The National Student Advertising Competition (NSAC) is the most challenging student advertising program in the United States. During the competition, a corporate sponsor provides a real world situation to challenge student's critical thinking abilities and creativity. 2014 NSAC's client was Mary Kay. Students were required to research the product and its competition, identify potential problems, and develop an integrated communications campaign for the client. Each student team then "pitches" its campaign to a panel of judges.
I was a member of Buffalo Advertising, the team that represent West Texas A&M University. We developed 'Boundless' as the integrated and creative solution for Mary Kay. I was involved in positions extending from the research process to creative executions. Moreover, I served as the Project Manager and Graphic Designer for the team.
THE RESEARCH
In order to develop the campaign and understand the brand, we gathered more than 1400 reseach impressions. From ethnographic studies to attending a variety of Mary Kay parties.
We researched and analyzed multiple studies about our target market's consumer behavior.
Accordingly, we learned everything about our Target Market (Gen Y females 18-25 years old), which we re-named as Genny.
This knowledge helped us redefine our target market into three different segments based on product differentiation and stages of makeup usage.
THE STRATEGY
After our research, we develop a campaign based on the uniqueness and endless opportunities brought to the consumer by Mary Kay. Boundless is a campaign that promotes the connection between the brand (Mary Kay) and the consumer (Genny) by relating experiences women encounter such as ending up with unused makeup in a drawer, or women's preference to try goods before buying them. This campaign emphasizes the try-before-you-buy satisfaction guarantee of Mary Kay as well as the connection created between Mary Kay beauty consultants and consumers.
Instead of a generic fantasy created with unrealistic faces of models, Boundless promotes the practicality of Mary Kay. Like these print ads
We also implemented numerous tactics for mobile and digital media. From creating an interactive consumer driven mobile app, push notifications, rewards and sampling, and a second screen strategy to a fully integrated microsite.
In addition to these tactics, several PR and Guerrilla Marketing ideas were designed with the most relevent content in order to advertise Mary Kay for a full year. These tacticts were implemented with respect to a 360 media cycle.
THE EVALUATION
These tacticts tripled with benchmark research and an extensive detailed media plan resulted in over a billion campaign impressions.
This media plan was awarded and titled the best and most complete media plan in the District 10 NSAC Regional Competition. The campaign was awarded third place overall.
You can access to the full version the campaign's plansbook at http://goo.gl/Z4FjuB
