Idle Man Initial Ideas

I decided that I would base my ideas largely around the internet and social networking since that it one of the easiest ways to generate interest for the target audience, and since The Idle Man is based on the internet rather than a physical shop front, I feel that it would be much more relevant. I will still make my ideas applicable to TV and other mediums, but for this project internet will be my biggest concern.

My initial ideas were to concentrate heavily on the 3 archetypes I was provided with from the brief - Jester, Sage, and Regular guy. This means that I could concentrate on create unique designs for each of these, all using the same sort of fashion sense that the Idle Man promotes, but different enough to catch different personalities in each. A lot of younger people love to be define, and be able to place them self in a certain box, giving them a feeling of belonging and knowing who they are. The Idle Man say that they want to be a part of young men building their identified, so I think that using these three archetypes as labels, or neatly defined boxes could help get that kind of effect.

I thought that perhaps this could also work if I made posters or fliers, and if they could be associated to other products i.e relating the sage type to a certain hot drink or meal at particular places that they are likely to eat/drink, but that would involve a lot of organising and money on the company's part, so while it would be good advertising and creating a sense of identity for certain parts of the audience to adopt, it wouldn't quite work.

I considered interactive adverts, with tag lines like 'Who are you?' to make the audience think about the way they are defined, or how they want to be defined, and then link that to one of the three characters/archetypes. If this was for a younger audience, maybe linking a quiz to sort the viewers into one of the three categories with links to and recommendations of The Idle Man products at the end, but the idependent, uni type student would probably find that a bit too silly and embarrassing.

I thought that maybe just having banners (that turn into drop down or larger images when hovered over) could work, with 3 different ones each showing the finished character and a background that relates to each of the personality types, while still keep them vague and open enough that a lot of people from the young adult male demographic would be able to relate to either way, maybe making them feel more like they're being defined when really they could fit in either category.

After getting feedback from our group crit sessions, another tudent pointed out that I could show three at once by involving a short bit of animation, having each part of the outfit (head/hair, torse, legs, feet) change [like a vertical slot machine], showing off a lot of the outfits I thought about for each of the stereotypes. That could also advertise a wider range of the sort of products and looks that the Idle Man want to sell, while giving the advert more of a fun feel.

This could be easily used on a TV advert too, with the animation having more space and the opportunity for a voice over and more text for information which would be useful, since internet ads and banners are easy enough to click on and be given information/taken to the Idle Man homepage.