Brand Essence

The essence of a brand is shown through 4 separate sections attributes (what the brand stands for), promise (what the brand offers the customer), personality (who would the brand be) and the source of authority (what makes the brand credible). Within a recent seminar, after thoroughly discussing brand persuasion and what makes a brand, we created brand essence models. Firstly for the brand that we had currently been working on for module 1.

Tom Ford aims to make women feel confident and sexy, it promises this within it's clothes and personality. It derives it's sources of authority from 50's glamour and ambassadors such as Tom himself and Julianne Moore.

We then evaluated in pairs our day in the life of. Whilst doing this I picked a brand that I encountered to make a brand essence board, firstly without posting the name of the brand, for my partner to guess who it is, I created one on herbal essences which was correctly guessed. 

Herbal Essences is a luxury hair brand sold on the high street, it has many different attributes and personality traits as there is a wide range of flavoured shampoos and conditioners for different types of hair. It promises to do many things for all types of hair e.g undamage and smooth damaged hair. Its sources of authority come across in it's campaigns with the use of attractive models with amazing hair. 

Tom Ford Final Moodboard

At the end of module 1 we were asked in groups to present a final photoshop mood board on A3, explaining our assigned brand thoroughly and stating why we had placed what we did on the mood board. My assigned brand for my mood board was Tom Ford.

The idea behind my mood board was derived from where I think Tom himself gets his inspiration from. Tom Ford stands for glamour and sexuality, the brand isn't mysterious, it is very graphic and unapologetic with an essence of aggression shown in my mood board through his 'Neroli Portofino' campaign of 2 naked people seamlessly falling down the right hand side. He creates clothes for the mature woman, pale skinned, sophisticated. The image of Julianne Moore depicts this, as a close friend of Tom Ford, she is a brand ambassador and starred in his hugely successful film 'The Single Man', a clip which is shown in the top left hand corner. He loves the mid century woman, 50's and 60's glamour brought out in his campaign for perfume 'Black Orchid' shown on the above right hand side. I have tried to base my mood board solely around this, the background showing old broadway, using pictures of New York in the 50's (The Empire State Building) and famous glamour icons such as Elizabeth Taylor and Sunny Harnett, the type of woman I believe he would dress. I have also included work from photographers Irvin Peng and Richard Avedon both who have shot for Vogue in the 50's and 60's, this inspired me and made me believe they are connected to Tom Ford as their work can be graphic very much like his campaigns. A colour palette is included to display the mood of the board while fabric examples of his work (bottom left hand corner) have been used to keep his modern day look involved. I made my mood board very cluttered and busy in order to keep in mind the graphicness of his clothes, fabric choices and  campaigns. 

Unlike the other members of my group my brand and mood board was very different, the brands in which I was asked to compare mine to had very neutral colour tones and were more soft (Chloe, Reiss, Bottega Veneta) all besides 2 sports brands (Puma, Rapha). 

FEEDBACK
After holding my mood board up to a room of people and thoroughly explaining it, my course tutors then read out their feedback on my groups performance and my mood board. The feedback said that I need to take my time more and pause for thought and have more confidence and self belief in what I am presenting. That I put forward an opinion and use a lot of contextual reference, that my mood board is creative. Tom Ford is humorous and provocative which is shown through my work by using good image selection. The problem with my mood board is that if you were to take away the name, would you really know who the brand was? Should i choose to resubmit my work I would need to make the board itself more of a minimal aesthetic in order to fully mirror his campaigns, include key words and make a few tweeks and touches. 

Tom Ford Photoshop Practice

The Original Image

After the past few weeks now I am slowly starting to get the hang of photoshop, within my last photoshop seminar we were taught how to edit individual pictures with effects such as hue, saturation, sepia and luminosity and also the ability to crop and move things around. It may sound easy peasy to experienced photoshoppers but for a novice like me who is still learning it helped a lot to find out where these tools where hiding within the programme itself.

Slight Practice Edit

Tom Ford Consumer Profiles

As our first module assessment is looming, my group and myself decided to meet up and discuss all of our brands in order to differentiate similarities and differences between each and to gain abit more of an insight and research into our own brand. The other brands that I have within my group to compare and contrast to Tom Ford is Reiss, Chloe, Puma, Rapha, Bottega Veneta. Firstly I considered and discussed the 7 p's of each brand.

Tom Ford 7 P's
Product
menswear, women's wear, accessories, eye wear, fragrance and beauty, Film 'The Single Man'

Price
cheapest price £26 (Eye Defining Pencil) all the way up to £1,000+ on clothes
(LUXURY BRAND)

Place
Online shopping, stores in fashionable cities, concessions (Selfridges)

Promotion
Billboards, magazines, most promotion done for beauty and perfume (affordable for the everyday woman), celebrity endorsements (Julianne Moore), fashion shows, sexualised graphic promotion to grab the eye and attract attention is typical of Tom Ford, all campaigns usually display 3 central protagonists

People

Tom Ford himself, brand ambassador Julianne Moore (good friend of Tom and star of his film 'The Single Man') 

Process
everything dressed neatly in packaging, luxury brand (expect a luxury look and feel of each and every product)

Physical Evidence
Make-Up counters, whole experience, try before you buy, personal shoppers, highly interactive website


When looking at everyone else's 7 P's we discussed how my brand is the highest most luxury brand and how the other brands aspire to be like Tom Ford, to be a the top of the game. We also discovered how Reiss, Bottega Veneta and Tom Ford are all mature brands with more of a sophisticated woman in mind rather than brands like Chloe who value youthful flirtatiousness and Rapha and Puma are both sportswear brands who desire to become more stylish. Chloe, Bottega Veneta and Reiss all share the same colour palette of neutral shades. 

Tom Ford Colour Palette

After exploring into Colour Theory I expanded my research into looking into Colour Palettes more specifically for Tom Ford. On photoshop I created these colour palette variations using Tom Fords most recent campaign switching around colours, positions and shapes in order to find out what looked best.

Colour palettes are important when looking into a brand, it helps you to get a feel for what type of look the brand stands for before doing any research or looking at any garments. 

Tom Ford- Free Writing

After participating in the free writing seminar I took it upon myself to adapt what I learnt to my assigned brand 'Tom Ford', as I found the free writing workshop so helpful on getting past writers block. It helped me to fully open my mind and just scribble whatever I knew on a piece of paper as a starting point for bigger and better things. With 2 minutes on the clock this is what I came out with.

Tom Ford

When first thinking of the name Tom Ford, my mind skips straight to mens wear and suits but delving deeper I see that he is the definition of glamour and sex appeal, his campaign Neroli Portofino was borderline pornographic, but as a designer he likes to push controversy. He adores the female figure and his clothes show high end glamour influenced by housewives of the 50's, 60's and 70's. 

Visual Analysis- Tom Ford

Within our seminar groups we have each been assigned a brand or designer for us to now continuously work on for the remainder of the first module, mine is Tom Ford. A skill for a fashion communicator is the ability to analyse an image. When you first look at an image you immediately begin to decode its and establish it's concepts, a semiotic analysis takes a step back so that you may work out what it signifies and how it has meaning. I chose a recent image campaign by Tom Ford to semiotically analyse.

1. Take a quick look at the image (no analysis)
I respond well to this image, it makes me want to look more closely at whats going on, 60's style, robotic, futuristic, simple image, plain, all about the garments and name, nothing to distract from them, signifies stylish chic modern women's wear

2. What kind of visual is it?
New advertisement, on trend, magazine spread? billboard?

3. Systematically and thoroughly list all the elements of the image (Denotation)
A young slim woman with a pretty face (pulling a shocked expression) and mid length brown hair sat manly but dressed feminine, sat awkwardly in a geometric shape on a white chair against a white background. The girl is dressed futuristically in a mid length sleeveless sequinned silver dress with a net mesh top, paired with over the knee gold gladiator style stilettos, he legs and placed as if holding her up awkwardly. Tom Ford is capitalised at the bottom left hand side of the page in a contrasting black colour, its stands out fully against the white background

4.Connotations?
hair, 60's style bouffant, beehive, fringe, sultry look,
dress, body con, sexy, tight, glamorous
shoes, roman, gladiator, gods, Greece, over the knee, stiletto 
(UP MARKET)