Hello! Sorry again for the delay; I've finally managed to upload everything though so we're good to go.
OK, so, we know my plan already: rebrand 667 as a literary think tank centred around exploring ideas from the world of Lemony Snicket at annual symposiums, funded by sales from our community-run shop.
All that remains is to implement my plans. I started with a brand new logo. I wanted to keep it very Snickety, so I chose simple imagery: eyes and fire/matchsticks. I came up with a couple of different designs:
It didn’t take me long, though, to settle on this one:
I chose this logo because I thought the scratchy quality looked suitably Snickety, because it combined the key imagery of eyes and fire, and also looked a bit like a magnifying glass. All put together, it reminded me of the 'question that burns like a fire in the mind' quote, and I think it suggests that 667 Dark Avenue is an organisation of curious minds.
This brought me to another key bit of branding: the slogan. I considered '667 Dark Avenue is waiting for you', and though this did make it into some of my marketing materials, I didn’t feel it was quite right. Eventually I settled on 'Be consumed by curiosity'. I thought this essentially distilled my USP into 4 words, and it seemed suitably intriguing.
In the first year of running the rebranded 667, my priority would be to get the shop running as fast as possible. As I previously described, it would run on a model similar to Etsy, so all sorts of products would be available from different members.
We would spread the word with small flyers, like this:
You'll notice that this matches the design of the poster I shared in the public pitch. I want all the marketing materials to work cohesively, and to suggest style and elegance (the symposiums will end with masquerade balls, after all).
These adverts can be distributed as physical leaflets (left in bookshops, libraries, cafés, etc, or posted through people's doors), and also shared on social media. The physical copies will have this on the reverse side:
I would aim to have the shop up and running within about two months, with more products being added all the time. In the first year, while we're still starting out, I do anticipate the probable need for extra funding, so we can make applications to arts councils for grants. When we have the money, we will find a suitable venue for a three day event, plus catering.
After the shop is up and running, we can focus on our attentions on the questions we want to research. As I mentioned before, everyone can present their own research into whatever topics they like, but we will be focusing most of all on a central idea, which we will vote on. Normally, this will happen within a couple of weeks at the start of the year, but in our first year I don’t anticipate us settling on a topic until about three months in, as we will be busy setting up the shop and advertising ourselves.
In order to draw in old members, we will send this out to everyone's email accounts:
We can also post this on social media to attract new members with all sorts of fresh ideas.
Once we've settled on our question(s), we will begin our individual research, and also enter the final leg of our advertising campaign, which will be themed around the topics chosen for discussion at this year's symposium. Using the examples I initially came up with, we can create posters like this:
As these posters go out (again: emails, social media, public spaces like libraries), we will create a board for symposium registration, where members can reserve tickets.
And, voila! That's everything.
Let me know if you have sny questions!