Entrepreneurialism adds a value perspective...
The Challenge:
In response to a selection of 21st century innovative toaster designs, mixed groups of three students were challenged to design the packaging for their toaster design. The Judge is a green customer, and will select the winner based not only on which package is the most eye-catching and effective in terms of product marketing, but also on which product package helps them make the greenest purchase decision. Therefore, the key criterion of this challenge is to highlight the sustainable and green features of the toaster.
Skills Takeaway
This challenge is useful to make participants think about how the customer views the product on a store-shelf. Participants learn how the logo, tag-lines, benefits, features, colour scheme and other details help to attract, educate, and aid in the final purchase decision.
Lessons:
1. Market the product
2. Sell the benefits not just the features
3. Think like the customer
Wider Reading
Reflection
After each challenge, students are invited to submit a reflection on their method and procedures relating to the challenge and their learning outcomes. Reflecting on the aspects of the experience will improve their learning and give them the chance to realise that every experience, every success and failure, offers a chance to learn, improve and develop. The best reflection receives an award, and will be posted beneath each challenge.
Advertising is all around us, a part of daily life that cannot be avoided. Companies use adverts to get people to buy their products, and so that they become a recommended provider. ZenithOptimedia, a market research firm, estimates spending on advertising is over £250 billion worldwide, supporting thousands of companies and millions of jobs. This is how important advertising is. We are surrounded by it in the supermarket, TV and magazines. For example, in a football match, players wear the logos of their different sponsors along with banners surrounding the pitch. The next time you watch a blockbuster movie, make sure you also keep an eye out for the products placed in the film by advertising agencies. The amount of advertising we see, means that consumers like ourselves often lean towards a single company (e.g. Apple) and buy without even considering other options that could be better suited to your needs.
In this innovation challenge, we chose a transparent toaster to try and advertise as it seemed like the most energy saving and therefore the most environmentally friendly toaster out of the ones on offer. However, we, as a team did not include all of the information necessary to attract the green customer and instead focused more on how the box looked visually. We included colours such as blue, yellow and green as we thought that the buyer may be interested in a product displaying basic, natural colours.
This innovation challenge has made me consider all of the different aspects that helps a product become a big success. Designing and making the toaster box were two completely things and were a lot harder than I originally imagined. Trying to appeal to all different types of people while staying on the environmental topic was quite difficult, especially with a 50 minute deadline! Condensing the information small enough so that it could easily be seen by a customer also proved to be difficult and time consuming.
This challenge has also taught me how much advertising impacts our decision on whether to buy one product or another. It shown me that no matter how good a product is, if it doesn't have a marketing campaign to support it, people will simply not buy the product; first impressions count!