Life Bowls Campaign
Life Bowls is a healthy foods restaurant with great services and food. However, the restaurant had a lot of potential for increased social media presence. I was tasked with revamping their social platforms as a social media campaign. The goals were to increase their social media content as well as give them possible ideas on what they could do for their future online presence.
Facts
September-October 2024
Programs: Illustrator, Photoshop, Canva
Role: Social Media Designer
Background
Life Bowls is a small healthy food shop located in New Haven and Madison, Connecticut. From their Acai smoothies to their healthy food bowls, the company is known in its local region as a quick and easy accessible restaurant. They have both an Instagram and a Facebook page, however, posting was infrequent (1-2 post a month) and their branding was constantly changing (colors/texts changed constantly). They were in need of a change.
Research: User Personas
During the first part of my social media research, I focused on user personas. I made 3 of them based on the 18-34 range that social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook normally go for.
Social media targets ages 25-34, with 18-25 being a secondary age group
New Haven has people with middle income/higher income
There are slightly more women than men in New Haven, (55% women to 45% men).
People who are/wish to be physically active
People looking for a local healthy food place to try
Research: What to Improve
With all the research in mind, I began narrowing what exactly I should make to improve Life Bowl’s social media presence. I wanted to focus on a couple major areas:
Instagram Posts and Reels: They don’t have many and could really benefit from more work, especially post wise
Facebook Ads: Healthy food places should have promotional material and Facebook accounts are more likely to consist of adults and their family.
Emails: For the non social media users, emails can act as a secondary interactive platform
Mediterranea Cafe
Good: They have good post time
Bad: Contain AI generated of food,
Bad: They also don't have Instagram.
Remedy’s Cultured Cafe
Good: Regularly updated social media and used for the media.
Good: Stronger sense of graphics than photos.
Ninth Square Caribbean Style
Good: Their social media preference is pretty good.
Good: Decent brand identity and keep to their themes and colors.
Research: Competitor Analysis
Final Instagram
I was going for graphics that had lots of swirls and colors, because i wanted to make the graphics pop against the healthy green and colors of most the images (most were taken in nature or most foods had greens). I found that the oranges and the browns really made the images stand out. All of the work was done in Illustrator, with certain images having to be masked out in photoshop. I tested a wide arrange of styles and text till I ultimately got these graphics.
Final Facebook
For the Facebook Ads, I made 3 of them. However, this is because I have actually never used Facebook before, and wasn't entirely sure how many I needed. So I made 3. I went for a simpler look. I knew that the audience for Facebook would be different than Instagram's. I also noticed that Facebook, especially for food companies, mostly consisted of images and videos.
Reflection
My biggest takeaways were just how much work truly goes into social media. I barely use social media at the moment and it never really occurred as a non user just how much effort is required to make a quality social media post. You have to think of what is best for your branding but also for your audience.
For Life Bowls itself, my biggest takeaway was that they aren’t completely lost in their social media. Despite the lack of posting, many of their older posts that used for references had consistent branding and good timing. They adapted throughout the seasons and had many cool ideas. If they were able to start up again, I think they would still be successful.
