Embrace Messy Hair

Week 1

To begin the production process, my team and I began by researching the previous "L'Oreal Studio Line" campaign. We did this is to critically analyse what the previous marketers had done.

In addition to this, I also conducted primary research via means of open style interviews and closed style questionnaires to offer a wider scope of the target audience (18 - 24 year olds). From this, we learnt about how the demographic recieve and interpret advertisments, as well as information regarding the product itself. We also came across "Embrace Messy Hair", a slogan that seems to have high status in popular culture, yet has not been monopolised by a brand.

Week 2

Having researched our demographic, we then began to develop some initial ideas that could be applied to the 360 degree campaign.  I proposed several storyboarded ideas that were received well by the group, and after some feedback and advice from them we settled on two main concepts for a video advert that could be applied to an overall 360degree marketing campaign. My original idea was to make a cinematic style advert, featuring a smartly dressed man in a suit with combed, flat and boring hair to wash up on a desert island. Upon struggling to crawl up a beach, the man discovers one of the “Matt & Messy” products, which he applies, resulting in his hair looking messy yet appealing, whilst simultaneously losing the suit to be replaced with typical beach shorts and flip flops, surrounded by fellow “desert islanders” who also apply the range of products to have the same effect. I felt this was a strong idea as it is a funny play on roles; you wouldn’t expect a man to wash onto a desert island in a clean cut suit and combed hair.

Another idea that was proposed was to film six different stereotypes from some of the nations that use “Matt & Messy” product; USA, UK, France, Germany, Italy & Japan. The idea was to film each stereotype in front of a green screen and impose the most notable geographical location of that stereotype behind them. Once they were introduced to the product, they lost their ‘stereotype’ and were all united with similar hair styles, enforcing the idea that the product is fun to use, brings people together and allows you to change your appearance. 

This idea developed into a more dynamic model for fear that the backgrounds would take the attention away from the hair, which would completely defy the objective of the campaign. Taking inspiration from the famous ‘iPod’ adverts that feature silhouettes in front of block colour backgrounds, we decided to replace the initial ‘stereotype’ backgrounds with the block colours of the “Studio Line” logo. This would focus the audience’s attention to the hair of the models and re-inforce the company’s brand image, whilst simultaneously conforming to the successful style of the use of block colour in popular culture.

Week 3

After devising a final concept, we began the production process. I organised models and a hair & make up student, as well as the rest of the production team for a video and photo shoot using a "Canon 550D", a camera that offers superb photography as well as high quality, intricately detailed video footage which we wanted to exploit to draw the audience's attention to the hair of the models. Using a storyboard and a shot list I had devised earlier in the week, I was able to orchestrate an efficient shoot. Using six lights, we were able to successfully light the models, the green screen background and most importantly the models' hair. 

Week 4

The post-production process posed many opportunities and challenges that had not been anticipated during the pre-production process. 

The most significant development was an issue that we encountered regarding the green-screen. Using "Adobe After Effects", we tested selecting & removing the green-screen background with intent of replacing it with block colour as discussed above. When removing the green background, as well as surrounding fuzz, it appeared that long hair seemed to become very grainy, poor in quality and looked terrible. 

This led us to the question; stick to our original idea or develop and adapt to a new solution? The unanimous decision to develop our idea was agreed, and we decided to adjust our concept to feature just a single colour background, which turned out to have the positive effect of further drawing the audience’s attention on the models.

After this, I created some mock-ups on "Adobe Photoshop" to replicate what the adverts would look like in a practical context.

I've enjoyed working on this project, it has taught me new skills and developed my existing ones. Working in an effective and coherent team, I am happy that together we produced good material that was presented well to the client (via video), and that we devised an effective 360 degree marketing campaign that covered the entire spectrum of modern media. Particular attention to social networking allowed us to experiment with different ways of approaching our target audience, that we were able to perform effectively thanks to primary and secondary research.