The Reel Business

This live brief was given to us by Christina Garlington - who owns and runs her independent film company based in the Media Factory at Uclan.

The brief was multi-fold; its' purpose:
- acting as a business consultant, my task was to inform Christina how she might best expand her business into new business sectors within the North West that perhaps she had not considered previously.
-I was to find evidence to back up the proposed new market sector I was suggesting in terms of size; financial return; viability in terms of being able to need and use video marketing as a marketing tool for their business.
- If possible, I was going to produce a database using excel for Christina to use should she decide she liked my proposal.

http://thereelbusiness.co.uk/

Looking at the business on the website and after the presentation that Christina made to us about 'The Reel Business', an idea sparked in my head for her to expand along similar lines to the market sector she was already enjoying some success in.  She explained to us that her work in producing video diaries for a charity representing terminally ill children was not only a totally worthwhile experience but emotionally rewarding as well as financially sound and imparted her love of working with children to us.

Not straight away, but soon after analysing the task, I identified what I felt was a niche market for her to tap into (following my past experience as a parent with a small baby/toddler) that of Private nurseries or Day Care facilities for children.  The idea began quite simply as offering 'A Moment in Time' Video to capture a young child's day at the Nursery for a parent to keep forever.

So idea in head, I began my research ...
part of our brief was in fact to place the importance of the emergence of film as a marketing tool clearly in the mind of Christina's' customers and so I needed to find evidence of use of video marketing; growth of video marketing; net worth of the financial returns of the video marketing market and perhaps also evidence of customers using this technique as a means to advertise or help increase their company sales and profits.

Surprisingly, there was a lot of information out there about video marketing and the figures were very encouraging!

So, I was happy that I could give Christina enough background evidence to convince her prospective customer about the benefits of her business offer to them.  Next I would need to find the evidence to support my idea in terms of financial viability of the offer, to Christina.  Unless she could see a return for her business and a large sustainable market, then it would not be a reasonable proposition for me to make.

The good thing about the education sector is that there is lots of evidence available and I was able to find statistics from experts to back up my suggestions:

Following on from this I needed to show that there was a market within the North West for my proposal and so I gathered statistical information to show that private childcare provision was not only alive and well in the North West in difficult economic times, but that it appeared to be steadily growing and the trend continued to be upward!

With all my research gathered; analysed; edited and produced into my report, the final stage was to formulate the idea so that Christina could understand how she might apply the proposal within a real context by expanding The Reel Business into the education sector for pre-school children:

There was more than one way I felt she could do this and so I gave her all the options I had considered viable:

Finally, I had made my case for business expansion into a new business sector in the North West and included a database of over 100 companies that Christina could contact as possible customers for her service.

I presented my idea to her in a client presentation forum and from feedback I received, my idea was met favourably!