OUGD603 - Work Experience - Day One: Marketing, TOV, Social Media and Brand Guidelines

Autoglym was established in 1965, formerly known as Welwyn Plastics and quickly became a trusted name in car care across car dealerships and garages.

Marketing and Tone of Voice (TOV):

Autoglym has five different brand departments within their brand:

• Autoglym retail brand.
• Autoglym professional.
• Autoglym lifeshine.
• Autoglym Carbon Shield.
• IMO.

Each of these need a different tone of voice to appropriately market to the different types of consumers, as well as changing these depending on what media they are using to promote their brand, for instance, social media, press and advertising, and POS (point of sale, meaning what consumers would see where the brand products are being stocked in a retailer and are about to purchase or think about purchasing a product, for instance, product stands, etc).

Within this there are also two different types of marketing:

• B to B marketing = business to business marketing.
• B to C marketing = business to consumer marketing.

Each of these need a different tone of voice, also, since business to business care more about value for money if buying a product in bulk for their business, but the product packaging and design for this still needs to look professional so that if a product is on display then customers can see what they are using and get a good view of the brand. Whereas, business to consumer marketing needs to have a friendlier tone of voice so that consumers easily understand what each product does and get the impression that they are a trusted brand to use in taking care of their car.

* QUICK TIP: for making type look more professional, place in all caps, up the kerning/tracking between letters and place on a dark background. When typesetting, it is best to set to 0 or optical.

Social Media Channels:

Shaun's first task of the day is to run through Autoglym's social media channels and review the previous evening's engagement, interacting with people's comments and posts and flagging up any complaints or questions with the customer care team who deal with this. If another brand or business has commented on something it is also good to engage with this in some way for the potential of working with them on future projects or marketing strategies.

Autoglym also have brand influencers on Instagram and YouTube who get sent products free from Autoglym and then have to do at least three posts a month endorsing Autoglym's products -  strategy they use in order to reach new consumers and show that they are a trusted brand, which is important to get from a consumers perspective, since people are more likely to believe this if it comes from people like them, as they know that the brand itself has to say its great to be able to sell. Autoglym hold a document with all influencers and their details in in order to keep track and monitor what posts they have done, how good they are at endorsing the brand, reliability and trustworthiness, and how much product they have been sent. Influencers who do not post to these guidelines are flagged up in red and on the brink of terminating their contract - some people run with the free product and never post, so Autoglym have to be careful with who they let on. Autoglym also need to be careful in this sense with who they take on as influencers since this will also have an effect on how the brand is portrayed, for instance, if a person or potential influencer is racist, etc, Autoglym does not want it to seem as if they endorse this kind of behaviour, since it would look bad on their part and as a result affect the successfullness of the brand. If an influencer hasn't posted in a while, sometimes a god way is to interact with a post of theirs to job their memory.

Another easy way to engage with consumers on social media, especially Instagram, is to share things to their stories which customers have tagged their brand in. Sometimes Autoglym also works in partnership with other brands and businesses in an agreement which promotes Autoglym on the other brand's page, again to try and reach new audiences and types of consumers.

They also keep on the look out for any news stories which they can jump on and make reactive content to that promotes their brand in current affairs, for instance "Blood rain = Polar Wash".

Example of reactive content to current affairs to promote their brand.

Example of reactive content to current affairs to promote their brand.

Brand Guidelines Task:

After a rebrand a couple of years ago, this meant that Autoglym's brand guidelines were outdated. As an exercise to see all the different small elements that you may not realise goes into creating a brand, the task for the day was to help in starting to create new brand guidelines, which also aimed to show how the document will break down to serve the various brand departments and their different design and marketing strategies.

Referring to other brand guidelines, such as Harrods and Seat, as well as liaising with the design team, a contents page was initially created. We found that it was important to place elements of the core branding first in the guidelines, since how these should be used will ultimately affect design elements, such as packaging, POS (point of sale), and current campaigns, etc.

Based on this contents, we then began working on a section for Tone of Voice (TOV) for the retail brand, the brand of products which ordinary consumers will see online and in stores, such as Halfords. Each of these TOV's were different for different elements of marketing, such as social media, advertising, point of sale and packaging, since each of these hold different consumer demographics which Autoglym need to appeal to.

It was important that these sections were worded in ways which anyone could understand, since these brand guidelines will serve as a document which can just be handed over to anyone who may need to work with the brand on design and marketing material, such as external agencies.

Since this document will be an ongoing thing and certain elements will change over time, the task was not finished, however, referring back to other brand guidelines and the old Autoglym guidelines, we looked at how this finished copy would eventually be presented in a document.

Typically, it was found that brand guidelines start by giving some background information on the brand, so that external agencies or anyone who this document is handed to have additional information which could help them in presenting the correct tone of voice and help them understand how the brand portrays themself, or at least want to be portrayed.

Example of old brand guidelines page.

Example of old brand guidelines page.

It was also found that brand guidelines give examples of how the core design elements have been utilised in existing campaigns, design, and brand material. One idea in the production of the new Autoglym brand guidelines we had therefore, in the tone of voice section, was to present information next to an example of how this tone of voice has been conveyed before, for instance in an existing social media post.

Example of old brand guidelines page.

Example of how information and examples would be paired together in new brand guidelines.