Beyond the brief: Outside-the-box thinking for crafting campaigns
When it comes to even the most demanding of challenges, there’s nothing creativity can’t solve. And MMK students’ creativity was definitely put to the test with a brief from none other than Ferrari. The task? To conceptualise purposeful client communication of the Ferrari Purosangue. Already a true challenge at first glance, the brief posed the challenge of how to responsibly market the car and at the same time appeal to sports car enthusiasts. It is, after all, still a sports car.
Through creativity, teamwork, and grit, the MMK students powered through, with each group coming up with at least two proposals for the Purosangue. And as with any challenge, a prize was at stake: an exclusive trip to the Ferrari factory, the racing team, LifeStyle boutique, and famous museum in Maranello, Italy; to gain an inside scoop on the workings of company and its brand values.
The group that emerged victorious was composed of Victoire Contandin, Catalina Oribe, Barnaba Pellini, Rakshita Jain, Charu Senthilkumar, and Maria Zahar. Two groups were tied at first runner up: Priyanshi Agrawal, Ryan Baroud, Maia Marquez, Mashal Rafiq, and Aleksandra Vujasinovic; and Arthur Clerget, Urjita Sheth, Shuyu Wang, Agata Wojcicka, and Eleonora Zorzo. At third place was the group of Alice Jornalo, Laura Pesca, Noopur Singhania, Radhika Tandon, and Yichun Zhu.
Two students shared the working processes behind the concepts that earned them a spot on the podium and how going beyond the brief was their key to creating successful campaigns.
Charu from the winning group shared that, “our team took a high-level approach to find out which indicators best define sustainability within the luxury sector. We created a template for Ferrari to measure their sustainability efforts by, which could go even beyond this project.” The team went beyond the project brief by taking a step back and defining the challenge differently. For them, it wasn’t a matter of finding how the Purosangue could be sustainable, but rather, how Ferrari as a brand can adapt sustainable
Practices today and in the future. When asked how they came up with their idea and way of working, Charu shares that it was “research, research, and more research.” Through this, their group found “interesting examples across multiple industries that helped us shape our indicators, which we based our specific proposals on.” In this case, applying best practices worked best for them.
On the other hand, “our group looked at sustainability differently,” shares Maia from one of the runner-up groups. “Instead of focusing on the environmental aspect and how the product can lessen or minimize carbon emissions, as would’ve been the more obvious answer, we played on promoting the product’s longevity.” She adds that “For us, the challenge basically meant redefining what sustainability could mean in the context of the Purosangue.”
One big takeaway marketers can get from a challenge such as this is to never just take a brief as it is. To come up with creative solutions means looking beyond it, pushing past limits, and challenging initial ideas to come up with ingenious, yet plausible innovations.