OUGD603 - DBA Capital North Initial Ideas/ Brainstorming

Group (5) : Daisy Conway, Mel Hardcastle, Sarah Goldthorpe, Danielle Harrison & Sarah Heal

After our initial brainstorming session today, we established that the concept and themes for this project are the most important of all. We realised that we have to make our concept more prominent and memorable to not only make our project stand out, but to inform all our visuals for the brand and most of all - make it interesting for ourselves! We found that a lot of existing brands that fulfil similar briefs were uninspiring for us, leading us to define what we DIDN'T want our project to be like: 

Since we were confined to not using stereotypes and not referring to the landscape aka 'rolling hills', this limited our idea possibilities down quite significantly.

 We also decided to make our campaign none-competitive through referring to others; as in we shouldn't compare the north to the south, but we should be comparing the north to existing preconceptions about the north. However, adverts like the first 'visit scotland' are rather uninspiring - we knew we needed another angle that isn't just 'bet you didn't know we had this-'

Sarah Goldthorpe was particularly interested in this advert because it was a little humorous but it compared California to itself rather than anywhere else, leaving the viewer to decide what to compare it to. The rest of the group liked it, but found it rather cheesy, which Northern English typically are not.

We then decided to explicitly write down points that we think defined the north from other areas. Aside from landmarks, food and local dialect the main difference we found between the north of England and the rest of the country was the people seemed to be friendlier/ more approachable and that it seemed to be cheaper - adding to the overall quality of life (subjective).

We then started to come up with marketing- orientated ideas that we could use to help sell our idea of Capital North:

The North is More 
North of England is more than people think it is.

'Less is North'
This concept was my idea, because I was trying to push how we could market the idea of breaking down negative preconceptions of the North. I thought that the idea that we have 'less' than the south- but in a good way. The main idea sprung from the negatives of living in London - the north is 'less busy', 'less crowded', 'less stressful' - a reverse way of saying we have more.

The North is Growing
The idea that the north is never a static place, and that it is constantly evolving and moving - it's in a state of becoming, and to become it needs others to join.

The North is Connected
A very literal translation of the HS3 train development.