Individual Professional Review
The target market that was chosen for our project was young single mums with a single, low income although with possible financial support from their parents or an ex-husband. The low income of this group enabled us to promote saving money as a benefit and saving energy in the process. We believed this to be much more marketable and likely to alter behaviour.
One of my main roles was developing Photoshop images for the advertising section of the campaign. These images would be displayed throughout
Nottingham city centre, on our website, our partner’s website (British Gas) and at our event therefore playing a key role in the overall campaign and branding of our charity. Also, through the process of our campaign I tried to ensure consistent branding throughout the entire project e.g. fonts, logos, colours all with relevance towards our target market. Throughout the whole process I feel that as a group we all equally contributed to the overall focus of the campaign.
Nonetheless, there are several aspects vital to the success of our campaign that
I feel could have been done to a higher quality or with more reasoning, thought and planning. Although I was not directly responsible for some of these aspects, in retrospect I should have had a more proactive approach to their outcome and
I still had still had a part in the responsibility of them.
Throughout the course of this project I believe I played several roles. Using
Belbin’s team roles (1981) I believe I was a co-ordinator, monitor evaluator
(especially in relation to the managing of the brand), and specialist (in relation to the Photoshop images and campaign poster production and design). In line with some of the weaknesses of the monitor evaluator I believe sometimes I was seen to be over-critical, although I feel this was constructive and in order for the project and campaign to be improved. The monitor evaluator role was one that I felt ran throughout the entirety of the project, contributing ideas and making decision to many of the separate elements. I felt this was necessary to the quality of the campaign; to ensure all elements linked and were in accordance with the concept and target market.
Without the campaign posters and many other of the graphics produced to a sufficient quality there would be little promotion of the actual issue we were attempting to promote and increase awareness of. Also, they would be the most prominent way of promoting our brand and issue to the consumer. The campaign posters communicated our message to a wider audience, rather than just existing British Gas customers which would be targeted through mailshot or e-mail. During the production and design of the campaign posters I looked significantly at what meaning would be communicated to the consumer. I used semiotics, defined as how meaning is created (Berger 1998) to try and directly target our market therefore creating a relevant brand and image for them to relate to. The signs and the connotation of them are vital to the meaning of the posters. Signs
1

are defined by Berger (1998) as a combination of signifiers and signified. The signifiers being the poster and signified being the information that a large proportion of energy is wasted through unnecessary lighting or standby consumption. This could be evaluated further, for instance, the unlit light bulb in figure 1 could be seen as the signifier and the signified the lack of energy usage.
The message conveyed here is that people should turn their lights off more, or be more conscious of their consumption of energy. Along with the message to the left of the image, this is what the single mother should connote from the sets of images produced.

Figure 1

The placement of the campaign posters and billboards could have been more imaginative, although city centre billboards and buses will enable the target market to see the campaign, using other methods