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• The course is being created to fill the gap between a college course and going onto university.

• It aims to offer its students a new opportunity to enter a graphic design career without having to go through the university environment.

• More students would attend and this would equal more funding for the college.

• It would create more publicity nationally, and in time internationally, depending on the development of the course.

• The college could be marketed to a wider audience, i.e – through the UCAS website. This would mean potentially students from across counties and across the country.

Why is the course being created? (describe the gap in the market that is it filling, how the course will benefit the college, and list any other reasons

– you may need to research this)?

What are the benefits, key successes of this course that need to be shared with the audience?

The benefits for its audience (the students) would include:

• Extensive use of lynda.com. This is a specialised site for in-depth tutorials through a range of self learning and self-taught subjects.

• Links with people of the design industry such as the lecturers who have worked and work in a range of design fields. For example: architecture, illustration and self employment.

• Strong links to local universities such as Chichester.

• Access to a HE room which offers high spec. mac computers and ipads for its students.

• Live projects will be incorporated into the course enabling the students to have their work seen by a larger audience.

What unique value will the course provide their most valuable customer? How does this compare with other similar courses? (unit 20 – 4.2)

• The course offers professional experience and allows its students to explore their creativity and their design skills. This is achieved by being informed about design and gaining relevant work experience within the industry.

• The course aims to cover elements such as: design principles, history of design, typography, advertising, visual communication, illustration, ideas generation, referencing and professional practice.

• Comparing this course to similar courses within universities, the HNC/HND course at South Downs College aims to offer a similar standard of education but within a smaller, local and personalised environment. This includes self-directed study time with two full days of guided learning.

Given college resources, what will the branding focus on to begin with? (e.g. increasing brand awareness locally so as to attract local students, increasing brand awareness to attract national students; increasing

brand awareness to international students; targeting students from the existing college (i.e. repeat business).

• The initial stages of the branding would focus on fonts, colour and layout as well the fine details of the course.

• It will also focus on promoting the course through the use of social media in order to increase its brand awareness to potential local students. When the course has become established and grows in funding, it will have the opportunity to advertise across different platforms, including print based materials as well as on the web.

• The targeting of international students will primarily come through UCAS.

• Students within this college can be targeted through Open Evenings and through in-college advertising.

What is a typical ‘customer’ profile? Create a fictitious character – give a description of the person, complete with photo, name, some personal background

and a personality type. How could you tailor the branding to attract this person?

Sarah Paper

Age: 18Location: GosportBio: Sarah has previously studied Art and Design, Graphics, English and Photography at A-level. She is unsure what to do next wherever this be university or an apprenticeship route. She travels from Gosport on the bus everyday, and to pass her time on this journey she will go on her mobile phone and browse her instagram, facebook twitter and gossip to her friends. Sarah is a typical girl and enjoys shopping, to do this she also catches the bus.

How could you tailor the branding to attract this person?

To tailor the advertising and branding to attract Sarah we could advertise on bus stops, buses once the funding has increased for the course. However during the early establishment of the course where there is little funding the main marketing would take place on social media and this therefore would reach Sarah and her friends. Sarah when in conversation could further promote the course.

What does the big picture look like (What are the client’s long term aims)? Are there any unmet customer needs that can be looked at?

Or opportunities to differentiate the course further? (unit 20 – 4.2).

• The client’s long term aims are to hopefully extend past the local area – eventually having a presence nationally. It could also potentially encourage international students, all of whom are in the age range of 18-21.

• There are no similar courses in the area so therefore we are meeting the unmet needs of students.

• In the future we could offer the option of specialising within a certain design field. This could be: typography, photography, fashion, product and interior design – this would help students go on to achieve jobs within the relevant industry. This would therefore differentiate the course further.

How have trends changed regarding student behaviour: e.g. distance students will travel to higher education courses, types of courses students pick, reasons for picking courses?

What are the barriers to students’ learning (and what has caused these)? Describe how this market research information can be used to support brand strategy decisions (unit 4 - 2.3).

• Fees within higher education university courses are rising and living costs are also continuing to do so. This means that courses like this within a college environment are likely to become increasingly popular, allowing students to live at home with parents without the need to travel far, whilst completing a course at HE level.

• The cost of enrolling in this course is lower than a similar course at university.

Identify a range of storytelling techniques that are used in branding (unit 4 – 2.5) Consider how this information could be used to help form the HND brand. What is the brand’s story?

• Skip the slow parts: As we would need to retell the HNC/HND course specifics over and over to a range of different students, it would become more beneficial to focus on the key aspects of what the the course offers i.e – use of lynda.com and links to Chichester university. This will ensure that the target audience will not lose interest in the course.

• Make it personal: By making the course personal the students can relate to what they are being offered and trust the lecturers knowledge. Its important for the lecturers to gain a good rapport with the students, so they both feel that they understand each other.

• Follow a classic story pattern: By following a classic story pattern, it creates a clear path and structure for the students to aspire to an end goal. For example this could be a job that they want or a specific career path they could follow.

What are the existing problems / on-going challenges that the client faces? Can these be helped by the branding?

•The biggest problem that the client would experience is having to break even in order for the course to have continued funding.

• Another continuing problem could be the ability to get enough students on the course, however through clever use of advertisement this can be easily achieved.

• A third problem is the competition against other colleges – the branding of the HNC/HND course would need to be unique and differ from other college courses to grab the attention of its target audience.

Identify what design aspects of the course can be branded. Consider: products; communications (online and print); marketing; advertising; and promotion.

Where could this be shown? Given the budget, what is best to target first (consider target market)?

• Given the budget the primary focus would be social media and web-based marketing material. Our target market is 18-21 year olds so therefore young adults, who use social media on a daily basis.

• Once the course has more funding it could look at using leaflets, flyers and branded stationery as a second way of advertisement. These could be distributed within the college and in the local area, e.g – shopping centres and fitness centres.

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