Creative Brand Strategy
TANG LILIN (0376668)
In Week 1, I learned that Creative Brand Strategy is not only about making visuals look attractive, but about building a brand through research, strategy, identity, and execution. This semester’s overall theme is Mental Health Awareness, but each student is expected to choose a more specific direction within this broad topic, such as stress, burnout, loneliness, emotional wellbeing, or healthy coping. The key idea is that a strong project must be relevant, meaningful, researchable, and suitable for branding development.
The lecture also emphasized that this module is process-based, which means the final outcome is important, but the development process matters just as much. Students are expected to research beyond surface level, show weekly progress, accept feedback, and carefully document their thinking in the e-portfolio. Strong work is not just about “nice final artwork,” but about clear concepts, strategic thinking, audience understanding, and consistent development.
Another important point from this lecture is that the semester will move step by step from research → strategy → identity → execution. Before designing anything, students need to understand the issue, the audience, the message, the opportunity, and the intended brand experience. This helped me understand that branding is not only visual, but also about communication, trust, and public impact, especially when dealing with a sensitive topic like mental health awareness.
For Week 1, the main task is Research and Direction Setting. I need to identify a clear topic direction, define the problem statement and audience focus, collect key findings and references, write an opportunity statement, and begin shaping an initial concept direction with mood and visual cues. Overall, this lecture made it clear that a successful project in this module should not start with design first, but with a thoughtful, audience-aware, and strategically grounded direction.
This week’s lecture mainly taught me that strategy should come before design. Before starting any logo, poster, or visual outcome, I need to first understand the issue, audience, message, emotional tone, communication goal, and brand experience. I learned that branding is not just about making something look nice, but about making sure every design choice has a clear reason behind it.
Another important point is that brand strategy is the thinking behind the brand, while brand identity is how that thinking becomes visible. The lecture introduced key strategy components such as purpose, vision, mission, values, positioning, personality, voice, story, heritage, and tagline. These elements help explain what a campaign stands for, who it is speaking to, and why the audience should care.
I also learned that when analysing a case study, I should not only comment on whether the design looks good. Instead, I need to ask deeper questions, such as why a certain visual style is used, how colour supports the message, what action the campaign encourages, and whether the identity creates trust, empathy, or engagement. This made me realise that good analysis is about explaining why the design works, not just describing what I see.
Overall, this lecture helped me understand that a strong campaign needs a clear strategic foundation before moving into visuals. It also gave me a clearer framework for analysing my case study and developing my own campaign direction in a more focused and meaningful way.
In Week 3, the lecture focused on Situation Analysis and Campaign Proposal Planning. The class helped us understand how to connect our case study research with our own mental health awareness campaign direction.
The lecture explained that a strong campaign should not start directly with visuals, logos, or colours. Before designing, we need to clearly define the issue, problem, audience, message, strategy, and experience. The main thinking flow of the proposal template is:
Issue → Problem → Audience Insight → Strategy → Concept → Visual Direction → Touchpoints → SWOT
This structure shows that a campaign needs to be developed step by step. We first identify a specific mental health issue, then understand the target audience and problem before developing the strategy, concept, visuals, and touchpoints.
We were also reminded that the proposal should be specific, research-based, audience-aware, strategically clear, and sensitive to the topic of mental health. The lecturer highlighted that our target audience should not be too broad, and we should avoid writing “everyone” as the audience.
The lecture also pointed out common mistakes, such as choosing a broad topic, making claims without research, creating visuals too early, using generic mental health symbols, writing a common tagline, and choosing touchpoints randomly.
For Week 4, we need to prepare a draft campaign direction, including the problem statement, audience insight, purpose, brand values, positioning, big idea, tagline, visual direction, touchpoints, customer journey, and SWOT analysis.
Overall, this lecture helped me understand that a strong campaign is not only about attractive visuals. It needs a clear connection between research, audience, problem, strategy, concept, visual direction, and experience.
Overall, my Creative Brand Strategy presentation has a clear research direction and a relevant sleep-related campaign topic. The case study on World Sleep Day supports my campaign well, and my own campaign, Night Ease – Insomnis, has a meaningful focus on bedtime anxiety, overthinking, and young adults who struggle to rest mentally at night. The app-based strategy, including thought release, calming sound support, time monitoring, and the Moon Drops reward system, gives the campaign a practical and interactive direction.
However, there are still several areas that need improvement.
Main Weaknesses
1. Explain the causes of bedtime anxiety more deeply
At the moment, the problem is clear, but the causes are still too general. I need to explain more specific reasons, such as unfinished assignments, tomorrow’s responsibilities, relationship problems, financial worries, social comparison, fear of underperforming, and digital overstimulation. This will make the problem statement more relatable and convincing.
2. Refine the brand personality
The current brand personality sounds more like the app function or campaign activation. I need to make it feel more human and emotional. For example, Night Ease can be described as a gentle friend who quietly stays beside users at night, helps them slow down their thoughts, and reminds them that rest is allowed.
3. Add a competitor comparison chart
Since my campaign includes an app prototype, I should compare Night Ease with existing sleep, meditation, journaling, white noise, and mental health apps. The chart can compare features such as thought release, calming sound, screen-time control, emotional reassurance, reward system, and bedtime habit-building. This will help show the unique positioning of my campaign.
4. Develop more unique symbol references
The current symbols, such as moon, stars, sleep icons, and “zzz,” are suitable but quite common. I need to create more distinctive symbols related to bedtime anxiety, such as tangled thoughts becoming loose threads, a thought cloud dissolving, a moon drop, a quiet window, or a night jar for releasing worries.
5. Support the campaign with stronger visual and app references
I should include more references from app interface design, sleep health campaigns, bedtime journaling tools, calming sound apps, mindfulness apps, and digital wellbeing campaigns. These references can help justify my design direction and make the campaign look more strategically developed.
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