TREND TRACKING

Here are a collection of images documenting the different outfits that Si wore with his New Balance trainers. These images show outfits worn every day (for University, out in the city etc) on nights out and also to the gym.
Although Si had the New Balance trainers for just under four weeks he managed to only find ten different outfits that would go with the colour of his trainers. This means that most of these outfits were used more than once throughout the trend tracking process.

SI MASON

We decided, for our Opinion Former, that we should choose a connector as this would be most appropriate for this brief as they can help get the brand 'out there' within a consumer group that New Balance wants to appeal to and raise awareness within.

Our Opinion Former is Si Mason, a 20 year old Architecture Student studying at Nottingham Trent University. Currently the president of the Architecture Society he is responsible for organising social meetings for the entire Architecture course. And as well as having to be in University for over 50 hours a week while keeping up with a hectic social life, he also lives with 13 other boys; giving us a good oportunity to get some insights into how similar consumers feel about trainers and the brand of New Balance.

To get a better insight into Si's life we visited his house to deliver his New Balance trainers and diary to fill and to also allow the chance to see where he lives and take pictures and document the kinds of products he has in his room.

SI'S NEW BALANCE TRAINERS AND DIARY TO FILL IN

In this diary Si must enter any comments that are made about his New Balance trainers, or the brand itself, and his own feelings for how he feels about the brand/trainers so it is easy for us to see if his opinion alters from wearing the trainers for three weeks. As well as Si's own entries we have also included a number of questions for him to answer to help us to get a further insight into his lifestyle and how he reacts to other brands.

Below are the images taken while in Si's house, including magazines left on the bathroom floor (he does live with 13 other boys so what can you expect?) which all featured trainers, his DVD collection and how he seems to lay out his clothes and shoes.

SI'S ROOM

SI'S DVD COLLECTION HOSTS A NUMBER OF 'MANLY' FILMS 
AND TV SERIES

Having the smallest room in the house doesn't really help Si organise his wardrobe. He tries his best, keeping his shirts hung up and keeping a shelf free for any of his shoes.

SI'S CURRENT COLLECTION OF SHOES INCLUDES
COMPETITOR'S SHOES SUCH AS K.SWISS, CONVERSE AND
VANS

THE LIFE OF A STUDENT...LOTS OF COFFEE
(WITH A COUPLE OF HIS MODELS INCLUDED)

EXAMPLES OF SI'S ARCHITECTURE COURSEWORK

Having the chance to look around Si's room helped to gain a small insight into his life; to further this we will conduct a small interview to get some information on what makes him tick, and his habits when buying products.

AS YELLOW AS THE SUN

Today we had the good news that our New Balance trainers had arrived so we finally got to take them to our Opinion former Si.

We surprised him with classic U420BNA in yellow and blue, he had also chosen U410BRY's in red and 410s in black and blue but lucky for us we had received trainers that were 

"as yellow as the sun" 

as Si said himself.

Hopefully the yellow will help Si to stand out in his New Balance and give him an edge over other consumers wearing competitor trainers. The inclusion of the blue also enables individuals to easily see the large N on the side for New Balance to help raise brand awareness within the UK.

FINDING OUR OPINION FORMER

In order to find our opinion former we asked ourselves a few questions...

...Looking at the descriptions of Malcolm Gladwell's Key Personas and Roger's Diffusion of Innovation Curve, we wondered whether there was anyone we knew that stood out as embodying one of these personality traits.

As it so happened, there were a number of people who stood out and would equally be suited for this project. In order to ensure they were 100% right, we created a tick-list to highlight the 3 best options.

Below features a copy of the tick list we created and filled out after having a brief chat with all 7 of the candidates:

Two males, both Connectors, and one female, who fitted the Maven description, were chosen as the best options and subsequently communications began to gather information and pictures of their lives to create moodboards to submit.