Every year Student Price Card (or SPC) releases a new campaign promoting their loyalty rewards program exclusively for students. When this project was received at Engine Advertising Inc. we sat down with the client and were able to come up with some extremely creative campaigns for the card. SPC’s loyalty partners are placed into six categories: fashion, dining, sports, travel, beauty and lifestyle. The client was sold on the idea of a campaign centered around the idea that parents, teachers and other authority figures couldn’t grasp these six categories. Things like fashion, sports and beauty were for the students to understand and that’s why the card belonged to them.
This project was created for the client through Engine Advertising Inc. and I’m only showcasing my involvement.
Several concepts for the card were presented to the client. Including variations of black and white cards that would come with a sharpie in the package for students to sign on the front with. Typically students are required to sign the back of the card, by bringing the signature to the front and including a sharpie we wanted to push the feeling of owning an exclusive card.
The final card took a different route and was one I tried to make look more elegant and luxurious. The inspiration for this card comes from security features on higher-end credit cards. In very fine print the words ‘Student Price Card’ formed a line pattern across the background of the card.
The final packaging featured the card itself large and center, colourful hexagons that represented the six SPC categories, and all information in the top half. This was by design so that when cards were placed at cash registers in holders, none of the information would be hidden, as the bottom half of the package would have been covered.
The packaging was an intricate piece. When opened, several panels would fold out. One panel containined the card itself, other panels listed participating retailers, and others promoted contests and other available perks.
Posters were created to help push the campaign through high schools.
The most challenging part of this project was the redesign of SPC’s website. Engine Advertising Inc. was commissioned to only do the design work for this, and the agency which currently handled their website would layer my design on top of the site’s already existing interface. This meant I could not change much about the site and that my new graphics would have to fit directly on top of their old graphics. If a call-to-action box was 200 pixels by 200 pixels, my new design for that box had to be 200 pixels by 200 pixels.
I was able to design something that matched the new campaign and although it was challenging (because things could have been altered/shifted/resized to make them better) my design followed the same interface and structure as the old design.
The mobile website was another challenging part of the scope for a similar reason. Another agency was working on the development of the site and wireframes had been sent to us. Development started the same time I started my designs, so once again I couldn’t stray too far off from the path that was set out for me.
Similar to the mobile website, the iOS app had wireframes already made. I quickly got started on my designs for the new app and when it was finished, we were miles ahead from where the old SPC app was.
