Option 6: Black & Decker Power Tools

Brief

Produce a 30 second TVC targeting Women 25-40 years of age promoting power tools for women.
SMP: Power tools for women around the house.

Background: Black & Decker have designed a range of power tools for women who feel empowered to take on the handy man's job around the house.Their husbands are either unable, or unwilling to complete the chores that need to be done.



Research

We researched a few facts of the company to better understand their position on the market.

• Two young entrepreneurs, S. Duncan Black and Alonzo G. Decker, founded a small machine shop in Baltimore, Maryland. They called it The Black & Decker® Manufacturing Company. Their shop has grown beyond anything they could have imagined.
• The company is the world’s largest producer of power tools and accessories
• Recently named as one of Australia’s key global brands and included in the 2004 Super brands compendium, Black & Decker® this year celebrates 75 years of power and innovation in Australia.
• Today, Black & Decker® is a global marketer and manufacturer of quality products used in and around the home and for commercial applications
• It is also a major supplier of information systems and services to government and commercial client’s world-wide.
• With products marketed in over 100 countries and approximately half of its revenues from outside the United States, Black & Decker®'s product lines hold leading market share positions in their industries.
• Its international network of manufacturing facilities is one of the most advanced and cost-efficient in the world.
• An aggressive, customer-centered marketing orientation has generated a stream of successful new products and has fostered a reputation for quality, innovation, design and value.

Black and Decker taglines
Any job, anywhere, anytime
Ideas at work

Black and Decker Logo

 

Some of the Black & Decker range

Including a blower vac, drill, electric chainsaw, angle grinder, blow torch, and nail gun.
We found the range to be quite manly orientated obviously designed for the man around the house, not the woman.

Current Black & Decker Commercials

We then began looking at various advertisements by the company to get a better feel for what the company was about.

Other Videos focused on women and power tools





Power Women, Power tools is an organisational charity in which Women help build or re build homes for those who are down on their luck.





Power Tools specifically designed for Women

We found that there were actually power tools available which were designed especially for women. These power tools tend to be made out of lighter materials, smaller grips to accomadate smaller hands and are generally more comfortable to use. Obviously the common theme with each image is pink. We even found websites that are dedicated to women and power tools.
http://professional-power-tool-guide.com/power-tool-guides/other-guides/women-and-power-tools/

http://www.womenintrades.com/profile.html

Concepts

We discussed this TVC from the beginning of week 1 as we knew a fair bit of planning would need to go into it. Our original idea was to demonstrate how the every day working mother/ woman can use the power tools to ease mundane tasks around the house. We wanted this to be over dramatised and slightly humorous in order of captivating the audience. From this we started to think about what power tools could be over drammatised for what tasks.

Ideas we came up with were:

• Using a pressure washer to spray out a messy bathroom
• Using an angle grinder to grind food off plates (instead of using a scourer)
• Using a jack hammer to make holes for new plants in the garden (instead of a shovel or spade)
• Using a  heavy duty blow torch to caramalise creme brulee (instead of the commercial kitchen torches)
• Using a nail gun to put the kids pictures/test marks up on the fridge
• Using the blower vac to clean a messy loungeroom

We were happy with our initial ideas and continued working with these as our final concept.


Final Idea

From the ideas we had to consider what we could actually film and what power tools we could get our hands on. We came to the conclusion of filming a kitchen scene with the creme brulee and blow torch, the nail gun and fridge idea and the blower vac and messy room idea. This concept fit into the women around the house genre of the TVC perfectly.

We wanted the TVC to be witty and slightly humerous and so we began planning the storyboard and how we could make each idea flow into one TVC.



Storyboard

Logo Design

The original Black & Decker Logo comes across as being very manly. As the new range was to appeal to women we added a feminine touch which seemed to fit better considering the target audience. This was to be shown at the end of the 30 second TVC and was a starting off point for the direction we were to head in.

 

Song choice

Deciding to have no dialogue and let the short commercial visually tell the story we had to choose an appropiate song. We wanted a song well know by most age groups but that still fitted in with the cross over from a commercial of mens to womens power tools.

We chose Dude (looks like a lady) by Aerosmith as it seem to fit well within our filming and it's the kind of song that people would hear and pay attention and sing along.

Shooting TVC

 Final Product