How to sell Babycham…
One of my next ideas was to use humour in order to advertise Babycham, humour that is even poking fun at the product itself. The heading I came up with was “How to sell Babycham” My poster would then demonstrate ridiculous, over-the-top advertising techniques, using irony to make a fun poster that doesn’t take itself – or the product – too seriously. I decided to use this technique of re-marketing, as I felt that my target audience would be almost too aware of Babycham being a “naff” product. I therefore couldn’t make it look cool or stylish, because the target audience wouldn’t believe it; Babycham’s current reputation was already too well known. My attempt to make them product seem cool would look desperate. I therefore took this completely opposite approach – humour.
Humour has been used in many modern advertisements, especially when it comes to re-marketing a product. A typical example of this is “Old Spice” aftershave. The advert advertising this product is fun and ridiculous. And yet this campaign was incredibly successful, with millions of Old Spice aftershave being sold because of it.
Illustrator
I knew that one of my strengths was working in Illustrator, while one of my weaknesses would be to hand-render my final piece. I therefore decided to work with my strengths and create my final poster by using Illustrator. I scanned my initial sketch (seen above) and pulled this into a blank document. I then used the pen tool to trace around my sketches, neatening them and making them look more professional in this computer program.
Colour swatch
Because my project wasn’t focused on redesigning the Babycham product, I looked at a modern Babycham bottle and made a note of the main colours being used. I created a colour swatch, which I kept referring back to in the creation of my poster. These colours helped to indentify the product.
Logo and Bottle
I wanted my poster to display the product I was advertising, so I therefore created a bottle and logo by using Illustrator, copying my design from the modern Babycham appearance. I didn’t want it to be overly complicated, as I wanted the rest of my poster to stand out more. However, I felt I could have improved this design by adding more detail. Perhaps on the bottle top especially, as the image appeared slightly flat.
Design
After looking at the ideas I created on my original sketch, I decided to lower the amount of images down to four - otherwise my poster would appear to cluttered. I therefore decided to take the best ones forward - hypnosis, witchcraft and false advertisement - while I chose the text-based image of "cheesy jingles" to break up the image, so it wasn't overbearing. I decided to keep the images in separate squares to achieve a neat, orderly composition and stuck to my Babycham colour swatch. This, I felt, helped to pull my image together, while also creating a fun, bright appearance.
Development
I turned these images into a poster by adding a title and background. For the title, I chose to use a font similar to the one seen on the Babycham logo, again referring back to the product I was selling. I decided to add a gradient for the background, fading from blue to grey to keep to a consistent colour theme. I also added a grey border to the image, so to make them the focal point. Next, I included the images of the Babycham logo and bottle that I had created in Illustrator previously.
To improve this image, I could have added more shadows and highlights, to make the images appear more realistic. I felt that I could have also added more detail on the Babycham bottle. However, I felt that strengths of this image was the humour, as well as the bright colours and quirky style.
