Today I had a group tutorial with David and my peers about our initial ideas and thoughts. I explained my initial ideas to David and, as I had thought, he questioned the legibility and message of my project idea. He thought it would be difficult to prove the point of branding helping a business financially with only 7 weeks. He advised I look into something maybe within my Rallying hobby or something more personal to me so that I had a lot of knowledge based around the subject before starting with any further research.
Admittedly, this set me back a fair bit mentally as I had been planning how I would implement it and what type of brand it would be etc. After this I felt quite unmotivated and uninspired. However, listening to everyone else’s ideas was very inspiring, although it did make me feel a bit behind as their ideas were all really good and well thought out.
I will spend this afternoon brainstorming other directions to take my FMP, thinking of things personal to me and that I a passionate about, which have a strong message that I can communicate effectively through my work:
I found that after brainstorming all of my ideas, I felt a lot clearer on which direction to take my FMP. I started by looking into female targeted products within rallying, but decided that there wasn’t enough problems to solve there, so the outcome just wouldn’t be strong enough in terms of communicating a message. From this, I decided to look into female targeted products in life in general, and was extremely surprised to see that “the pink tax” existed. I didn’t realise the extent that female targeted products, exactly the same specification to those targeted at males, were more expensive, simply because they were aimed at females. I was so intrigued by this, and found it really really interesting.
THE PINK TAX – Initial research
The Pink Tax is a hypothetical “tax” of products marketed specifically towards women, making them significantly more expensive than those marketed towards men, despite either gender’s choice to purchase either product. Women typically earn less than men, and pay more for specifically targeted products – which is highly unfair. Products marketed specifically towards women cost 7% more on average than products marketed toward men. This applies to clothing, toys, and healthcare products, along with many other items. It starts from birth, even girls’ toys cost on average 7% more than boys’ toys. In children’s clothing, girls’ clothes were 4% more expensive than boys’. Men’s clothing was 8% less expensive than women’s clothes. The largest discrepancy came to personal care/hygiene products, where women’s products cost 13% more than men’s.
EXISTING CAMPAIGN: Ax the pink tax
Ax the pink tax was, by the looks of things, a campaign which aimed to raise awareness of the increased prices that females pay for general life products, compared to males. Unfortunately their website is no longer available, but I was able to find a few bits of the campaign on other sites, and I think it’s a really strong campaign. The main aim of the campaign is to let women know how much exactly they have “overpaid” for certain items, just because they are specifically female products. A shock factor is applied and helps to surprise women about how much more they have paid than males.
Ellie Williams 