The journey comes to an end.
Today is my submission date, I have finished all of my outcomes leaving a reasonable and sound amount of spare time for any necessary revisions and final reflections. After the past few weeks I have seen my project evolve and shift into many things I did not anticipate that it would, I experienced a couple of bumps along the way and had to overcome my of fear of doing collaborative work, but at the end, it was all worth it.
I went in with the mentality that I was going to create a real brand and therefore, I had to come up with real life solutions for things such as budget, consumer interaction and managing third-party providers. Having made the decision to create my marketing strategy as a realistic and economically viable plan imported a lot of restriction to my creative freedom, for instance I had to be resourcefully think of ways of engaging with consumers exclusively online and without the use of any paid advertisement in order to keep costs low, even though I really wanted to incorporate an offline touchpoint to the brand. Yet, I was able to use this as an opportunity to learn quick problem solving skills and exercise my creative brain into looking for ways of turning around and cuttings costs to ensure that the level of quality of my brand would meet industry standards. Another challenges includes having to learn how to behave at a professional level with the interpersonal relationships maintained between me and my graphic designer and consumes focus groups. Good communication skills and a friendly mode-of-address ended being essential skills that I did not anticipated I would have needed for the completion of this project.
One very important aspect about my journey has to do with learning and listening to the advice and recommendation being given to me by my supervisor, Jess. Jess works as a beauty journalist so she knows much more than me about the industry and how brand launches usually operate. Therefore, having her input was instrumental at making sense of my ideas and examining where there missing opportunities for me to tackle. For instance, one of her suggestions to me was that I should add a more personal touch to my brand document by making a page about myself as the founder which was something that I had no thought about but made perfect sense since one of my strategies was using my social media following to attract consumers.
Lastly, I feel the need to report back to my experience and learnings from my Fashion Theory Dissertation. During that module I wrote a study about how marketing influences beauty consumption by promoting a symbolic value to cosmetic products which are representative of the consumers underlying aspirational needs. In many ways, my brand and strategy plan are the perfect example of how my argument in that paper is truthful. For instance, one of the brand USP’s is the idea of mindful and eco-friendly consumption, which to a consumer who likes this ethos or practices this lifestyle would find that purchasing a product by BRIXI would help promote a feeling of self-actualisation and fulfilment of one’s desire to be a part of that niche.
Overall, I genuinely believe this was the best piece of academic work I have ever produces. I utilised similar softwares to the ones I was already accustomed but I had to develop a completely new sense of repurpose of skills to meet the industry standard that would be expected from a real brand. Furthermore, I created a marketing plan which is not only useful for me and my own career aspirations, but could be repurposed for many start-up brands in a similar position to mine. Therefore, demonstrating its validity to the industry at large.
Total wordcount (11 posts): 10.659
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