Group mood board research - Soap

In the same groups as we were in for our street style task, in our seminar we were set a task to research and find out about a specific beauty product in which would be designated to us- we were given soap.

As a group we decided to create 4 mood boards which would be in the categories of children's soap, teenagers soap, adults soap and soap for the older generation. We also decided to have a low and a high end example for each of these categories.

We began our research online and looked up which brands sold soap and in which age category they settled in with best. We then took our research into town and browsed in shops such as Boots, Lush, Superdrug, John Lewis and Debenhams to see what was on offer in those selected stores, as well as getting a few images of the packaging that was provided and the way in which the products were displayed.

The next day we began our moodboards, Myself and one other girl in the group volunteered to make 2 research mood boards each to speed along the process. Here are the mood boards that we created;

Childrens soap:
We decided to use Johnson's Baby and Crazy for kids as our two examples. We found that whereas Johnson's was more aimed towards the parents due to its a well established and reliable brand, the Crazy for kids online range was aimed more specifically at the children themselves with its use of a bold, vibrant colour scheme, aswell as its online interaction elements in which allows the children to play games such as 'spot the difference', as well as meeting the cleverly alliterated characters who appeared on the soap bottles such as 'Milo the monkey' and 'Peri the peacock'.

Teenagers soap:
As a group we decided on using Simple and Soap & Glory as our two brands- Simple being the low end brand and Soap & Glory the more high end brand. We found that Simple used basic, 'simple' white, green and blue packaging to enforce the product as a unisex brand whereas Soap & Glory based itself predominantly as a women's brand with its memorable pink logo. However when researching online I found out that Soap & Glory also have men's gift sets available in which are blue and red- reinforcing stereotypical colours for males whereas the women's gift sets were pink and white- thus reinforcing the opposing gender stereotype through colours. The use of Soap & Glory's sexual innuendo's within the naming of their products such as 'sexy mother pucker' lip gloss, added a fun and playful edge to the brand as well as cleverly keeping up with their desired audience-this being teenagers.

Adults soap:
The two brands we chose to research for adults soap were Clinique for the high end and Lush for the lower end brand. With Clinique, we found that their colour schemes very much reflected the male and female products. For example the pastel green, cream and beige products for women reinforce the idea of their organic and fragrance free products, whereas the more vibrant pink and orange products reflect the idea of them being the fragranced and chemically enhanced products. This completely differentiating to that of the male Clinique range in which is entirely based upon metallic black and grey colours-symbolising the idea between a hard and typical 'mans man'. Yet with Lush we found that the design and layout both online and in store added a fun and exciting edge to the product, this mixed with the cool and quirky themed soaps that they offer, such as soap that resembles food, pink 'girly' soap for girls, dark 'chunky' soap for men, as well as soaps based for occasions e.g. the Christmas penguin soaps.

Soap for the older generation:
We decided upon using Estee Lauder as the high end product and Dove for the low end product for this category. We discovered that Estee Lauder was a more premium brand as the soaps were a little more pricey as well as having slightly more up market packaging in comparison to Dove which is simple and fairly reasonably priced. Estee Lauder is predominantly aimed towards a more female consumer with the exception of 2 or 3 mens products, whereas Dove caters to all with its unisex soaps and colour themes used such as blue bottled soap, to pink bottled soap with white bottled soap in between- reinforcing gender stereotypes but with a neutral medium to cater to all in between.

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