This portfolio summarizes four case studies Laura Brown completed as an account planner at an advertising school. Her strategies for Snickers and Blackberry won class challenges. The case studies include briefs for Snickers to expand beyond the snack category, for Airbnb to empower hosts to spread belonging, for Blackberry to promote its productivity, and for a museum light exhibition to create a shareable experience.

1. Laura Brown
Strategic Planning Portfolio
laura.e.brown2@gmail.com
@saysLauraBrown

2. 2
This portfolio is an overview of four separate case studies
from the Account Planning Bootcamp at the Miami Ad School
in Sydney, Australia.
We worked in teams of account planners and creatives, and
each week we were given a client brief to crack. My role as
the planner was to write the creative brief and direct the
strategy, but I also played a central role in engineering the
creative idea.
My strategies for Snickers and Blackberry won the weekly
class challenge. I was also received the Top Dog reward for
overall first in class.
INTRODUCTION 3
SNICKERS 4
Expand the brand beyond the category
AIRBNB 7
Use members to convert non-members
BLACKBERRY 11
Bring back a dying brand
MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART 14
Create a highly sharable experience
Great
views from
here!
An Overview of Strategy.

3. The girl from Dekalb, Illinois.
Hello there. My name is Laura and
I’d like to be your account planner.
We spend a lot of time talking
about the brand journey: Where are
we now? Where do we want to be?
How do we get there?
But we should chat about our own brands as well.
The way we approach challenges is as varied as our own
journeys to arrive here. I can be the pragmatic farm girl
from Dekalb on occasion, but I can quickly pull on the hat
of the hospitality industry pro. Or the data analytic. Or the
theatrical pitch presenter. Every good planner should have
a different story, with a rich background weaved through a
variety of careers and interests. It’s our insatiable curiosity
about the world and deep love of culture and people that
drives us to keep digging, to keep seeking answers.
Thank you for reading.
After all, patience, like brevity, is a planner virtue.
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4. SNICKERS
Dominating the confectionary category isn’t enough
for Snickers. Its real competitors are energy drinks,
muesli bars and bananas. Engineer a campaign
that could replace BBDO’s ‘You’re Not You When
You’re Hungry”. Take this brand to a new place.
The Brief
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5. Snickers owned the ‘filling snack’ category 20
years ago, but energy drinks and vitamin-fortified
snacks are where millennials are now seeking
sustenance, especially as enjoying a candy bar
requires permission.
Snickers can hold its own in the hunger-bash
category. It’s packed with peanuts, caramel and
nougat, and its easy to eat on-the-go: no blender
or microwave required.
He’s constantly negotiating his place in the
friendship group. He cares about how he’s seen
and when he doesn’t feel 100%, his place is
weakened in that group.
At the same time, he wants to stay true to who
he is, because he knows deep down that he is
awesome.
Brief in a Tweet:
Get hungry guys to reach for a Snickers first
when they’re feeling out of whack.
Target:
Young guys with massive appetites who
don’t feel at the top of their game when
hunger strikes.
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6. Insight
Don’t let yourself get hungry
because you want to be at
the top of your game.
Strategy
Restore yourself back to full.
Creative Idea
You just need to
top up your charge.
Peanut
Power
Around 4pm, two unrelated but equally debilitating
things happen:
1. Your phone is on the last bar of battery
2. The fog of hunger starts to creep in
How about a candy bar that truly gives you a charge?
Introducing ‘Peanut Power’, the solar-powered
wireless cell phone charger. Available at bus stops,
campus cafes, outdoor music festivals and
neighbourhood bars, you can find them right at the
crucial moment when you need charge.
The Idea
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7. The Brief
AIRBNB
Airbnb has a highly motivated, passionate
community of over 10 million members. Explore
how Airbnb can creatively empower their
existing community to grow the idea of
‘belonging’ out to a new audience.
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8. Airbnb is a platform for renting accommodation
from private homes and is changing the way that
we consider travel. To grow Airbnb, we needed
to find a way for the 10 million members to show
non-users that the non-hotel way is the best way.
Hotel chains and guidebooks standardise travel
to the largest common denominator, whereas
Airbnb offers an an authentic city perspective.
Experiencing the city as a local rather than a
tourist is a key motivator for many Airbnb users,
and belonging is a universal need that
transcends culture barriers. With that insight, we
found a way in.
Brief in a Tweet:
Get Airbnb users to show non users how
good it is to be a local anywhere.
Hosts
• Proud of their hood and know it well.
• Fundamentally travellers as well.
Guests
• Travellers, not tourists.
• Interested in authentic experiences.
Target:
Existing Airbnb users
(both guests and hosts)
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9. The Belonging Manifesto
Belonging happens when you’re suddenly no longer
the part of the audience but rather an actor in the
scene. It’s nodding reverently to the Sydney Opera
House for its beauty, but paying homage to that little
Vietnamese takeaway shop where they put their rolls
on special for $4 after lunch, or that coffee place on
the corner that has best lounges, or perhaps knowing
that the 501 bus is always 7 minutes late.
These little experiences elevate you to pride. These are
your people. This is your place. It’s not about mileage
points or expense accounts. It’s about connecting and
sharing. Welcome home.
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10. Insight
Airbnb hosts are proud of
their hoods.
Strategy
Tap into the knowledge of
these proud hosts to grow
the idea of belonging out to
a new audience.
Creative Idea
Give the expert locals a
platform to share the
neighbourhood love.
Feeling proud to know the ‘secrets’ of your neighbourhood or
hometown is a powerful emotion that speaks to the Belonging tier of
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. We saw an opportunity to leverage
the guide-creating behaviour that Airbnb hosts were already doing
for their guests and spread this local pride with the rest of the world.
The Idea
Visit the
website, select a
template and
unleash your inner
Lonely Planet
self.
The Local
Expert
Visit the mobile
app and browse
guides by interests,
popular or
language.
The Anti-
Tourist
Download for
offline viewing
and go have an
authentic local
experience!
Earn social
kudos and Airbnb
credits to use within
the community.
Ready to book?
Connect through
the app to Airbnb’s
platform to find a
sweet pad.
If you’ve got a
popular guide, you
could travel the
world for free and
spread the word
even further!
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11. Vague but challenging: Breathe
life back into this failing brand.
The Brief
BLACKBERRY
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12. In 2008, RIM was valued at $83.4 billion. At the
close of 2013, the company (now known as
Blackberry) was worth $3.4 billion. It currently
holds a 1.4% market share in Australia, ranked
distant 4th behind Apple, Android and Microsoft.
“Bring Your Own Device” is standard office
protocol now when it comes to phones, so
people are trying to integrate all aspects of their
personal and work life into one piece of
technology.
These weekday warriors take pride in the
number of hours they spend on work each week,
but thanks to Angry Birds, they worry that they
haven’t spent every minute productively. They
may use 10% of the functionality on their current
smartphone because they have no desire to add
filters to a photo or snapchat a video.
These iOS and Android devices give them
productivity nightmares because they are
content consumption devices. They need a
phone that speaks their language.
Brief in a Tweet:
Get the weekday warriors to champion
Blackberry again by showing how it
improves their productivity.
Target:
Anybody who feels that their mobile device
should elevate them to the top of their
professional game.
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13. The Weekday Warriors may boast about their 14
hour work days, but hours worked does not
necessarily result in more productivity. Give them
a device that delivers efficiency so they can make
their hours count more, both in and out of the
office.
Blackberry is the ultimate productivity device. It
gets things done easily, securely and quickly and it
speaks in the language of spreadsheets and email
enterprise systems.
Those ‘Blackberry Fruit’ keys aren’t just for looks,
either. When matched up against an iPhone in a
typing speed competition, the Blackberry finished
in half the time
So, ask yourself: What would you do if you could
double your time?
Insight
For this audience, most
smartphones are slow at
best and distracting at worst.
Strategy
Champion Blackberry as the
ultimate productivity device.
Creative Idea
Duplicate yourself
The Idea
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14. Create a low-budget experiential campaign that
enables users to share their experiences during
the Light Show exhibition at the Museum of
Contemporary Art without using photography.
The Brief
MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART
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15. 2015 is the UN’s Year of Light, and Sydney’s
Museum of Contemporary Art is celebrating with
the spectacular Light Show installation.
Featuring 20 artists and spanning 4 decades, the
Light Show is a premium experience that
commands an equally premium fee.
Sydney’s beloved Vivid Festival of Light will bring
2.3 million visitors to the city at the same time.
Brief in a Tweet:
Get people to spread the word about the
Light Show by giving them a tangible
experience to share.
Target:
Social Influencers, AKA
‘The Date Makers’
Always in the driver’s seat
FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out)
Socially event selective
Time poor
How they choose to spend their time is a
reflection of how they want to be perceived.
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16. MANY CHALLENGES
1. Create an experience that can be shared,
when photography is forbidden in the exhibition.
2. Drive attendance to a $20 light show, when
the Vivid Fest light shows can be enjoyed for free
3. No space may be taken up in the exhibition.
4. Campaign should not be mistaken for artwork.
5. Must be within $5,000 budget and able to
activate within 3 weeks.
OPPORTUNITY
By spreading the word of a premium experience
through Social Influencers, the Light Show can be
the brightest event at Vivid.
Let’s create an experience that’s
organically sharable.
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Social
Influencers
The key to unlocking this brief
existed in the target audience
and their motivations.

17. Insight
At Vivid Fest, it was the littlest
things, like glowsticks, that
brought the biggest smiles.
Strategy
Bottle the Light Show
experience into a sharable
keepsake.
Creative Idea
The MCA Orb
The Idea
We noticed at Vivid Fest last year that it was the littlest
things, like the glowsticks in a few lucky kids’ hands,
that seemed to bring the biggest smiles.
With that insight, we designed an orb with low-tech
school chem lab ingredients that could be held in the
palm of your hand.
As you move through the Light Show, the orb creates a
second layer of light interaction in the exhibition with
transforming colours. It’s only available at the MCA
Light Show, but you get to keep it to light your way
through the rest of Vivid Fest.
Why does it work?
The museum is located in the heart of the Vivid Fest. Using the idea
of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) we can engage the target audience
with an exclusive experience that they can only have at the MCA.
These branded MCA orbs are mini advertisements for the exhibition
and light a way for our Social Influencers to share the experience of
The Light Show within their network and other visitors to Vivid Fest.
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