LO1 Report

 In the new Skittles marketing campaign to support pride month the company expanded to many different marketing platform including media and printing. From the company expanding their advertising platforms it shows that the company supports pride and rebranded their original red packaging with a rainbow to then a plan white packaging with black writing and outlines of the rainbow. The company also changed the slogan that they use on the packaging from "taste the rainbow" to "during pride only one rainbow matters." From the company doing these brand changes it shows the support from the company that pride is an important time and should be promoted and supported by all companies. 

The all the action response that the company hopes to get from this branding change is to gather more support from the community for pride and to also gather more customers for the brand for they have shown their support for the pride community. This branding change will also make the product stand out more for then the public will notice that the products changed the packaging and the colours of the Skittles are now just white. This then intrigues the audience to buy the product to then see if the flavours have changed or to see if anything is different about the product apart from the appearance.

This campaign was released in 2016 during pride month, the company did not give any information on the product change and dint give any intel that the product would have a branding change or how for. Skittles partnered with GLAAD to donate $1 per packet sold to the LGBTQ+ media advocacy group, they then ended up donating up to $100,000. These are the campaign logistics from the launch of the rebranding, these show that the company successfully achieved their objective of getting more people to support the LGBTQ+ community and to gain more customers for the company. Another result of the company showing their support for the LGBTQ+ community it shows that the company is a modern company and it keeps up with the community and stays updated with what's going on at the time. 

The target audience for this campaign was the LGBTQ+ community and teenagers aged 14 - 18+, the campaign can relate to adults as well but the younger generations are more involved with the campaign and community. This target audience is for all ethnicity groups, races and explorers for this campaign that supports pride is relevant for everyone, these are all demographics for the target audience. This target audience is relevant to this campaign because the people that are most involved with the pride celebration tend to be the younger generations for it is more common now for teenagers to experiment with their sexualities and question them. The target audience for this campaign specifically is geographically in London, London is a very popular place and is an attraction for the audience when its pride because of the festivals held. The social grade for this campaign would travel across the social status depending on if the people like them however it does seems to be related to mainstreamers more than any other because of this it then means that the category that the target audience is in would be varied. 

In this campaign there are certain messages that standout to the audience, for example the message of everyone being the same on the outside but different on the inside. This is shown through the colour of the skittles and the packaging for every skittle is the same colour, being white, but they all have a different flavour. The other message in this campaign is the message that is wrote on the packaging that says 'there is only one flag during pride,' which infers that when the pride month is commencing then the skittles branding will change to full white so then it makes the prides flag more visible and more important than the Skittle brands colours. 

The representation of this company rebrand is to use the appearance of skittles to represent the message of everyone being the same on the outside but being different on the inside and that there is only one flag during pride month. This further shows how easy it is to support the LGBTQ+ community and the idea that if a company that is well known can support it then others can too. 

For this campaign there where many different media platforms that where used to advertise the pride skittles on. For example there was the Tv adverts, YouTube pop up adverts and the use of social media being Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat this is called multi-channel advertising campaign, this is called synergy for the company used different platforms to advertise their product to then get the best profit they could from it. These platforms where used to advertise the products rebranding on the media and not just through the print products including the billboards, newspapers, fliers, posters and the bus wrappings, this brought more brand awareness. This made it possible for the company to reach a larger audience and to get the rebrand known throughout the world, this then concludes in there being more profit for the company donate and to also get more supporters for the LGBTQ+ community because a known brand is also supporting the community. 

However, from the change of the colours being stripped to white ended in there being a lot of legal and ethical issues, it concluded in people getting offended by the colours being white for people saw it is as the company was supporting white pride, that is a racialist concept promoted by white supremacist and neo- Nazi groups. This made it so that there was a lot of chaos on the media from the rebranding being taken in the wrong manner. People was also creating chaos for pride was being seen as getting 'taken too far' this then also concluded in there being a lot of havoc for the company and also the pride supporters because they was supporting the brand but others where against the brand and angry at it for the rebranding 'wasn't being supportive for the other ethnical pride members.' This has now resulted in the colour of the pride skittles being changed to a grey colour to then stop the issues with the ethnical and legal arguments on social media. From the audience having different views to one another it is called psychometrics because the audience has different lifestyles and opinions it means there would be arguments that start from it with others that gave a different opinion, this then further relates to VAL also meaning peoples values, attitudes and lifestyles. 

In comparison the B&Q campaign is also another company that advertises a consistent message being "lets do it together," this is shown from the adverts being changed consistently. For example in some of the adverts the company gives the impression that building things and growing things yourself is a work of art and is a good skill, this is shown by there being slogans such as "art" with a drill underneath it. Other adverts such as "you don't buy a life you build one," onto of a pie of bricks, there are also many other adverts that represent the idea of plants being grown with slogans such as "we will grow again." From these examples of adverts from B&Q it shows that it is common for companies to develop their messages through slogans on adverts.