Plan of Action

After a rather depressing weekend, which included a chest cold, rain, power outages, and a great feeling of being lost, and not knowing what to do next, I decided that I had better clarify my intentions and get focussed. I spoke to Melissa from the City Agriculture Office who was supposed to be my contact. She attended a lunch at Czarina's place for a bunch of Australian Filipinos who were up visiting common friends. We agreed to meet with others from the Mayor's Office the next day.

After looking at many different products with the same kinds of issues, and the lack of promotion they were actually getting, I decided on a plan of action. Firstly, the interest in me coming here, was to help the local OTOP team with packaging and branding, because even with my student's knowledge, there is little specialization in design here. So ultimately it would be good to help design something along these lines, and ideally for someone who really needed help from the ground up.

Secondly, outside of introducing food products into the local supply chain, there seems to otherwise be no concept of marketing whatsoever. There is no consideration for who the producted is being aimed at, but rather a general hope that if it's in the store, then it might be purchased.

So this is the plan. The next five weeks will be aimed at project one. This will be the immediate identification of a producer who requires significant assistance, followed by a process of gathering information not only about their operation, product, competitors, and sales channels, but also with some focus on an attempt to identify possible target markets and alternative destinations for their products. I will work with the city and this producer to identify a visual language that will best create an unique identity to tell their story and create demand for their product. This will include a process of gathering and developing indigenous iconography that does not necessarily have to be a literal representation of their product, but should identify it with them, their history, and the place that they live. We will look at the availability of packaging materials and printing options, and develop a series of packages that will look unlike everything else on the shelf.

Along side this, the DTI is interested in holding a conference for local producers and all of its local partners. At this event at the end of the month, I will give a prensentation on the basics of good design, visual culture, and hopefully run some exercises aimed at promoting the use of simple design methodologies to help create better branding.

The second stage of the project will be directed at communicating the existence of these products to a selected target audience. This will either focus on promoting the benefit of buying local to the local market, or it will educate visitors to Puerto Princesa City about what is available and where to find it. At this time we will try to run a second and possibly a third presentation/workshop which will address souvenir shop owners needing help with promoting local products, and possible people from the printing, art, and packaging sales industries.

If all goes well, I will also hopefully be able to develop some kind of resource for local producers to reference in the future, for more information on how to pursue the ideas we will communicate.