- Your client is Nike, Inc., which is a global athletic wear manufacturer with strong brand recognition and endorsements from major professional athletes around the world. However, they are looking to develop a US campaign that moves away from a focus on professionals and focuses on recreational team sports that everyday consumers might participate in.
Part 1: Target Market and Secondary Research
In this step, you will decide what group you plan to target with your theoretical campaign, write a description of them, and find 6-10 academic sources describing their values, lifestyles, and behaviors
Identify your segment and write a rationale defining it. To research your segment, you have to know what it is. While there are clues in both of this scenario about who your client wants to reach, you need to explain who those people are in the terms of a traditional consumer segment. There are multiple paths that you can take here and multiple ways to define your segment. Your goal is to figure out demographic and geographic characteristics of people that are likely to fit into the descriptions in the scenario above.
TIP: Use Google to look for information about who these people are likely to be (you might start, for example, by looking for information about the age people typically get their first pet in Scenario 2). If there are multiple demographic groups that stand out from these initial searches, narrow it down (i.e. if in Scenario 1, for instance, you found that children/families play on recreational teams but so do young men in their 20s, pick one to keep going with)
Write a short paragraph that explains the demographic and geographic characteristics of your segment. You should address some or all of the following questions: What gender(s) are your consumers? How old are they? What is their relationship status? Do they have children? Where do they live (suburban/urban/rural)? What is their socioeconomic status? Your final sentence should match your group to a PRIZM segment.
INSTRUCTIONS
Locate sources about your segment. Your main task here is to locate 15-20 academic sources that tell us about the psychographics, lifestyle, values, and behavior of the demographic group you identified in Step 2.
TIP: Use both the demographics of the segment you defined and the original description in the scenario to look for sources.
As you find your sources, record them in this spreadsheet Links to an external site.(when you click, it will automatically make a copy to your Google Drive).
- In the first column, put a citation for each source in proper APA format. You can reference this guide to APA Style from Purdue OWL.Links to an external site.
- In the second column, put the link for where you accessed the source so I can check it out easily
- In the third column, write a brief description (one sentence or less) of what this source tells you about your demographic (i.e. if your source is a study about youth sports and they found that some percentage of children participate in youth sports because parents sign them up, write that "XX% of children joined because of parent")
TIP: 6-10 articles is a lot of words, but you don't need to read or even skim them in full at this point. To fill out the key audience insight all you really need to look at is the abstract, you also may find some useful information in the conclusion)
At the end of this step, you should have a paragraph that describes the demographic and geographic characteristics of your segment and identifies which PRIZM segment you think they are most like and why, and a spreadsheet with your sources.
Part 2: User Persona
When doing research for an advertising or marketing situation, one way that we present that research is in the form of a User Persona, or a fictionalized representation of a typical member of the target audience segment you've been researching.This videoLinks to an external site.has an explanation of why businesses use these and what components they consist of, as well as showing MANY examples of what a persona can look like.
Next, you will create a one page fictional representation of the audience you researched that describes your target segment as a user persona. Your persona should have a name and image, a brief bio description, and a description of their relevant wants/needs, motivations, and challenges or "pain points" in relation to the client prompt. Draw on your research as much as possible to create a "typical" person in your target demographic.
Tools like CanvaLinks to an external site. and VismeLinks to an external site. have User Persona Templates that you can use or adapt, or you can just start with a blank slide in your presentation tool of choice and add the elements you want. You will not be judged on your design, just the information you present.
Part 3: Influencer Identification
As one part of your campaign for this client, you are going to identify a relevant influencer for the client to work with on a social media campaign and present some key information about that influencer's metrics and engagement.
Identify a social media creator who you think is a good match for the audience you have profiled in your persona and the client scenario. THIS PERSON MUST HAVE FEWER THAN 1M followers, you will be marked down if they have more than this.
You will need to find some information about their engagement, audience, and other metrics to report back on. A lot of the places where you can find these things require you to pay money, but here are a few free tools you can use: Social Blade, Links to an external site.Upfluence's Free Account AuditsLinks to an external site.Links to an external site. this engagement calculator for Instagram Links to an external site.and here's one for TikTok.Links to an external site.
Once you have looked up information about your influencer, you should be able to:
- Describe them and their content
- Describe their overall engagement, metrics, and audience
- Explain why they are a good match for reaching your persona
Part 4: Presentation Slides
Your presentation should follow this format:
- Slide 1: Describe Nike, Inc. and audience segment (don't forget to include your PRIZM segment)
- Slide 2: Summarize the most important insights you gained from doing secondary research about your audience segment with citations (this can be more than one slide if needed)
- Slide 3: User persona. Make sure your narration highlights how your research helped you craft this persona.
- Slide 4: Introduce your chosen influencer. Make sure your narration explains why you think they are a good match for the client