Brand & Communications Management

BC56 Positioning and Creative Strategies

Exam Project for Spring 2013 Semester

For the final assignment, you are asked to choose a brand whose advertising you would like to analyse, and
select an advert from its current or recent campaign. You will also need to find and analyse an advert for that
brands two major competitors. For the assignment, we are asking you to analyse print adverts, even if the
brand and its competitors also (or even primarily) use broadcast. This assignment is in three parts.

Part one: Brand Advertising Strategy and Execution

Analyse the strategy and execution of your brands print advert in terms of its likely effectiveness.
In this analysis you will want to pay particular attention to:
1. Likely target audience and resonance
2. Positioning strategy in terms of the three steps to positioning
3. Brand awareness and brand attitude strategy
4. Creative strategy and tactics

In your analysis, if applicable, you may wish to consider some of the following:
Appletons prospect and refuge theory
Embodied emotions
Hammonds reconceptualization of Mowers work
McGuires inoculation theory; two factor analysis of anxiety
Shearmans ideas on liminal space
Sherif and Hovlands assimilation-contrast theory
Tulvings ideas on encoding specificity
VisCAP model
Visual imagery and psycholinguistic understandings for optimizing attention and learning

PLEASE NOTE: not all of these theories and models are applicable in all cases, nor do they
represent an exhaustive list. They, and others, may or may not help in the analysis of a particular
advert, depending upon its brand attitude strategy and the execution


Part two: Competitive Advertising Analysis

Analyse the two competitive adverts in the same manner as the analysis above for your brand.

PLEASE NOTE: the analysis of your brand and its competitors will be marked in terms of its
correctness with regard to the brand awareness and brand attitude assumptions you make, not
whether that assumption is correct. As discussed in class, while some assumptions are generally
straight-forward (eg. Pain relievers are LI/I, soft drinks are LI/T, computers are HI/I, and high
fashion HI/T), we can never be 100% sure because everything is target audience dependent and we
do not have the marketing plan. The analysis must be consistent with the processing requirements of
the brand awareness and brand attitude strategy assumed.

Part Three: Reccomendations for Next Generation Advertising

Based upon the analysis of your brands advert and its competitors, what would be your
recommendation for the next generation of your brands advertising?
1. Is the positioning correct or should it be modified or even repositioned? If so, discuss why
and how. If not, discuss why not.
2. If you identified problems with the executions creative tactics, how should they be
corrected? If not, how might the execution be strengthened?

PLEASE NOTE: we are not asking you to create a new advert, only to discuss how you see the
advertising changing or evolving strategically in terms of positioning and creative execution.




Length of paper: 10 pages
Due date: 13
th
May 2013
Language: English

The assignment must be a typed text of 10 pages (excl. appendices). Absolutely no more than 10
pages. (an average page =2.275 characters incl. space). What is beyond 10 pages will not be
included in the evaluation. There should only be a very limited number of appendices.
Prof. Percy may be reached with questions at: larrypercy@larrypercy.com

Please hand in your project to: Helle Bunde (SP D3.44) between 10.00am-12.00noon in 2 copies