Creative Branding in Tourism

Aim: This module aims to develop students' understanding of theories and business practices concerning building strong brands in travel and tourism. Students will learn how certain content in social media managed to engage with target audiences and viewers in a compelling way and achieved branding agendas simultaneously and even went viral online. The module not only promotes creative thinking and problem-solving skills but also develops students' abilities to create branding solutions and a coherent plan on selected social media platforms.

Learning Outcome 1: Evaluate the concept of customer-based brand equity and key performance indicators of a brand in travel and tourism;
Learning Outcome 2: Analyse the attributes of a branding campaign that can achieve popularity and increase persuasiveness in social media.
Learning Outcome 3: Ability to conduct a brand audit to a given travel and tourism brand;
Learning Outcome 4: Create a coherent plan that includes a series of original and shareable content and branding campaigns based on the results of the brand audit to address a given Creative Brief;
Learning Outcome 5: Select appropriate measurement strategies to monitor the performance of the proposed plan.

Assessment tasks

A. Plan an original, compelling and shareable 15-second video ad that resonates with the target audiences, who areemployed female, aged 30-49, living in England, looking for social interaction and self-fulfilment.
B. Justify your choice of the most appropriate social media platform to attract the target audiences.
C. Produce appropriate SMART objectives and a mini storyboard of the video.

Assignment structure

The one-page plan you created should consist of headings and sub-headings of the following components. All the sections shall be entirely your CREATION & ORIGINAL IDEAS.
• Your name + student ID
• Title of your big idea & the logo of your chosen brand

Section 1: Chosen Social Media Platform (max. 60 words)
o Justify your choice of the most appropriate social media platform to attract the target audiences of your chosen brand. A list of brands will be given in the assessment briefing session.
o Back up your justifications with relevant market reports and academic journal articles as well as the results of brand audits.

Section 2: Objectives
o Propose 1-2 appropriate SMART objectives with a relevant ‘S', based on your chosen brand's existing Marketing Mix (7Ps) and the result of brand audit.
o Avoid generic objectives (e.g. increasing the number of likes and sharing) or discounts in this assessment.

Section 3: Mini Storyboard
o Create a compelling story with memorable characters in the proposed 15-second video ad.
o Use 6 frames of images to convey how the proposed video ad would unfold from the start to the end. The sequence of the images serves as a visual script which clearly communicating the key scene in a timeline.
o Annotate each scene clearly with relevant details about the visual, aural and textual elements (i.e. the characters, the storyline, dialogues/voice-over, music/sound effects, written text and camera movement).
o Make sure the proposed video includes engaging branding messages and relevant call-to-actions that address Section 2.
o The mini storyboard you created need to be well-designed and self-explanatory, which means readers are able to understand the storyline and imagine how the proposed video would look like even without speaking to you.

- References
- Using Harvard Referencing throughout.