing a Faculty Club membership will leave target audience members feeling that their participation at UCSB is incomplete.  The ads will not explicitly state that non-members are in any way inferior to members nor will they explicitly state that non-members are unintelligent or ignorant for not being members yet.  We did not employ a spokesperson for our ad; even if there was a celebrity faculty or staff member, that one person would not enough clout to catch attention of non-academics or researchers/professors in other departments who may not care as much about that one celebrity professor’s work.

5. Ad and Ad Analysis: In the newsletter we created for faculty and staff members, we included the same logo image that we also use in the flyer for graduate students (see next advertising goal).  We do this in order to begin building the Faculty Club brand and thereby boost awareness among those who qualify for membership.  The newsletter we created includes the same content as the original newsletter for May 2011, but we reorganized it so that it is less cluttered and so that it utilizes the same color scheme that we also employ in the graduate student membership flyer.  The cleaner, more organized look is likely to be taken more seriously and read more carefully by faculty and staff members to whom it is distributed.  

We also added a “Membership Corner” section to the first page of the newsletter in order to build a sense of community among members as well as highlight a specific member-only benefit.  In this mock-up of the newsletter, we chose to highlight the use of the pool in an “upgraded” membership in light of upcoming summer months and we also made mention of a (fictional) graduate student mixer as well as reminded faculty and staff members to bring graduate students to Faculty Club for lunch and to discuss their work.  

The first page of the newsletter includes information for members-only—information about the member-only event, art at the club for members to view, and upgrading membership to include use of the pool and to add families to memberships.  The “Membership Corner” alone contributes to the goal of boosting comprehension among faculty and staff of what benefits their membership offers.  The “Membership Corner” also encourages inviting families and mingling with grad students, both of which will build a sense of UCSB pride and community.  We are confident that our redesign of the newsletter will attract more attention than the more chaotic former newsletter format.  Additionally, we also have the skills to create an HTML e-mail with the same look as the newsletter that we created for monthly distribution via print in PDF format, so those receiving the e-mail would not have to open a PDF file and the newsletter would be displayed in the browser’s open e-mail inbox.

Membership Advertising Goal 2

1. Advertising Goals: Awareness Campaign.  In order to tap into the grad student market we want to grow awareness of the Faculty Club and the perks of membership.  Not all graduate students are aware of the Faculty Club.  Additionally, not all graduate students who are aware of the Faculty Club’s existence are aware that they can become members and what the benefits of membership are for them.  We want to make graduate students aware of the benefits of membership and of networking opportunities with professors.  During Phase 1, we want to make sure that at least 33% of graduate students (approximately 1,000 grad students) at UCSB are aware that they can become Faculty Club members and what the benefits of membership include.

2. Target: Our secondary target includes UCSB graduate students.  There are currently approximately 3,000 graduate students enrolled at UCSB (http://www.ucsb.edu/campus/campus-intro.shtml).  Although they are generally at UCSB on a more temporary basis than faculty and staff members, graduate students are an untapped market for membership.  The Faculty Club was formally a location at which graduate students and their professors would regularly congregate to discuss papers, dissertations, and research as well as to network with faculty members would could assist graduate students in their completion of their studies at UCSB and work outside of UCSB.  We want to recapture the Faculty Club’s former sense of scholasticism and make it an ideal location for graduate students and professors to meet-and-greet in a scholastic yet social environment.

*NOTE: In the Point Conceptions Media Buy Written Report, the secondary target was UCSB alumni, but after conferring with general manager Linda Ruuska, we modified our secondary target to be UCSB graduate students.  We decided to focus secondarily on graduate students because they are a key part of creating a feeling of scholasticism and community in the Faculty Club.

3. Media for dissemination: Flyers will be slipped into transfer student information packets which will efficiently reach the target since all transfers will receive one. This will also be effective in introducing the Faculty Club early on in their career at UCSB.  By getting them to come to the Faculty Club they will also learn about its location, atmosphere, quality food, as well as other services and benefits that are attached to membership.  The flyer can also be sent as a mailer in the The Daily Nexus issue that is sent to new admitted students’ home addresses before they arrive at UCSB.  The same flyer can also be sent to graduate students via department listservs on the first day of each new quarter.

4. Copy Platform:

1. How Targets Make Decisions About Service: Thinking, high involvement.  Graduate students are highly educated students who have already received a college degree and are pursuing masters or doctorate degrees.  Their workloads are heavy, and they have to consult with their professors often to make sure that they are on track with their studies.  Additionally, higher education is expensive, and fees are getting increasingly expensive each year.  Graduate students have already had to pay for their undergraduate degrees and are now spending more money on higher education.  These students must therefore be persuaded using logic why Faculty Club membership is economical and beneficial to them.  Faculty Club membership must therefore directly benefit graduate students on academic, financial, and extracurricular levels in order to be worth the membership fees.    

2. Key Benefits: 

1. Functional: We want graduate students to know what benefits Faculty Club offers to members only and we want grad students to become aware of how to utilize member-only features in a way that helps them develop their work more effectively than if they are non-members.

3. Message strategy: Generic. A generic message strategy is strong for awareness campaigns.  We want to make graduate students aware of services that Faculty Club provides that would be beneficial for them to take advantage of.  We want to make mention of services from which graduate students could specifically benefit.

4. Ad Tone: The tone of our ad is not overly serious, but neither is it humorous.  Our ad maintains a light, positive tone to convey factual information.  We listed each member-only benefit as a fact and then included a parenthetical comment below each fact that illuminates the functionality of each benefit in an uplifting way.  Each parenthetical statement connects functionality with positive emotion; therefore the ad uses emotion to build on rationality.  The tone is not overly formal, but we utilized a more elevated vocabulary than we would with undergraduates because graduate students are pursuing a higher level of education.

5. Ad and Ad Analysis: In the flyer we created for graduate students, we included a photograph of the front of Faculty Club so that students will know what the building looks like.  There is also a photo of the pool area; Santa Barbara has beautiful weather for a large portion of the year, and we wanted to highlight the resort-like nature of Faculty Club’s premises.  We additionally decided to include a box with the Faculty Club’s logo on it in an attempt to build brand awareness.  All images—the two photos and the Faculty Club logo box—are all colorful and fairly large in order to be eye-catching.  We used a four-color color scheme for the text and background colors—white, blue, pink, and green—that matched the colors in each of the two photographs.  

The flyer’s slogan—“The Spirit of Community”—is designed to instill a sense of UCSB campus pride and group identity.  The slogan font is also large so that it draws the audience member’s eye to it, and it highlights the word “community” in pink.  The sense of academic community at UCSB that we convey using the slogan is an emotional foundation for a rational argument.  We used the slogan to convey that Faculty Club fosters a sense of community at UCSB, and the two sentences directly below the slogan elaborate on what specific sense of “community” that Faculty Club offers graduate students specifically.  These two sentences define community at Faculty Club as a convergence of professors and graduate students as they network and discuss their studies.  Graduate students are generally highly motivated; they have been accepted to UCSB masters and doctorate programs that take years to precise and in-depth work to complete.  The notion of networking with other graduate students and professors is appealing to this group of highly motivated students who relish opportunities to meet with peers and professors outside of class.  The two sentences below the slogan on the flyer alone make a rational argument to graduate students that Faculty Club is an ideal location to contact professors and peers as well as mingle with them.  

Just as the slogan and two sentences below it are highly targeted, so are the listed member-only benefits in the right-hand column.  We highlighted member-only benefits that are most attractive to serious graduate students and did not specifically list other less related member-only benefits.  Each item on the list additionally has a parenthetical comment below it highlighting a reason why each member-only benefit is specifically useful for graduate students.  We decided that it was not enough to list “Use of meeting rooms” as a member-only benefit for grad students; why would they care about being able to use meeting rooms?  We provide them with an answer as to why they should care: meeting rooms are ideal places to meet with professor to discuss graduate work.  Other items on the list are less explanatory and more emotional.  For example, we described “Member-only events, such as Winemaker’s dinner” as “a getaway from chaotic graduate studies.”  This sends the message that member-only events are beneficial to graduate students because it provides them with an opportunity to take a brief break from their studies to mingle with their peers and professors in a more casual way, and a new sense of community as camaraderie is established.  Each parenthetical comment describes a functional, rational, practical, and/or emotional advantage of each individual member-benefit.  These parenthetical comments illustrate that each individual member-only benefit extends beyond its literal merit thereby proving to graduate students in a concise yet effective way that Faculty Club membership is worth purchasing.

The images and text together form a rational message uniquely tied to emotional sentiments that are designed to capture graduate students’ attention.  Together, the images and text are eye-catching, and therefore build awareness.  The two sentences below the slogan along with the parenthetical comments that convey rational reasoning for joining Faculty Club also go beyond a basic awareness campaign by also helping graduate students comprehend why Faculty Club membership is useful for them.  Our advertising goal is to boost awareness in what general manager Linda Ruuska described as an “untapped market,” and this flyer will certainly catch attention, boost awareness, and additionally build comprehension, making it a more than effective means of meeting our advertising goal for increasing graduate student membership.    

Lunch Services Advertising Goal

1. Advertising Goals: Awareness and comprehension campaigns. Our goals are to not only increase students’ awareness of the restaurant but to help them understand that the restaurant is available for their use during lunch hours. Since our restaurant marketing goal is to increase lunch profit by 5% during Phase 1, we want to make sure our advertisement methods will be able to connect with enough of the target audience and understand the restaurant is a viable lunch option as well as where the restaurant is located.  We also want to increase awareness by 75% and comprehension among students by 60%.  These numbers are realistic and optimistic percentages due to the large number of students who will be exposed to our advertising messages and promotions.  

2. Target:  The target audience for restaurant Faculty Club restaurant services include UCSB students which include undergraduate as well as graduate. We want to specifically target UCSB students who are on campus during lunch hours, have a disposable income and would prefer a nutritious, nicer meal in comparison with other lunch options on campus and Isla Vista.

3. Media for dissemination: We will incorporate use of Twitter as well as Facebook to target UCSB students. According to an article in USA Today (http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2009-11-16-ccsse16_ST_N.htm), college aged students are heavy users of social media with 94% using social-networking tools and 41% use it multiple times a day and as much as 53% of college students are plugged into social networks on their phones as well (cellphoneinformation.net).  We will also advertise in The Daily Nexus.  

4. Copy Platform:

1. How Targets Make Decisions About Service: Thinking, low involvement. The target audience usually decides where to dine based on convenience, price range, location, and menu options. There are many choices on campus available to students including the UCen, Arbor, Coral Tree Café, and the Courtyard Café. The Faculty Club’s location is distinctly separate from competing services and offers a healthy menu with diverse options to accommodate to vegetarians as well as vegans. The Faculty Club also offers comparative pricing with lunch options ranging from $7.50 to $11.50 which is less than the cost of a meal at the dining commons. There is also a weekly specials menu which accommodates to college students’ limited budgets. In addition, students have the option to order take out which plays a large role in convenience when students are in a hurry to class or would prefer to take their lunch elsewhere. The students use low involvement when deciding where to eat on campus and do not need to make reservations before hand or plan ahead to find parking.

2. Key Benefits:

1. Physical: Emphasizing where the Faculty Club is located on campus will be crucial in attracting students to dine there during lunch hours. Many students are unaware the Faculty Club even exists let alone where it is located. It does not help that it is not featured on the visitor’s tour maps but the Point Conceptions Advertising Agency has arranged for guides to direct parents and families to the Faculty Club as a lunch and overnight stay option.
2. Characterizational: It will be important to stress to students that they are supporting a campus tradition and reignite a sense of school pride by dining at the Faculty Club. By helping student comprehend the Faculty Club’s history, they will have a better grasp of what it means to dine at the Faculty Club and instill a sense of altruism in supporting a non-profit organization. Moreover, students are also in an environment where they are more likely to meet department faculty and network. In addition, the advertisements will point out the nutritious and filling options the Faculty Club menu offers. With as many as 80% of college students at university campuses such as Yale demanding organic, sustainable, healthy options, college students understand the desire and benefits of eating healthy and will respond to another restaurant option that offers such items (http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/food/2006-09-26-college-food-usat_x.htm). These advertisements will also point out the appeal at eating in a classy environment as opposed to grungy Isla Vista. What separates the Faculty Club from other on-campus options is its elegant and tasteful environment which students will be able to appreciate.

3. Message Strategy: Preemptive.  Because the target audience use thinking and have low-involvement in deciding where to eat, messages that remind students the Faculty Club is a BETTER lunch option will be an effective strategy.  Students are aware of the varied options available to them on-campus as well as in Isla Vista but will pay more attention to messages that assert WHY they are superior to the other options.  Messages will stress how they are a healthy option located conveniently on campus in addition to how students are supporting a campus tradition.  The Faculty Club also offers weekly specials which may appeal to students on a limited budget.  Furthermore, the Faculty Club offers elegant dining on campus which sets itself apart from the rest of the dining options.

4. Ad Tone: We want to illustrate how the Faculty Club restaurant is a novel option as a neighborhood gem while using humor and a laid back attitude. The tone of the ad would point out how the Faculty Club is a fresh ‘new’ option for students and ways they can take advantage of dining with faculty and staff. Using a novel tone would stress the uniqueness of the Faculty Club and help it stand out among the other more well known establishments that UCSB students have become familiar with. The tone of the ads would also be done in a humorous and laid back way as opposed to a serious, up-tight tone that would heighten the Faculty Club’s obscurity. Humor and a relaxed attitude would be appropriate for this target audience given their tendencies to respond to youthful, exciting ads which are similar to their experiences, tastes and preferences.

5. Ad and Ad Analysis:

1. Lunchtime Comic Strip: For the ad that will be placed in The Daily Nexus, we chose to make a comic strip that functions as an ad in order to attract the attention of the UCSB student population, our target audience.  We chose to use a comic strip as the format for this advertisement for a number of reasons.  First of all, since there are hardly any comic strips in these student newspapers (there are no comic strips that are placed in the papers on a daily or even weekly basis), we decided that a comic strip would not only stand out in the paper, but would also catch the reader’s attention.  Moreover, research has found that adults in the age range of 18-24, the age of our intended audience, are likely to read a comic strip if it is printed in a newspaper, as the comics section was found to be one of the most popular sections read by that age group in the newspaper, following the general news, sports, and classified sections (Mediamark Research Inc.).

Secondly, since the ad is in comic strip form, the story line can change weekly, and since we intend to place a weekly ad in each of the student newspapers, the ad would be different each time.  As a result, students would be less likely to skim over the ad as one that they’ve seen several times, and instead would be more likely to read it and even possibly look forward to seeing it, as the content would change each week.  And lastly, a comic strip would also attract the attention of the audience because it would include a bit of humor, which the target of 18-24 students would enjoy. This would also coincide with our goal of having a humorous tone for the ads aimed at the student population.

            The ad itself that we created has six different cells.  The first cell gives a title to the ad, while at the same time prominently showing the name of the Faculty Club.  The second through fourth cells provide the overall story, which depicts two female UCSB students.  The two characters in these cells are easily identified as UCSB students, and therefore characters that the target audience can identify with, by their apparel (a UCSB sweatshirt) and the words that they use (the first girl refers to I.V.).  Moreover, the storyline in the cells creates the overall feeling that the Faculty Club strives for, creating a classy, yet friendly, university environment for students and faculty to dine in the same facility for lunch.  While the dress of the second character is exaggerated, as we realize that one does not have to be in a dress and heels to dine at the Faculty Club, it also shows that the Faculty Club has class, and that one should feel a bit of pride in dining there instead of at the regular eateries in Isla Vista and on campus.  The fifth cell contains the slogan in a sort of “POW’ format which is inherit to comic strips.  Again, the Faculty Club’s name is mentioned here, along with the slogan: “Stay classy my friends.”  This slogan is a play off of the Dos Equis beer commercials that are airing on television at this time.  These ads have proven to be highly successful; the Dos Equis company has claimed a 22 percent increase in sales after the first ad aired, while other Mexican beer companies continue to lose sales (http://www2.macleans.ca/2009/08/13/king-of-beer-sales-amigo/). Moreover, since these beer ads are aimed at a college aged audience; UCSB students will be able to identify with the ad and its slogan.  And besides, what student wouldn’t want to be seen as classy?  The last cell contains the weekly specials for the remainder of the week and in order to capitalize on this, we believe it would be wise to place these comic strip ads in the Monday papers, that way students can see the selection of specials for not only Monday, but Tuesday through Friday as well.  

        By placing a comic strip ad in the newspapers circulating on campus, we not only would be able to achieve our advertising goals of creating awareness, but would also be able to increase comprehension.  Students will not only learn the specials of the week from the ads, but will also learn that they are welcome to dine there, as the Faculty Club is not just for faculty as the name of the club might indicate. (Future comic strip ads will also touch on this notion.) And because the ad would have a humorous appeal that would attract the attention of the target audience, those who see the ad will be more inclined to dine at the Faculty Club and to tell their friends as well.  Moreover, since the ad would change weekly and become an established comic strip in the papers, students would be more inclined to read the ad instead of glancing over it, as many of the other recurring advertisements in the student papers often are.

2. Social Media Newsfeeds and Photo Album: Social media newsfeeds are effective means of disseminating information to a wide spectrum of people in a short-lived real-time marketing opportunity (mashable.com). Newsfeeds are a constant stream of information that can be updated frequently as well.  Twitter has become used by more and more college students each year since 2008 (online-marketingtrends.com).  Social media tools can be used for advertising as well as promotions interchangeably. A Twitter account can link to a Facebook account to relate the same messages to a different social networking platform and reach a different segment of the target audience.  College students tend to have short attention spans and process information differently than other demographics. Since our social media feeds are aimed at college age students, news feeds are effective ways of keeping advertising messages short and to the point. Students also tend to follow their peers so “grabbing the attention of a few will grab the attention to many” (Jennifer Messina, marketing director of The Quarters).  Allowing student customers to upload their own pictures onto Facebook allows for more interaction. Ideally, customers will upload a picture of them dining and tag themselves (linking a user’s name to their face in the album) in a monthly album. This special event would run for the course of the month and at the end, a random customer would be picked for a free lunch item. Posting pictures of the daily special on Facebook alongside a tweet is also an effective way to draw attention amidst a clutter of text. Similarly, followers of the Faculty Club Twitter account can post pictures as well and respond to comments as well to provide a more interactive and personable relationship with students.

Ideas of how using social media can create awareness include following UCSB organizations and tweeting (directing a tweet to a certain party) to them is one way of creating awareness. Re-tweets (reposting tweets by others) are another way to establish a relationship with other tweeters. Social media can also create awareness to the greater UCSB student population by posting tweets on their Facebook home page as well as promoting its twitter page on the Faculty Club website. Banners, posters and fliers can be used to cross-promote the Faculty Club’s Twitter page as well.  Social media can be used to promote daily specials, special events, establish dialogue with followers and other organizations. In addition, both Twitter and Facebook posts act as advertisement itself, by generating awareness of its brand and establishing comprehension with the public.  Faculty Club can use Twitter to establish a dialogue and level of engagement with everyone. Twitter accounts can embody ‘personalities’ to connect with customers so they feel as if they know the restaurant as well as the people behind it.  Twitter can be used to feed off of what followers are talking about. It is a way to get into conversations between tweeters (people who tweet) without being promotional and engaging others in the conversation as well.

More frequent social media updates and motivational promotions (i.e. Twitter coupons) will make Faculty Club more of an online presence among UCSB students.  The monthly Facebook album tagging promotion as described above also provides incentives for students to go to the Faculty Club and try it so that they can photograph themselves there and then enter the Facebook drawing for a free lunch item.  Newsfeed updates can also include daily specials or “fun facts” about the Faculty Club to keep students informed and included in the Faculty Club community.  Social media newsfeed updates and promotions are interactive and accessible to students; frequency of updates, the level of interactivity, promotions that provide incentives, and trivia posts all contribute to the overall advertising goal of raising awareness and comprehension by providing a constant stream of information to student followers.

Guest Room Services Advertising Goal

1. Advertising Goals: Awareness campaign.  The overall UCSB student population is currently 22,850, and UCSB most recently admitted about 3,800 freshmen and 1,500 transfer students.  It is therefore reasonable to assume that flyers in new student packets would reach at least 5,300 parents or guardians.  This is a modest estimate because it only assigns one parent/guardian to each student (because some students may come from single-guardian families). With the addition of placement of these flyers in prime locations on campus such as the admissions office and visitor’s center, as well as the incorporation of the Faculty Club name on respective websites, we can reach far beyond the minimum 5,300.   We therefore aim to grow awareness at least 50% within the market of parents of UCSB students during Phase 3.

2. Target: Our primary target consists of parents of students make up a large pool of consumers that visit frequently throughout the year.

3. Media Dissemination: We created a flyer to insert in the admitted student information packets for freshman and transfer students; this flyer can also serve as a mailer, i.e. for the copy of The Daily Nexus that is sent to new students at their home addresses prior to the first day of classes at UCSB.  In addition, as mentioned above, these flyers can be strategically placed in the UCSB admissions office and visitor’s center for pick-up when parents come to tour the campus.

4. Copy Platform:

3. How Targets Make Decisions About Service: Thinking, high involvement.  When parents are looking for a place to stay in the Santa Barbara/Goleta area, they are usually searching for the most convenient and affordable option. Since parents are visit Santa Barbara primarily to visit their children and are not in the area specifically to seek a pleasurable vacation, it is reasonable to assume that their decision is rooted more in rationality and practicality as opposed to emotion.  Parents are searching for the best value in the most convenient and appealing location close to their university-attending children.  We want to demonstrate to parents that staying at Faculty Club is deluxe yet economical, and to do so we must sway them using logic.

4.  Key Benefits:

1. Functional: Faculty Club can function as a hotel, one that is centered on campus and is within close reach of food, the lagoon, beaches, and the ocean.
2. Characterizational: Staying at the Faculty Club will help parents (a) stay closer to their students who reside in dorm rooms without having to share an extra long twin bed, (b) feel closer to their students since its location gives an understanding of what living the campus lifestyle is like, (c) feel young again and possibly remember their college days, and (d) feel like they are on a beautiful, exotic vacation due to the proximity to and views of the ocean and lagoon.

5. Message Strategy: Preemptive. We used a flyer to make a general claim that the Faculty Club offers guest room services, and we go beyond making a generic ad by stating that Faculty Club’s superiority to other hotels in the area by stating that it offers the best value.

6. Ad Tone: The tone of the flyer is relaxed yet informative.  The relaxed tone emanates the beach-town vibe of the Santa Barbara area, and it acts as assurance that Faculty Club is undoubtedly the most logical hotel choice for a parent visiting his/her child.  The relaxed tone also conveys the effortless simplicity of choice; of course Faculty Club is the ideal hotel location for parents.  The language is more than relaxed; it is also inviting, i.e. “The Faculty Club invites you to stay…”.  The blurb also breezily provides information to parents as to why the Faculty Club is a logical choice.  The relaxed, inviting yet informative tone creates a sense of assuredness and security for parents that they are certainly making the smartest choice by choosing to stay at Faculty Club.

5. Ad and Ad Analysis: Our flyer is geared toward the primary target market of parents of UCSB students.  It emphasizes the Faculty Club’s key benefits of proximity, character, and value.  The tagline, “Stay close, stay connected, stay right,” hits all three of these points. The Faculty Club is situated on campus, making it the best place for parents to stay close to their students. Its location within the heart of the university also helps parents to see campus life for themselves and bond with their students. Finally, the Faculty Club is the best choice of any hotel in the area since it offers the best value for the lowest cost, making it the right choice for visiting parents.

The three photographs exhibit the breathtaking views, fine accommodations, and sight-seeing opportunities for parents when they stay at the Faculty Club. All are part of the experience parents will choose, and these glimpses will leave parents wanting to see more and will encourage them to make reservations. Furthermore, the flyer invites parents to stay and makes them aware of recent renovations, which will establish Faculty Club as a brand new place to stay and will encourage exploration.

The small blurb elaborates on the benefits and unique character of the Faculty Club’s guest room service and the final line allows parents to follow up on the flyer and find more information. This is a key feature of the ad not only for promoting guest rooms, but also for growing awareness and comprehension of the other services available at Faculty Club. Overall the flyer remains simple and clean so as to avoid distracting the eyes of viewers and to present the information in a way that stands out, especially from the other inserts in the packets. The font choice stresses the easy-going beach town culture of the university and the larger fonts highlight the name, Faculty Club, and selling points of the guest room services. The color of the flyer itself is yellow in order to make it stand out from other papers in the information packets where they will be placed.

The bright flyer color, the photographs of tourist scenery, the laid-back font, and the information provided in the blurb all act together to provide parents with information about the Faculty Club’s guest room services.  These elements combined should catch the attention of at least 50% of parents of newly admitted students.

Weddings Advertising Goal

1. Advertising Goals: Awareness campaign.  Since not everyone in the Santa Barbara County community is interested in hosting a wedding, we wish to advertise to those who are.  This will be done by targeting the specific bridal market by using an awareness campaign, which will let future brides and grooms in the community know that the Faculty Club is a place for them to not only have a gorgeous outdoor ceremony and indoor reception complete with catering, but also to spread the word that any guests who need lodging for the event can stay at Faculty Club, as the hotel renovations will have been completed by this time.  According to a study conducted by Get Married Media, 58% of brides use bridal magazines to plan their weddings (http://www.getmarried.com/articles/view/get-married-media-survey-shows-budget-conscious-bride-continues-to-plan-her-dream-wedding-).  This would mean that if we target 1,793 people as we calculated in the “Target” section below, then about 1,040 of them would read the magazines and be likely to see a Faculty Club wedding ad. Therefore, by using the number 1,040, if we wanted to increase awareness by 50% in the first few years of Phase 3, that would mean that 520 brides would have to see the ad and learn that the Faculty Club can be a location for a wedding.  But since 58% of brides read bridal magazines, we decided to set a goal to reach 60% awareness, which would mean that 624 brides would need to see the ad.

2. Target: The main target market for the Faculty Club when it comes to weddings consists of local engaged couples in the Santa Barbara County area.  According to data from 2010, the overall population in the SB County area is a little over 423,000 at 423,895.  13.3% of the population was between the ages of 18 and 24, and 29% of the population consisted of people ranging in age from 25-44. Since most females tend to get married around the age of 29 and men around the age of 31 according to TheKnot.com, most of our target audience would be in the 25-44 age range, but there are some younger engaged couples in the area, so we decided to include the 18-24-year-olds in our target audience as well.  Therefore, by combining these two percentages, we would have an overall percent of 42.3%, which would be 179,308 people.  This does not mean, however, that we are trying to target all of those people in the age range of 18-44 in the Santa Barbara community, as not all of them are planning a wedding. There is no way of knowing how many engaged couples there are in the Santa Barbara County area at any given time, as the number is always changing and fluctuating.  Therefore, it is be safe to assume that of those 179,308 people, perhaps less than one percent of them are engaged, which would be less than 1,793, as this number is not too large.

3. Media Dissemination: In order to reach local brides, grooms, and their families, we created a print advertisement for placement in The Santa Barbara Independent, bridal editions of The Santa Barbara Independent, The Santa Barbara News-Press, and The Daily Sound.  The ad is resizable and can be used in print and on the web.  

4. Copy Platform:

1. How Targets Make Decisions About Service: Thinking, high involvement.  When these couples decide to get married, they will put a large amount of thought into where they will want their wedding ceremony and reception to take place, as this will be a place that they will look fondly upon for the rest of their married lives. And even while this big decision will be an emotional one, as feelings will be running high, this will not be a decision that the couple will make purely on an emotional whim. Therefore, they can be classified as high involvement and high thinking consumers. Not only will they be highly involved when it comes to choosing the venue for their wedding, but they will also invest quite a large amount of thought when it comes to making such a big decision.  These couples need to be aware of what features set Faculty Club apart from other wedding venues and which features make it specifically ideal.

2. Key Benefits:

1. Functional: We wish to let the future newlyweds know that the Faculty Club offers a place for an outdoor ceremony and an indoor reception, while at the same time offering a delicious catering service for the reception.  
2. Characterization: We want to highlight how choosing the Faculty Club as the place for a couple’s wedding will make them feel.  Not only will they have a lovely, stress free wedding because of all that the Faculty Club has to offer them and in such a great location, but they will also be able to afford said wedding as well.

3. Message Strategy: Affective.  We want to involve the target audience by targeting emotion.  As mentioned earlier, the whole time surrounding the engagement period is very emotional, and we think it would be wise to play into that sentiment in order to catch the attention of the local soon-to-be brides and grooms in the area.

4. Ad Tone: We created an emotional yet rational ad.  This ad will not only capture all the emotions that will be running high among target audience members by showing and telling them why they should choose the Faculty Club as their wedding venue, but will also convince them that the Faculty Club is a very logical choice at the same time because of all the services it has to offer and the affordable price tag attached to it.  Therefore, because we would like to highlight the rationality of why engaged couples should choose the Faculty Club as their wedding venue while also emphasizing that it is the right place for their wedding, the ad will also be what is considered two-sided, as we want to include enough facts (but not too many) for them to realize just how wonderful and right for them the Faculty Club is.

1. Ad and Ad Analysis: For the wedding ad that we have created to be placed in local bridal magazines and The Santa Barbara Independent, we have chosen to use a photo of the Faculty Club’s lawn as the background image. We chose to use this image because it will put a picture into the minds of the target audience about what their wedding ceremony might look like before their guests arrive on a gorgeous, sunny Santa Barbara day.  We want potential customers to visualize themselves in the space, or at least give them a general idea of what their wedding ceremony could look like, as they could add their own personal touches to the ceremony, such as flower preferences and more.  In order to help with this visualization, we also added an image of a couple kissing under the archway, so that again, potential customers could see themselves as that couple sharing a romantic moment of their own. Overall, the images in this advertisement go hand-in-hand with our goal of using an affective message strategy that will trigger emotional responses in potential clients.

We also included text in the ad as well because there needs to be some information, but not too much, in order to attract the potential bride and groom’s attention. We listed the name of the Faculty Club and its location at the top of the ad in black so that the couples that are interested will know exactly where the background image was captured.  We also decided to make the top portion of the text look and sound like a formal wedding invitation, as the Faculty Club wishes to invite the couple to come celebrate their wedding vows and reception at their location.  By using this approach, the ad becomes more personalized, and the couple should feel that they are being welcomed and invited by the Faculty Club to come share their wedding day celebration. Furthermore, by making the ad seem more personal, an emotional tone emerges, as the couple will again feel like they are being invited to host their wedding at the Faculty Club.  At the bottom of the ad, the services that the Faculty Club provides in regards to weddings are listed, so that the potential clients will know from the get-go what they will be entitled to on their wedding day.  This portion of the ad also mentions that the prices are affordable, but does not give the exact prices because not only will prices vary depending on the individual couples’ wedding, but listing prices might deter couples trying to save more money.  Couples today are still trying hard to save money on their weddings as a result of the economic state, and for this reason, it is highly important to mention that weddings at the Faculty Club could easily be within their budget (The Knot). Lastly, two forms of contact information are provided at the bottom portion of the ad so that the couple will easily be able to access and gather more information. Therefore, while the top portion of the ad (the invitation) interests the intended target audience by targeting their emotions, the lower half of the text in the ad will provide the rationale of choosing the Faculty Club as the place for their wedding venue, as it is a very logical choice with its cost and all the services it provides.

As mentioned in the media buy report, the advertising goal of this wedding ad is to create awareness.  By not only listing the services that the Faculty Club offers in regards to weddings, but by also providing a visual image to accompany that information, this ad will easily achieve the advertising goal of creating awareness among the Santa Barbara bridal community. Potential brides, grooms, and their families will see this ad and not only learn that the Faculty Club is a venue that can host weddings, but will also see a picture of what their own wedding could look like, gather information about the services provided, and most importantly, learn that those services come at a reasonable price.  

Conclusion

As this concludes the written report for the Point Conceptions Creative Plan, we would like to take the time to thank you for your vested interest in not only this report, but the others that we have produced for you as well.  As we stated from the beginning in our mission statement, we hoped to use our youthful energy to come up with innovate ideas for your company.  We hoped to create an array of advertisements and generate a variety of personalized campaigns tailored to meet your company’s advertising and marketing goals in order to expand your business.  And we hoped to show you the way to success.  But now, all we can do is hope for one more thing: that you, our clients, have learned, with our help, how to ride the perfect wave.