Sinchon Detour
A seasonal art installation in Sinchon, a region of Seoul, leveraging Sinchon's bright student talent and young demographic to build a stronger identity.
Team Members
Catherine Ho
Kristen Fajardo
Leshell Lu
Jessica Nguyen
Skills
Market Research
Data Analysis
Videography
Tools
Google Slides
Adobe Premiere Pro
Adobe After Effects
Adobe Illustrator
Duration
Oct 2019 (2 months)
Project Overview
For my Advertising and Consumer Psychology class at Ewha Women's University, my team was tasked with creating a positioning strategy for Sinchon, a region in Seoul, incorporating consumer/ advertising psychology insights and deriving key strategies.
my role: consumer researcher & videographer
신촌
Sinchon
Sinchon is home to three major universities in Seoul, making it a popular area frequented by students and millennials as it has an abundance of restaurants, cafés and affordable shopping options. This area also has a pedestrian-friendly walkway, creating a prime space for events, buskers and various pop-ups.
Key Assumptions
As exchange students, we felt as though we had to break down our assumptions because of our limited knowledge of the region.
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Because of the proximity of 3 major universities in the area, the best strategy is to market to the college demographic (18-23)
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Sinchon does not get as much traffic as Hongdae and therefore does not have a strong identity
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Seeking out local student talent engages and supports the community
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Creating an art installation is the best strategy because it is interactive and appeals to the target demographic’s social media habits
Consumer Research
I created and sent out surveys in the early stages of our project and analyzed the results to aid in our key assumptions.
We surveyed residents and frequent visitors to learn more about the perception of Sinchon. We targeted responders from 18-30 years old, mainly focusing on the student population of local and international students. For our quantitative research, we wanted to know about the demographic of visitors and their social media habits.
#instagrammable
i. social media habits
It was clear that the overwhelming majority of people used Instagram as their primary social media application. This was a key factor in our decision-making to create an art installation because we realized that many young visitors like to plan their trips around “Instagrammable” locations. Thus, we decided to create an event that would be catered to the arts, make an impact on photo-sharing sites, and combine this with an opportunity to support students.
ii. consumer perceptions
For our qualitative research, we wanted to determine what the prevalent consumer attitudes were towards the area, and why people go there.
Most respondents described the area as a lively place with a strong sense of community for students. For non-locals, it was clear that most had not heard of Sinchon until they had come here, or they had associated it with Hongdae.
iii. an opportunity
We asked "What are things you wish you could do in Sinchon?"
With the feedback given, we wanted to create our event to be something that could be visited at any time. We also received responses that mentioned that Sinchon has many festivals, and we wanted to develop something that would feel more organic to the environment, but still stand out. Thus, we created the idea of “Detour” -- inspired by the idea that people could visit and interact with art pieces as they were passing through the area.
DETOUR
We took a look at art installations in other cities and noticed that these installations are relative to the artists and also integrated within the environment. To differentiate this event from Sinchon’s other events, this will be a seasonal art installation with a new theme each time, with a focus on featuring student talent.
As an example, the debut theme we came up with is ‘Home’. The purpose of this theme will be for artists to interpret what Home means to them and have complete creative freedom.
Brand Communication
*I created a short informational video about our project to act as an introduction in our final presentation.
Reflection
The project was difficult to approach as exchange students; it was difficult to 'rebrand' a region we have limited knowledge of. To conduct consumer research, we sent out a written survey that was both in English and Korean to obtain the most relevant information from local and international students.
One thing that we should have done was to have in-person interviews to learn people's emotions and preconceptions of Sinchon. This would have provided more accurate information.
After our presentation, our team was selected to present at a district-wide project showcase along with another team.
