Sweet Like Cinnamon

Friday, 13 October 2017

The Apprentice - My Dream Task, Interior Design

This week's episode of the Apprentice was honestly my idea of absolute bliss. I'm so incredibly jealous of these people; being given a £13,000 budget to design a luxury hotel room would be an absolute dream! I thought both teams designed tasteless, low-rent hotel rooms, both felt immature and impractical.

I feel both teams made a real error in their choice of themes; the girls chose Golf as their theme and the boys went with a British Travel theme. By choosing a straight forward theme like this you can so easily create a cliche, themed room which doesn't fit the luxury brief. Before choosing a theme I feel the teams would have benefited from setting a short list of key values to bare in mind when designing and buying. An obvious theme isn't a necessity in a task like this; if anything, choosing such a blatant theme is a bit of a cop out. For a luxury room, I feel an obvious path to take would be luxury textiles; it's so easy to choose a small selection of key, quality pieces to fill a tastefully decorated room.

The candidates failed to consider the orange carpets covering the room floors; these should have influenced their colour palettes. Both teams' ideas have the potential to be successful; the boys would have benefited greatly from a refined colour palette and a stronger sense of direction. Designing a room isn't "We're making a British Travel themed room, we should put Big Ben on the wall" you need to understand the feel of the room and remember the brief. When looking at a British theme, on a budget, for a one of task on the Apprentice, it seems obvious to choose simple colours like a neutral base for all of your walls, maybe adding a tasteful feature wall if you're feeling adventurous. The boys splashed out on expensive furniture but it was in-cohesive and felt so childish, especially next to the primary coloured walls.

For the Golf themed room, creating a rich room filled with leathers and velvet in deep luxurious colours and using rustic metals and dark wood, to create a room so luxurious its guests won't question the hotel's quality. Surprisingly, I didn't think their idea of using a gold bag and clubs as a feature piece was a bad idea; but it was executed terribly. A dark brown, vintage or vintage style golf bag, on a stand would have looked tasteful. I'm thinking some heavy curtains to balance out the fire place and a whisky cabinet; people are coming here to have a relaxing time after all.

Another simple option would have been for the teams to go for an all white, clean, elegant room with a key statement colour to tie in the carpet and any wood/metals used. Then they could have focused on getting some cool, functional additions for the room.

Another very easy option is to go all out comfort and really prioritise getting a statement bead a multiple layers of gorgeous, luxurious bedding. Adding large, well made arm chairs, a vintage, dark-wood chest filled with faux furs and tartan blankets and filling the fireplace with logs would have created a warm British feel but in a more tasteful, subtle way.

There were endless possibilities on this task and although I appreciate this is not their area of interest or expertise, I feel the opportunity was wasted on the contestants. Hopefully Lord Sugar will read this and hire me instead.

Graffiti Sucks Like Deep Throat

Barcelona is such a creative city; many of the streets are adorned with graffiti, as are many streets across the globe. What struck me about Barcelona is the way in which graffiti is slowly moving towards being an accepted art form in society. Many stores have picked up on this and are using graffiti to advertise their brand. Whilst there were some horrendous pieces, the majority of the street art in Barcelona is well or interestingly executed. Some of the pieces below aren't the best but I live for that contrast of modern graffiti against the traditional, detailed elements of a building.

Drowning in commercialism

I recently returned from a trip to Barcelona with my family and I gathered so much inspiration for my uni work, it really motivated me for my, fast-approaching, second year at Nottingham Trent University. Walking through the beautiful streets of Barcelona made me feel so sad; I constantly look for interesting and beautiful visuals and it reminded how tasteless advertising is in the UK. How much more beautiful would the world be if it weren’t plastered with tacky advertising campaigns and plastic KFC. In cities like Barcelona you really notice things like fast food restaurants; with their plastic signs detracting from the beauty of Barcelona’s incredible architecture.

International, commercial companies are slowly diminishing diversity among the world’s capital cities, if not entire countries. I’m finding it difficult to articulate but I feel like every country is unique and full of history and plastering these incredible places with modern, commercialism is almost disrespectful. As a promotion student, I appreciate brands have to constantly reach out to consumers, but there are more aesthetically pleasing and considerate ways to do this. For example, using unique stone signs on the sides of historical buildings instead of slapping on a standard logo in primary colours. These tasteless advertising methods reek of desperation (a nice Clueless quote for you right there); the companies don’t care that their signs are ugly because at least someone is looking at them. By designing retail spaces with a country’s history and values in mind, the in-store experience will be improved for the consumer and will be beneficial in regards to tourism.

The Gypsy Shrine @ Ibiza Rocks TS5 Pool Party

I'm currently powering through a serious case of the post-holiday blues after spending 4 amazing nights in Ibiza. We stayed at the Ibiza Rocks Hotel and packed so much into those 4 days! All guests at the hotel are given free access to the hotel events, lucky for us this included Craig David's first pool party of the season. Whilst we were naturally so excited for Craig David (I also have to say Patrick Nazemi's set was soooo good), we were also really happy to see The Gypsy Shrine team offering face/body glitter. Me being even more thrilled than most, as the girls helped me cover the previous day's sunburn - welcome to the life of a redhead! I've been watching The Gypsy Shrine as an up and coming brand for a few months now; I think they've really identified a gap in the market. Whilst there are countless festival based brands circulating at the moment, none do it quite like TGS. The brand understand their consumer so well and have successfully utilised social media to gain a strong following amongst young people. They also really understand where their brand works, but I feel they'll need to keep evolving as trends begin to shift. The brand working with the insanely popular tv show, Love Island was an incredible opportunity for the brand and I'm sure they'll only grow in strength as a result. It will be interesting to see if the brand have any ideas for winter!

http://www.thegypsyshrine.com/shop/

Street Style Edit - Wireless Fest

I've been meaning to write a street style post for a few weeks, featuring some of my favourite looks I saw at wireless Festival earlier this month. Finsbury Park was full of amazing outfits, but these lovely people were kind enough to let me take some quick photos of theirs!

These two babes were like real life Cindy dolls and I'm a sucker for any outfit you can picture on a young Britney Spears - trousers are from ASOS.

The British weather combined with me drinking from 10am kind of ruined this photo.. Both guys were wearing really cool vintage shirts (especially the guy on the right) - I saw a lot of seriously ugly, desperate shirts in that park but these guys nailed it.

It's super difficult to see, but the lady on the right had the most gorgeous outfit on - I think she was feeling a bit face shy! She was wearing a lace body with a floor length mesh skirt and chunky sandals. I also loved both girls' incredible hair, they looked stunning and classy. Not ideal if you're planning on clawing your way to the stage barrier, but so pretty if you're having a chilled day.

This little lady had the prettiest hair jewellery - I'm so weak for french plaits on a festival look! Her whole outfit was perfectly planned.

By far my favourite person I met at Wireless, she'd come all the way from New Zealand! I saw these skirts EVERYWHERE in Ibiza this year, but not so much at U.K. festivals. Her cornrows/braids felt so Xtina, again, I love a pop princess. I liked that this girl was having the best time and she 100% knew how bomb she looked!

I'm so annoyed I didn't get a better photo of these ladies; they were both so sparkley, I ran at them like a literal magpie. I was mainly interested in the lady on the right; her sequin body and body-chain combo looked perfect - body-chain from In The Style.

Numbers Don't Lie - Fenty X Puma

I'm in love with Puma right now. I can't get enough of their new style and I'm having to exhibit some next level self restraint right now because I could easily spend hundreds on their clothes. I have a thing for the Men's Sale section on ASOS (guys do not take advantage of their amazing sale section) and I've found a few Puma jumpers recently for some criminally low prices. I just feel like Puma really deserve to be screamed and shouted about right now; for me, they're nailing it. I came across an Instagram post the other day from the Fenty X Puma account, suggesting Rihanna's contributions as Puma's Creative Director are behind their recent increase in popularity. Influencers are key right now for most fashion brands and most seem to recognise this - Rihannah is a prime example. In 2014 it was announced that Rihannah would be taking on this role and, although I've not checked the financial side of things, the past few years have seen Puma producing really on trend, exciting garments.

Shadowing the Marketing Team at CPWOS

Unfortunately, being a fashion student with a serious spending habit requires money. So I spend 24 hours of my week working as a Customer Service Adviser at a Carphone Warehouse Online Solutions call centre. I really hate feeling like I'm wasting time, so although I need to work over summer I've been trying to gain some work experience with the company's Marketing team. I first of all needed to figure out which job roles suits my course the most, I was given the chance to sit with some of the team and learn about their roles. I wasn't allowed to do this within my current working hours but I learnt so much from the few hours I was there, it was so worth it!

I shadowed five members of the team, learning about each role; starting with monitoring the website productivity for two of the company's current sites. I feel like the knowledge I gained from even just 20 minutes of shadowing this role will be beneficial to me and my uni work. It's helped me to understand how websites can be analysed; I'm constantly picking apart print and TV ads but websites are more complex. It's so interesting seeing the ways in which you can plan the layout of a website to maximize productivity and accessibility for the user. There are some really useful applications/sites that allow you to monitor which parts of the site are being accessed the most; they can monitor consumer patterns and cater to their needs more efficiently. It's important to see the journey taken by the customer and look for ways to make this journey as smooth as possible.

Promotional emails are considered in a similar way. Each tiny element of the company's promotional emails are considered; from content to subject lines to branding. There's no point crafting the perfect promotional email if your subject line isn't interesting enough to persuade consumers to open it, the number of consumers opening emails is closely monitored. The team can see which parts of the email are accessed the most and which areas need improvement. Emails can be timed to reach consumers at different times of the day, month and year depending on when these emails will be most effective. Email content can be personalised based on consumer buying patterns; content is therefore more likely to be relevant.

The company focuses heavily on their affiliates (e.g. price comparison, cashback and voucher sites) as these can increase site traffic and promote deals. The company deal with around 600 affiliates and these are split into the top 10 and the remaining sites which tend to be smaller. Dealing with affiliates is all about building relationships; this applies to the top companies but even more so with smaller affiliates. The team must reach an agreement which both the company and the affiliate are happy with; they usually work on a commission basis, receiving payment for each order placed via the affiliate. The team look into ways of increasing sales coming from affiliates and they're constantly on the look out for the latest sites and apps. A really interesting up and coming shopping aid is Monotote - I won't go into this now but look out for a post in the future when I've done a bit more research!

A massive factor that any successful company needs to consider is Google; I have to admit, I was completely uneducated on the way Google works. The company also consider the search engine Bing but on a much smaller scale as far less consumers use this engine, I'm going to focus on Google for now. It's really complicated and I'm definitely going to be researching into the business behind Google, but to simplify, Google is pretty much split between Paid and Organic search results. As you'd expect, Paid search results are the ads you see surrounding the regular search results - these regular results are referred to as Organic. Paid ads seem easier to understand; these are basically money focused and usually companies pay Google per click. For this reason, they filter out certain key words to avoid consumers clicking on the site by accident and push forward relevant words - every click costs money. All search results are monitored by Google and this is where it gets pretty damn complicated. Google require sites to follow their guidelines and by not doing so, sites can be dropped to the bottom of Google's search results. This sounds pretty simple right? Follow Googles rules and you'll be fine... except Google don't actually publicise their rules so it's a bit of a guessing game. Their are tools that can give you a rough idea of whether your site is complying with these rules, but you're never going to know for sure. As I mentioned, I've not researched this but it's something I feel it's crucial to have an understanding of how Google works as more and more of the fashion industry is moving online, it's something I never would have considered.

I'm hoping I'll be able to do more work with the Marketing team, it's easy to forget what your aiming for when your doing a part time job but this has really reminded how passionate I am about this field of work.

DG Millennials Fighting Back

Where better to protest a brand and their policies than at their own show? I'm assuming artist and model Raury was thinking the same thing. Dolce and Gabbana have been relying more and more on up and coming young people to promote their clothes and have been using less conventional models. This is a common trend in the fashion industry and appears to be effective; that is until these young people turn against the brand they're representing. These people have a huge following and as modelling isn't their primary career, they're a risk for any brand to hire. They're less likely to care if their modelling reputation is tarnished.

D&G have received huge amounts of criticism recently for dressing First Lady Melania Trump, the brand is said to be one of her favourites. This has personally put me right of D&G, it really shines an unflattering light on the brand. If they're happy to dress the wife of an insane person, it's only natural to worry about the brand's morals and ideologies. Choosing such a controversial figure to wear their clothes is bound to fill consumers minds with doubt. It also may have been worth considering choosing a brand representative who isn't internationally recognised for making atrocious outfit choices.

Naturally, in today's superficial society, people will still buy Dolce and Gabbana. But it will be interesting to see if this impacts the brands success over the coming years.

"When they tapped musician Raury for their Spring/Summer '18 men's runway show, however, they got more than just his 157k Instagram followers when the 21-year-old Atlanta singer staged a protest of the Italian fashion brand on their own runway. Before the finals bow, Raury removed his shirt to reveal the phrases "PROTEST DG," "GIVE ME FREEDOM," and "I AM NOT YOUR SCAPEGOAT" penned across his chest."

- Cady Lang for Time Online, 2017

The Zara Lifestyle

I was in Manchester last week and, being on a spending ban, I thought it would be a fantastic idea to visit the Trafford Centre. Although my bank balance hates me, I had a great day. I find Zara as a brand really interesting, so I was embarrassingly excited to find a Zara Home store for the first time. I've never seen one before but it was exactly as you'd imagine, if anything I think Zara Home looked better than most of their clothes stores. If I had the money, my home would be filled with Zara's gorgeous home pieces. The whole store felt clean, light and universally influenced.

Who's that girl

Doing a degree in promotion has ruined adverts for me, but in some ways it's made them really interesting. It sounds sad but I can't stop picking apart every advert I see; the choice of model in this advert for blu vaping kits shows that the brand are trying to widen their target market.