From Air Bag to Literal Tote Bag: Coopr Academy Week 3

This third week of the Coopr Academy was all about creativity and creative PR campaigns! As we learn more about the specifics of PR it is important to also think about how each PR campaign can be made unique by using creative thinking.

As always, we gathered in the presentation room at 16:00 where Mischa and Dorieke welcomed us. They presented about how creativity can be used in PR, tips and risks of these campaigns, and they guided us through brainstorming sessions for our ongoing Primark case.

We learned about two campaigns, Volvo and Lexa Voice, which gave us insights for our own case. We learned about Volvo’s strategy to appeal to a younger audience by creating sustainable tote bags using airbags from cars. Holding the product in real life while understanding the story behind it really brought the campaign to life right before our eyes.

We also learned about the very innovative way in which they promoted Lexa Voice’s new feature of audio messages. A booth was set up at a festival where participants would communicate only through voice, and without seeing each other, they had to decide whether they wanted to go on a first date. The biggest takeaway from this example was that sometimes the best way to promote an online website is by using an offline activation.

Both of these campaigns were great examples of how PR campaigns can be creative in different ways to focus on their target audience!

Before dinner, we split into the two groups to start brainstorming ideas for our campaigns starting from our insights. it was super helpful to start from insights to boost creativity and not only focus on the obvious ideas when thinking about an activation. We used Post-its to map out our ideas and this helped us all be on the same page while discussing.

We enjoyed delicious burgers right before getting back to the presentation room to discuss the risks of PR campaigns and reflect on which risks we should consider when specifically thinking about Primark. We then split again into the two groups and kept brainstorming about our ideas and finally chose one big idea that we wanted to pursue as a group.

This session brought our campaigns to life a bit more and helped us learn all the things we need to take into consideration. As pitch-day gets closer and closer the anticipation of discovering what the other group has come up with becomes bigger and bigger!