OUGD603 - "Tell A Lie" Convincingly - Research

Idea
As a group of 4, we were tasked with creating a convincing lie that would expose a problem. After brainstorming several ideas, we thought about the promotions given to freshers during freshers week and the ease at which people will sign up to receive a chance to win a competition. Therefore our idea was to create a coffee brand that would offer people the opportunity to win free coffee for a whole year. In order to be entered into the competition, participants would sign up to a false newsletter that would give them the option to read false terms and conditions. The terms and conditions would in fact state that the competition was false, which would give us the opportunity to record whether people would bother to read this an understand where their information would be used.

Research
In order to create a brand that was believable we would need to look at existing brands of a similar type and how they would market to their audience, as well as the things they would offer. The role that I would be tasked with was to look at how social media is used by businesses in Leeds and replicate this with our own false social media accounts. After looking through Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, it was clear that the best platform to use would be Instagram as many students were easily able to access and interact with these businesses.

 

One source for this research was the Wolfox Cafe's Instagram as it would provide our social media with inspiration for a professional looking business. Many of the posts on their Instagram were of coffee, lunches and other snacks available, all of which would look professionally photographed or edited. This works well for the platform as the followers were giving positive feedback to the account and its content.







The Instagram account
After discussion among the group we had settled on the name Cipher Coffee, as it meant false or non-existent making it a fitting name for a false business. To create the Instagram account an email was first set up for Cipher and then linked to a Facebook account, giving it more authenticity as well as an alternative platform to connect with. Making the posts for the account meant finding free images of coffee that could be used to promote the business in a professional manner. The photographs were labelled with the logo that had been created by other members and then posted to the account. One trend that had proved to be popular among several Instagram accounts was to post images within a grid format on the home page. This technique allows each photograph posted to be a part of a bigger picture split into 9 posts when viewed from the home screen.