Barclays - T&C Brief

BRIEFING AND INTIAL IDEAS

This brief was an exciting but daunting one. Having done a lot of live briefs before hand I knew what to expect and how it all works in terms of pitching etc. but I feel the brief itself was quite tricky. There was two to choose from (Terms and Conditions and Financial Wellness) Ryah and I had three ideas for our first initial pitch for the T&C's brief. Mood boards for all three ideas below

The Idea behind Slogan Tee’s was to have Barclays collaborate with a popular fashion retailer that is on trend with the target audience and create a range of slogan t-shirts (which is something we found was popular on the market right now) that incorporated the terms and conditions some how. We thought of taking the terms and conditions and spinning it to something that is relevant in an 18-24 year olds life. With that we came up with relationships. We decided to do a ‘Terms and conditions of dating me.’ and made it light hearted and funny. We wanted the ‘Terms and conditions of dating me to be something that had a light hearted tone of voice nothing too serious but also was still written in the same format as the real T&C’s. I noted down some ideas and eventually came up with the T&C’s. We wanted the users to have to read the t&cs before hand in order to answer 3 short questions about them in reward of doing so the customer gets a discounted price on the slogan tee range.

Research

We researched into consumers and online shopping statistics for one of our ideas and we found that millennials now make 54% of their purchases online (UPS) this is what drove us to using an online retailer when it came to deciding what brand we wanted to go with. With this being the perfect target audience too it was something that could back up our points in our pitch.

Another interesting statistic that we found was that by 2040, it is thought 95% of purchases will be facilitated by eCommerce (Nasdaq) this shows that Online shopping is going in a certain direction with the percentage of people buying online is rising therefore our idea of slogan tees had sustainability and we could talk about the future of our idea.

Our idea was for somewhere in the Terms and Conditions for there to be a box that was optional to tick stating that if the box was not ticked annoying push notifications will appear on the users phone every hour on the hour. Our thinking behind this was that a large majority do not read the t&c’s therefore most customers will receive the notifications. To turn them off they will have to read the T&C’s.When researching about consumers we found that the average consumer in Britain checks their phone at least 28 times a day. Thats at least once an hour and 10,000 times a year and with the averages apps per person being 50 that equates to at least 85 push notifications per day. From this we started to think about ways we could incorporate what we had found into our idea for Barclay customers to read the T&C’s. This is where we got the Annoying Notifications idea. Having constant notifications that the customer was not aware of signing up to is alarming and requires action. The action being the customer heading straight to Barclays website which then in turn results in them reading the T&C’s.

Sing your T&C’s was one of our first initial ideas that came to mind when we first starting brain storming. We wanted to put a young and light hearted twist on the terms and conditions which was highlighted in the brief. How it would work is when a Barclays customer receives their terms and conditions they will receive pop up options of different relevant UK artists who would sing/rap a shortened more simpler version of the t&c’s making it easier to understand and broken down into human language. This would then be sharable online and available to download on platforms such as Spotify and Apple Music.

FIRST PITCH

Presenting all three ideas it was obvious which ones we needed to ditch, Annoying Notifications being one of them, we didn't want to portray Barclays in a bad light and give them a reputation of being 'annoying'. The Barclays team highlighted they liked sing your t&cs and though that it had potential and could work however the Slogan T-shirts they thought was potentially a better idea long term.

This was my design for our 'Terms and Conditions of Dating Me' Tee

After presenting this idea to Barclays they showed an interest in it and liked that it was attractive to young people however they did ask for us to go back and tweak how we can tie it into Barclays more but still keep the design young and fun which they said they liked. So with this feedback we went back to the drawing board and thought about ways we could make Barclays stand out the most on our t-shirts and also focus on the user journey more so we were nailing the brief. We thought that instead of having T&C’s of a relationship we would look into the terms and conditions and take snippets out and put a funny light hearted twist on them.

We also thought that the customers can take a short 3 question pop quiz in order for them get the t-shirt at a discounted price. The more questions you get right the lower the price of the t-shirts. Going back to our insight that people love to feel as if they are getting a great bargain especially students. We played with the idea of having a freebie but we felt that freebies were often disregarded and had no value, we also thought about having a discount code but we found that was boring and it would have to be considerably higher than whats already out there e.g. Student beans, Uni days for people to even consider choosing one over another. So we decided to have the t-shirt at a discounted price as we found that lower the price higher the value.

FINALISING IDEAS AND REDESIGNING

Here are some of the test designs I did tried to play around with colour as much as possible and figure out what worked and what didn't.

These are 2/3 of the Tshirt designs. Designed by me.

BARCLAYS PITCH DAY

Overall I think the pitch went well and on a personal level feel that my pitching skills have improved massively over time. It used to be such a daunting task for me but the more I have pitched to clients like Barclays it has improved my confidence and professionalism and I now find pitching exciting! When Ryah and I pitched we both spoke clearly and professionally I feel like we spaced out our deck well and didn’t find ourselves talking over each other at all. They said they liked our idea some key points we took from them they said ‘ That would be a great walking advertisement for Barclays’ they also commented on how they would wear the T-shirts themselves and liked the design. We were told to perhaps look at how our user journey works and wether Barclays is the first place you visit then to ASOS. When receiving our feedback via email they said that “ Collaborating with trendy brands like ASOS to help position Barclays in a more appealing light to students was a great idea” but they felt that perhaps our pop quiz at checkout wasn't the best idea for this and to think about our customer journey again.

So with this feedback we did just that and thought hard about how the slogan tees could be purchased and how the terms and conditions tied in as the main focus, not just being on the T-shirts.

TWEAKING THE IDEA

After reading the feedback they mentioned how they though using ASOS to market Barclays as trendy by using clothing was a great idea however we needed to change the way the user journey to ensure we were on brief. We decided to scrap the idea of having a pop quiz and they felt like no body would actually take their time to do that. So instead the way to be rewarded your discounted T-shirt priced at £2.50 is to find the code 'ASOSTEE'. The instructions on how to gain access to the collection would still be on the Terms and Conditions pages as one of the first thing you see. Find your 'ASOS TEE' code hidden with in your terms and conditions to receive a huge discount on the NEW ASOS X BARCLAYS collection. Visit www.asos.co.uk to use! This gives the users motivation to read the terms and conditions with being rewarded at the end. The terms and conditions being written on the T-shirts also helps customers understand the T&C's which is what was asked for in the brief.

OVERALL

Overall this project has been challenging yet fun! It allowed me to work in a professional environment and work with a client and pitch my ideas and designs which is something I have now gotten used to and love! I feel like Ryah and I worked really well together constantly meeting our own internal deadlines as a team and our constant communication really helped with the design work. The feedback was a little disappointing in regards to the score of the overall idea however it motivated us to do better and make improvements to something we are proud of and can add to our portfolios and have also used this great opportunity as good experience for us working with in the industry.