So throughout the blog we have briefly explained our initial ideas and how we intend to follow through with these. We have decided to bring all this information together in one large collective post in order to provide a clear, simple structure.
The Objective: To create an online presence for a product called ‘The Bearded Brew’. We intend to follow up with some of the designs that have already been created for this beer and turn it into an online interactive experience, free from corporate restrictions, and spreadsheet jargon. We are keen to complete this project in the most creative way possible and therefore want to almost challenge ourselves to take on roles and responsibilities that we haven’t encountered before.
Target Audience: After some research we found that our target audience would be quite a varied one, as we want to reach as many people as possible with the product, and therefore we want to avoid creating something that will only appeal to a niche audience. Looking at statistics, men tend to drink more alcohol than women. Men aged 18-49 drink the most, according to the Gallup poll, which explains why so much alcohol marketing seems to target them. For example, the ‘Fosters’ television adverts tend to glorify men and sexualize women, conforming to the marketing stereotypes that aim to appeal more at men over women. Another survey suggested that it all depends on the alcohol product, for example 55 percent of men prefer beer and 52 percent of women prefer wine. For this reason, our beer product will almost naturally aim more towards a male dominated audience than female, however not because of the design elements in our approach. In order to showcase the product itself, as well as our online website for it, we have decided to host an events evening, that will allow locals in the area to come and try the beer for themselves. We believe this evening will play an important role in our module this semester, as it will be important in making sure the website is up and running smoothly, and catering to customers the way we want it to. We intend to host this event late November, early December time and this will allow us to inherit feedback in order to perfect the website as much as we possibly can. Overall, with regard to our target audience, we have a clear idea that we want to get as many people involved as possible, however restrictions on age will obviously play a part. Our audience are those that will be able to embrace the fun, lighthearted approach to the design of this website and those that enjoy drinking beer, a good beer at that.
Market/Competitors: The competition in the alcoholic beverage market is very high standard. Many larger brewing companies have sleek, professional looking websites, and a solid brand identity already in place. However, this is largely the bigger, more well known companies, such as Sierra Nevada (http://www.sierranevada.com/beer), one of the largest craft beers in the world. Smaller craft beers often just sell their product through their parent brewing company, of which the main focus is on. For instance, https://www.brewdog.com/ just gives a short description of it’s beers, it doesn’t create a narrative like we want to. Since we’re not focusing on the Pheasantry (the brewery The Bearded Brew is produced at), it provides us the exciting opportunity to really focus all our attention on this one craft beer. In terms of displaying their products online, all the companies I have researched simply show images of their beers. It would separate us from our competitors if we were able to use software like Agisoft Photoscan to display a full 3d rendering of the product.
– Alice and Alex