Interactive Advertising Campaign:
Canon - Through The Lens of Community
Role: Graphic Designer, Researcher, Marketing
Tools: Adobe Photoshop, Figma, InDesign, Canva Timeline: 8 Weeks
Project Overview:
“Through the Lens of Community” invites users to experience Canon as the camera that connects every moment from vibrant nights out to peaceful stargazing. By encouraging users to document their own transitions, the campaign highlights Canon’s ability to adapt across environments while celebrating the communities and friendships built along the way.
The first step of the process was being able to define the goals of this campaign:
Primary Goal
The primary goal of the campaign is to increase brand relevance among young creatives by positioning Canon as the camera that supports community-centered storytelling and real-life experiences.
Secondary Goals
Encourage user-generated content across social platforms
Create a recognizable shareable trend
Visually communicate Canon’s performance
Strengthen emotional brand connection
Research
Personas:
Thinking of the togetherness of the campaign that was wished to be showcased, community was something that was huge. It was also important to develop personas that could represent the target audience, as well as people who could potentially help spread the campaign while being part of the target audience. Essentially the target audience was also part of the creation content.
Competitive Analysis:
Based on competitive analysis showing Sony's individualistic approach and Apple's casual creativity, Canon has an opportunity to own community-centered storytelling for serious creators.
Young creatives don't just want great photos, they want to document shared experiences. The "Through the Lens" campaign positions Canon as the camera that captures connection, not just content.
Netnography:
To understand how communities form around cameras and shared visual experiences online, observations were made through a netnography across TikTok, Instagram, and Reddit which were focusing on how or if young creatives talk about photography, gear, and the role cameras play in their social lives.
The emotional register is largely unoccupied, and it maps directly onto how Canon's target audience already talks about photography in organic online conversations.
Mindmapping:
Moodboard:
Developing a mind map to start thinking of the most important parts of the campaign was very useful as an introduction to potential deliverables.
The mind map centers around one core idea: that Canon's strongest differentiator isn't technical specs, it's the fact that photography is more meaningful when it's shared. Every branch connects back to the fact that community experiences feed the content, the content fuels the hashtag, the hashtag drives the giveaway, and the giveaway rewards the community itself. It's a loop in a sort of way.
Design Development
Developing a mind map to start thinking of the most important parts of the campaign was very useful as an introduction to potential deliverables.
The mind map centers around one core idea: that Canon's strongest differentiator isn't technical specs, it's the fact that photography is more meaningful when it's shared. Every branch connects back to the fact that community experiences feed the content, the content fuels the hashtag, the hashtag drives the giveaway, and the giveaway rewards the community itself. It's a loop in a sort of way.
People viewing the campaign being promoted via Canon
Communities taking group pictures for experiences
Posting with the hashtag
More people participating in the challenge
Other people view the campaign being reposted
Winners announced , kit giveaway promotes product
Deliverables:
Promotional Banners in Specified Sizes
Google Ads Banner
Instagram Story
Landing Page
Email Advertisement
300×600
300×250
Landing Page
728×90
320×100
Instagram Story
Email Advertisement
Google Ads
Results
What Worked:
Deciding on a company to use for a campaign that had something that didn’t really exist yet was a fun way to experiment with marketing and advertising. I was able to really develop visuals I thought were something that would be digestible and fun to the target audience so I think my goal there was complete.
What Didn’t Work:
Not being able to really track metrics or have quantitative data meant that it was a guessing game on how the audience would receive the potential campaign.
Next Steps:
Find a way to create a campaign similar to where tracking clicks, user posts and hashtags is done in a simple way to be able to see how an audience would receive said campaign.
Overall Feedback
The overall feedback was positive. This started as a class project, but after sharing it with the founder of a creativity-focused non-profit, the concept resonated enough that they could see it being used as a real pitch to Canon for sponsorship which was a nice indication that the campaign held up outside of an academic context.