Background
XOBruno is a small company that designs and makes leather bags. The company's owner, Michele, came to Portland State's portfolio workshop to find a way to reach a larger audience.
Insights
We found that one of the main ways she could differentiate herself from her competitors was by focusing on her uniquely design "Alvar" bag. Our guiding insight for this audience was that these were people who were striving to be unique and expressed that desire through their clothes. With this in mind, we created our Alvar Girl/Guy campaign.
The Concept
The idea behind our campaign was to leverage the visual-centric nature of Instagram to show off the Alvar bag in a quirky situation our target audience might relate to. These posts would utilize the #AlvarGirl or #AlvarGuy tag which would allow others to join in for a chance to win a complimentary wallet.
One of the most distinctive aspects of Instagram is its powerful influencers. While we couldn't utilize large ones due to our budget, we managed to locate several micro-influencers in the Portland area we believe we could work with provided that we gave them an Alvar and a discount code for their fans. It was one of my tasks to write the letter contacting them along with a thank you card explaining the campaign.
Conclusion
It always feels good to help a local business. I'm so proud of my team for coming together to make this over three days. Portfolio workshop is always a whirlwind of activity that teaches so much over its brief period. My biggest takeaway from this campaign was how to more effectively utilize Instagram, whether it be writing for it or contacting influencers. With social media playing such a large role nowadays, I'm sure it'll be a skill I'll have to use often.