Reasons why research is important;
1) Allows you to understand your target audience and how to reach them
2) Gives you background knowledge on the brand
3) Inspiration
4) To see trends and most popular items from the brand
5) Competitors, seeing what the brand is up against
Types of research
Primary research- research performed by yourself like a survey, focus groups.
Secondary research- research performed by others like internet research, books.
Town and Country Rebrand;
Town and Country began to manufacture and design leather based goods in 1960, since then the company has focused their attention on farming and agriculture side of their business, stating on their website that '
our focus has been on bringing innovation to the gardening sector with a range of gloves and footwear that combines quality, functionality and style, with a price tag that represents exceptional value for money.' Today, T&C has claimed to be one of the country's leading gardening brands who allege that they offer 'one of the most comprehensive collections of gardening gloves and footwear'. Having put their put through the door in 1997 when beginning the production of footwear T&C have continued to invest in their footwear ranges and hope to in the future.
Research
From my research i have found that, currently the target audience for T&C is middle aged to older men and women, i can tell this by the promotional pictures adverting their goods through the website. The website also heavily features a lot of the outdoors, which is to be expected with a company who sells outdoors footwear and equipment. To me this suggests that the company is also trying the each audiences over the age of 65 as it is a well known fact that this is retirement age therefore those older than this will have the time for things like gardening and so will want to buy the goods from places like T&C, another observation i have made from the brand is that the prices are high for the goods provided, showing to me that they have a customer base and those they want to reach must have a lot of expendable income to spend of things like wellies, hence why is suggest that there is a middle class vibe towards the brand. From my research i found that alot of the products also used gender neutral tones and earthy tones which i will keep in mind when it comes to the rebranding as i believe it is beneficial to keep things gender neutral to reach larger audiences but also how i can re brand the items on sale with changing colour schemes and styles.
For my research i will perform both primary and secondary research before beginning my re brand, most of my primary research will be very active including going to visit my closest distributor of T&C footwear and inviting them to answer my questions such as what styles sell best and who buys them, using questionnaires to identify what my target audience would want from the rebrand, asking questions such as who influences you style wise but also things like occupation to understand how much my target audience are willing to pay. In doing these questionnaires i can get a full understanding of how and what will make my rebrand successful and my research i conduct will hopefully back this up. As for secondary research i will use the blogs and information provided to me through the T&C website as their information will be most correct, i will also use google and other factual providers to benefit my factual profile on T&C.
My idea
My Idea is to rebrand Town and Country for a younger audience for a festival scene, due to this my target audience will be those over the age of 16. When festival season starts the sale of wellies sky rocket, in 2015 Ebay the e-commerce giant gained a 40% surge in the sales of waterproof garments before Glastonbury, with key searches being 'fashionable' and 'waterproof' together. By brands such as T&C tapping into consumers interest during the festival period, they can profit on the uncertain weather Britain seems have. My intention is to create a line of wellies for the festival season and to promote each design through a collaboration of a well known celebrities, preferably those who is well known in the for appearances at festivals in both the US and UK such as Coachella and Glastonbury. Over the past five years there has been a surge in brands creating festival inspired fashion lines such as H&M X Coachella and other online British clothing companies such as Boohoo, Miss guided and ASOS also selling festival inspired pieces, during my research I also noticed that men were also targeted during the festival promotions.
Thanks to this research that suggests both men and women are targeted during the festival season, I will ensure that my collaboration will include both women and men influencers. I have made the choice to use two male influencers, currently i believe i will use Harry Styles and Jordan Bunker as one is well known in the music industry and the other well known in the fashion industry which i believe will benefit me as both influencers intertwine the two markets i am trying to reach. I have used the same method when selecting my female influencers, choosing to use three to model for re brand. The three female influencers i have chosen to use are Alexa Chung, Cara Delevingne and Rita Ora. I plan to use these influencers in multiple ways, the first i will do this is by naming at least one of my boot designs after one of the influencers, because of this i will be design five different styles of welly boots, each separate design reflecting the style of the influencer. For example; Rita Ora's will be flamboyant and named 'The Rita.' In order to do this entire process i will begin by creating individual mood boards of reach influencers style, begin to sketch out ideas and researching patterns and colours that could be used before then transferring all of this information into photo shop and creating my finale designs. Once i have completed my design work i will processed to think about how i could potentially promote my wellies, currently my idea would be a meet and greet situation where my influencers could meet those who buy a certain pair. Another Idea i have on how i could promote this is by ensuring photo opps are taken with them in the wellies during a festival scenario.
For this display project we have decided upon three original ideas sourced from other creative members of our class to created a visually pleasing display of the quote 'It doesn't get easier, you just get better.' with the main focus of the brief being that the idea must be 3D or at least able to be translated into 3D once the artwork is finished. Before selecting our finale ideas to work with, each individual member of the class needed to create their own interpretation and idea to suggest to the class. My Idea was to use images sourced by those within in our class from our projects from the previous year however whilst i waited for those images to come through, I created a mock up of my potential idea. My influence for came from my research on the graphic designers Craig and Karl who use modern pop art for different cliental, overall i really liked their use of bold colours and imagery to portray their imagery therefore i incorporated this into my own ideas. After reflection on what i had created as a mock up, i found it difficult to think of a way to tie in the 3D point from the brief, therefore my idea was not chosen.
As a class, after finishing our designs, we tied together what we had learnt to decided on three main ideas we liked the idea of. First was Oscars who incorporated Imagery into photography and typography into one main idea, i really liked this idea as it was similar to mine. Brandon's Idea was the second idea we had chosen to work with as he used different forms of patterning and shapes to manipulate typography in a pop art way, much like that of Craig and Karl. Finally, the last idea we decided to work with was Angel's who wanted to incorporate textures into her lettering to ensure it would stand out on the board, using train tickets as use of material of choice because that is how most people get into college. 
