BPS V1

Function

A local entertainment guide for 20 - 30 year olds. The guide lists food and drink specials, events and some editorial information about the scene.

Content

Food special

Drink specials

Events

Editorials

A) THE CUTT Careless fun 

A rude and gritty street level guide. The content will have an anti-establishment underground feel to it. How to keep your dollas away from the man by following the specials around town. Its about keeping your shirt on your back, unless YOU feel like ripping it off.

From mood boards

B) DEN days evening nights story line

The guide tells a story from cover to cover. The story will run parallel with all the listings. So in the drink specials section the story line would have drinks or some sort of metaphorical reference to drinks. The style is surreal and slightly abstract.

From mood boards

C) DRINK simple & informative

The guide focuses on the drinks and the establishments. Features for amazing new drinks invented locally great new types of alcohol and some local reviews of the scene. A quick simple reference guide. Strong use of symbols will be incorporated to list commonly desired features such as TV's, pool tables etc.

From mood boards

Proposal

Introduction

My Proposal is about showing people what Richmond has to offer in the way of fun for 20 - 30 year olds. It addressing peoples inability to efficiently pick good places to let loose and have a good with-out breaking the bank. I’m going to suggest a few different solutions for informing these people of all the great opportunities their city has to offer.

Problem

Planning a night can be extremely annoying and difficult. People don’t know what to do or where to go. They scan their mental rolodex’s with a maximum of two or three places appearing. This leads to consistent frequenting of the same places. (Ground hog night) As a result, people get bored. And Instead of moving on to new places, they slowly stop going out. People need to have fun it relives stress, it allows for social interaction, its an important part of life.

There are great parties, events and specials every night, but its difficult to know when and where everything is. Sometimes people forget, some times people just don’t know. What ever the reason, people are not having as much fun as they could. So how do people find the really good places to go? 

Solution

My solution is to create a guide that informs people of the opportunities for entertainment that are available in their city. I want to inspire ideas. I want to spread the word to every one in the target demographic. I want to make planning a day or night a fun and easy decision. Its my goal to add more variety to peoples entertainment palettes.

This generation enjoys variety. They are open to recommendations, if it’s coming from a credible source. That is one of the things this guide will strive to accomplish, connecting with the target market and becoming a credible source.

The guide will help the local bars, restaurants and clubs that are offering great deals and great events. It takes away the smoke and mirrors and gets down to who is really offering something of value to the customer. These are the places that will receive the most praise.

We the customer should show support toward establishments that offer specials and events. It encourages more owners to hold special nights, which saves money for the patrons. It also generates word of mouth marketing, an immeasurable tool in creating awareness and provoking action. All these elements create a larger clientele pool. This is good for the economy.

I am going to use Richmond for my example. I have the greatest understanding of this city. Richmond has a divers range of bars and restaurants. This is adequate for the testing of this concept. If it becomes successful, the sky’s the limit as to how far the guide could go.

Audience

19-29

Male and female

This is a generation coming into it’s own. All the wonderful things that life has to offer like debt and expenses of living on your own are becoming a reality. But they still like to have fun and are going to be open to new ways of entertaining themselves for a reasonable price. This is a generation that scours Ebay and Amazon looking for the best products and the best prices.

This group is very wise to advertising so it’s necessary to offer them something of true value. Or you will not hold their attention. They are very socially active and aware. This generation isn’t quite as attached to the Internet as the next generation, so there is still a hunger to be out in the world socializing. The locals usually have places that they regular, but it is easy to make a patron defect with a promise of more for their money.

Another target market is tourism. Going to a new city always presents the problem of where to go. If you don’t know anyone locally it can be really hard to find out what’s good. As I’ve mentioned before special nights bring in the crowds, so they simply have to follow the specials, or they can search reviews.

Objectives and criteria

I have 3 different approaches using three different mediums to execute this solution

The first is a site with live feeds of clubs and bars. The second is an application for mobile devices. The third is a printed guide that speaks directly to the market about one thing, entertainment. Of all three I am definitely leaning towards the printed guide. I think it would be the most appropriate choice for this project.

1) Website: Construct a site with all the local bars and clubs listed. What will make this different than sites like Clubvibes is a live feed of the club. Each club simply installs one or more web cams so that users can see inside the club live. Another addition to the site is a meter linked to the door mans clicker that tells users how full or empty an establishment is. A web cam outside can show line ups. A virtual tour can be used to check out the layout of the club. (extras can be set up all over to create a party atmosphere)

I would also ad an interactive element to the site where people can submit comments and reviews and photos of different places.

2) Application: An application paired up with your GPS map that directs you to the best bar for you in any given area. If somebody is looking for a good beer special it will list the closest and most relevant location. So the system is geographically driven, the search results will always change according to your location and specific desire.

3) Printed party guide: A young, cool, underground like publication. The contents will consist of food and drink specials, events, cool places to go, short editorials and ads. I plan to use a rating system to decide which spots to recommend and show why they are the best places. This is a publication that speaks to its readers on a more personal level. It’s not corporate or mainstream in any way. It’s a publication with an opinion and an attitude and a style.

This guide is talking to one group about one thing, entertainment. Locals of that target age group will write the editorials. They will document their experiences in that city and draw conclusions and recommendations from those experiences.

All the best drink specials will be listed and categorized in order of greatness. All relevant events in the city will be listed in the events section to keep people current with things like sports games with beer gardens, raves, shows etc.

This guide would be distributed around the city in all the places frequented by my market: bars, restaurants, clubs, clothing stores hotels, the Airport etc. Every month a cool new cover is made and a new issue. Being free will ensure that users have no dilemma taking the guide. It seems like something of value for free.

A guide listing the drink specials would be an invaluable tool. For some people going out at night can cost $50 – $200, this really ads up. Drink specials can be more than 50% at st some places. This is a big deal. For people going out one or more times a week. This could ad up to thousands in savings each year.

Research

I have searched Richmond for all existing guides within my city. All the guides I found were very similar in content and style. There are no guides that contain drink specials; the guides that are around are pretty bland and general. They are text heavy and the pictures are boring. These guides are meant for tourists aged 30+ The local government guides come out once a year, the commercial ones are more frequent, seasonal and monthly.

I have looked on the Internet for existing party guides, there are quite a few. They list drink specials, and there are rating systems and voting already out there. I have found a few sites on the Internet about drink specials, but there were problems with all of them. The sites didn’t draw you in. They appeared very unprofessional, and they where hard to navigate. The layout of the sites is all quite amateurish.

Seeing as I am my own target market id like to add some personal insight into the subject. From 17 – 24 I went out 1-2 times during the week. The venue we chose was always a special of some sort, which is what brought in the crowds. I can’t stress enough how effective drink specials are. I can say personally that I would definitely use a guide like this.

Then there are the weekends. The weekends were never about drink specials. The weekends were about the crowds. Bars don’t need specials to bring people in on the weekends. The weekends are all about momentum. I’ve seen bars gain and loose momentum. It’s a game of tug of war with neighboring establishments.

In 2006 the buck and ear gained an amazing amount of momentum, there started to be a lot of beautiful girls there and it didn’t go unnoticed. It became the talk of the town drawing in large crowds. I over heard some guys waiting inline from surrey, saying they heard there where allot of hot girls here on Fridays. Word travels. Eventually the hype died down and the popularity decreased. It’s still the best place to go in Richmond on Friday, but its no longer over capacity with long line-ups. The popularity of a bar is controlled by outside factors. Mob rules in this realm. Speak to the mob if you want the business.

Future research

To research my target market I am going to set up a questioner and have 50 – 100 people fill it out. I want to know things like where they go, why, how much they spend. I will also ask what they would think of a guide with all this information. Would they find it useful? What elements do they like or dislike. Is there anything they would ad. I will also observe and have simple conversations with people about the subject to gain more personal insight. I want to know what makes them choose to go out and what are the deciding factors in choosing a venue.

I will research the local establishments I plan to include with a questioner and personal observations. What are there busiest nights, why are they busy those nights, what type of crowd comes in, demographics. What are there food and drink specials. What type of menu have they got? Do they have an attractive staff? What is the set up like? How many TVs do they have? Do they show sports games.

Finally I will research the business potential, can it be profitable. How will the guide bring in revenue? How much should be charged for ad space. What are the costs associated with printing and distribution. How big would the staff need to be? What types of talent need to be brought in? How much of this can I do my self? These are all important questions to ask in order to gauge the feasibly of this project. Can it work?

Educational outcomes

I will learn to conduct interviews and produce questioners that I will have filled out by people in my target market. I will create a brand for my guide that identifies with my target market. I will make a piece that utilizes most of the elements I have learned in school. I’d like to combine photography with editorial, I want to design a brand, a logo and aesthetic that are my own. I’m hoping to have at least one printed editorial piece for my portfolio. 

Guide exploration

For my research I scoured my city for every free Richmond Guide I could find. There are also a few Vancouver guides that mention Richmond and are always distributed there, I will be including them in my research. 

Looking at these guides has given me a good idea of what's here and what's missing. I must admit there has been a major improvement in The Richmond tourist boards free guides compared to last year. The content has doubles and some design considerations where actually put into their work. So my hat goes off to them for noticing how terrible it was. 

They have clearly made and attempt to appeal to the younger generation with designs and putting a little more emphasis on entertainment. But I still think the guides are week and boring for my demographic. 

The private guides like; Where and Visitors choice, have always had nicer design, layout and content. But they are still talking to the goodie goodies that want to do boring things like go hiking and look at native art. These guides have a responsibility to stay neutral and not stick out too much. They all have a broad target audience and they have brands and cities to represent. 

This is how my guide would differ. I have the freedom to say and do what ever I want. Their are no corporate or government rules I need to adhere to. Unleash a creative mind on a city, what fun. 

Please try not to fall asleep while viewing these guides.

Magazine exploration

When I started my search for cool youth-full publications I had low expectations. I didn't think there would be much out there in the way of great design. They usually just put the really hot girl on the cover, yada yada yada. As soon as I stepped into chapters the magazines with unique style and personality began to leap out of the book shelf. Right off the bat I learned two lesson. There are a ton of highly designed magazines out there and its not going to be easy to be original. Secondly I learned you need to be unique, original and eye pleasing to get picked up.

This doesn't mean that content is not important, but it is my feeling that covers are what draws people to pick up a magazine. After that, they see if its worth purchasing. But if the publication is free, there is no decision weather to take it or not, its a no brainer.

As I started to look closer and try to pick out what really made somthing I felt was strong in design. The most obvious things to start with is photography. The nicest and most modern covers are very light on the typography so as to let the pictures do the talking. This si of coarse my own opinion. It could be argued that text heavy magazines are eqeully apeealing. but during this session of exploring I was much more impressed by magazines that relied on the picture to talk and the title is more of a label than the reason why the magazine is going.

This almost feels like a step away from brand loyalty and a step towards a diverse magazine battle ground, fighting for the attention of readers. It gives way to a new generation of magazines that compete on a visual level with the big dogs that have held court in the editorial publication realm for so many years.

I noticed every genre has atleast one very nicely designed magazine. But of about 30 genres 4 yeailded the majority of nicely designed magazines Fasion, life style, architecture and of coarse design. These are the 4 genres I based my photo documentaion on. Here are my findings.

Work-back schedule