In today’s session, it was important we arrived on time as the presentations ‘were to be treated as an exam’. I arrived promptly at 9:45am, and time management is something I am able to utilise in my upcoming placement.
When watching the other groups’ presentations, I appreciated the visuals and animation of The Events Structure’s presentation which they had created using a software online. I found this presentation engaging due to the animation which made it lively and interesting and if I am faced with the tasks of creating a presentation in my impending placement I will use this software to make my presentation the best it could be also. The following article gave me a few options of softwares to use: https://elearningindustry.com/the-top-6-animated-video-software-in-the-elearning-market On the contrary, one group used power-point presentation to portray their information, which I found hard to concentrate and engage with therefore I will avoid using this when making presentations in my placement year.
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It was important our group had carried out each task set out to us so we were able to compile these into our strategic marketing plan. My tasks included an in-depth study of current marketing trends and research into the customer insight of Toilet Twinning. I optimised databases such as WARC that we have been given via the MMU Online Library to carry out my in-depth study and give this academic reasoning. I found these extremely beneficial to my research, as they widened my knowledge.
In the session, I was in charge of ensuring all our individual tasks were compiled into the strategic marketing plan, as when carrying out the Belbin test at the beginning of term my highest trait was ‘driver’ meaning I could ensure we completed this on time for our client. Furthermore, we began to create our video for the upcoming presentation. As creative director, Michal was in charge of this. We included our team roles and how we came to these to show the productivity of our group, and began to include the analytical tools we had planned to in previous sessions. This was our final week of creative work for our output to the client ‘Toilet Twinning’. I created the contents page of our strategic marketing plan and applied knowledge of my other assignments in other units of report writing to allow our plan to look professional.
Micheal continued with the video, and we overlooked this to ensure the correct theory was put in. We included our Gantt chart to display our productivity and phases of the project. We felt this would allow our video to be understood better by our client and clearly show our project. Once the strategic marketing plan was completed to a high standard we took advantage of our tutor's presence and asked her to look over the plan to make sure it was professional and ready to be sent to the client. Once she had confirmed this, we E-mailed it over to our client, who was anticipating this creative output as they had been previously informed of this by our tutor. At the end of the session, we all watched our final video, and gave our opinions which is effective to productive group work. Prior to this session, I messaged the group to ensure we all attended this week. I felt it important we were all present due to the nature of the session, as we needed to create a plan for the video we need to create. Since the last session, Yasmin had re-visited the brief to ensure we met the client’s requirements, and set out individual tasks we each must create. This was extremely useful to our group and showed her dedication to our team, without this our group were in danger of losing sight of our client’s requirements and progressing forward in a wrong direction which could be detrimental to Toilet Twinning’s satisfaction with the work we produce.
The tutor covered our assignment in the first half of the session, however I felt this wasn’t covered in enough depth for my own understanding therefore made a note to revisit the brief in my own time. The brief can be found the Big Agency area on Moodle (https://moodle.mmu.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=76326). I printed this brief out and made an appointment with unit leader Bex so that she could talk me through my questions with the brief. I felt this beneficial as the one to one nature allowed me to ask questions I may not feel confident doing so in class, and receive a personalised response. Although this session did not have a dedicated topic, it was pivotal to move forward and be productive within our small project. This session was dedicated to ensuring we were up to date with all our work for our small project. We had to ensure we are on track for everything and were given a list to check this:
1.Research data collected/analysed/preparing for presentation 2. Started planning for group video presentation 3. Created personas 4. Re-written brief 5.‘Thought digitally’ From this list, we concluded we had achieved the data collection and analysis of this, as well as re-writing the brief, however were yet to plan our group video presentation. We collated the theories we had used over the course of the project and analytical tools such as a PESTLE analysis and Porter’s five forces, and concluded how these had helped us. We aimed to put this information into our video In today’s session, I had to initially overcome merging into another group and being taught by a different tutor. I personally felt like she wouldn’t understand the work we were doing, therefore I ensured she sat down with our group to understand our project before helping us. I found this an efficient way of overcoming my initial doubt.
We discussed our idea of a strategic marketing plan with the tutor, who herself had created a surplus amount of and was kind enough to show us these to help with our own. I felt this helped our group as it gave us a starting point and guidance as where to grow with our plan. One worry I had when we decided to go ahead with our strategic marketing plan was that none of us had previous experience of this, and the session’s were not dedicated to this like they were a creative brief. Therefore, the tutor’s input and help was very valuable to our group. She taught us content to be included and guided us on the correct layout, which we were able to make a start in the session allowing it to be productive. Furthermore, prior to the session I carried out wider reading regarding strategic plans to help us start and found the following to be useful: Prior to this session we had to ensure we made the data we had collected from our market research accessible therefore I uploaded the data onto planner we access through Moodle in-case I couldn’t make a session to allow the rest of the group to progress. The use of this planner has fuelled our efficiency as a group as we can share ideas, work and tasks.
The focus of today’s session was ‘creative briefs’. We learnt from our tutor a creative brief is aimed at problem solving and is fuelled by insight, however once the session divided into group time we decided to discuss whether this would suit our small project. After conducting wider reading around B2B markets and creative brief’s we concluded a marketing strategic plan would best fit our project (as approved by Bex). We discovered the strategic planning process helps to discover ways to improve the performance of an organisation and create insights. (http://www.thealternativeboard.com/what-is-a-strategic-plan-and-why-does-your-business-need-one/) To strengthen our client communication and trust we discussed this and informed our client of our progress and decision to create a marketing strategic plan. Evidence of which can be seen below. For today’s session, we had to make sure we had collected our data, as this was pivotal for the session’s efficiency. The new market research had excelled in comparison to our initial plan, and we had collected extensive data to help us move forward with our recommendations, therefore in reflection it can be concluded this was a successful decision.
We began the session with a stand-up meeting to recap the previous week, and to catch up on the data we had individually collected. We feel that stand-up meetings offer us a quick and efficient way of setting a plan for the session to ensure we are all ready for the work. Once the session had begun, we had to discuss as a group how to visually present our data in the best way. It was important we heard everyone’s opinions to ensure fair teamwork. We discussed qualitative data however concluded our client would prefer statistics and figures therefore as a team decided to present quantitative data as this is clear and easy for our client to interpret. We began using bar charts and pie charts to present different questions to clearly set out our data. Furthermore, an aim of this session was to create personas to get an idea of our target market. In another unit of mine (customer information management) we learn all about different customer personas, therefore I optimised information learnt in this unit for this session and drew upon ‘Predictive Marketing’ by Artun and Lewis to assist me with this task. (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/store/10.1002/9781119175803.fmatter/asset/fmatter.pdf;jsessionid=1ADADC69C617F6A4F2D493124C795EA1.f01t04?v=1&t=j0v6vt3b&s=d41615c9442b807bb6ee7eeb0f5bf04fa42eb732) Prior to today’s session, we were told by our tutor we must ensure that communication with our client ‘Toilet Twinning’ is up to date. We hadn’t received a response from our client in a while therefore spoke to our tutor on the best way to approach them. Our tutor taught us that it is important we create a strong and professional rapport with our client, and this is something I aim to integrate within my placement year as I will be working with reputable clients daily.
To educate myself upon the importance of client communication I conducted wider reading, finding an article on Advertising Age which taught me relationship building through communication with your client is important when managing accounts within an agency. (http://www.dermascope.com/client-care/the-importance-of-client-communication#.WMqUg3ecbVo) Unfortunately, our group is struggling collecting our market research. Due to the nature of our research (b2b markets) our participants are refusing to take part in our interview, therefore prior to today’s session I researched steps to problem solving, so that we could productively address the issues within our group. I found the following article http://www.mediate.com/articles/thicks.cfm which taught me to identify the issues, list the possible solutions and evaluate these options. Therefore, we created a plan B, turning attention to the brief’s ‘digital presence’ requirements, creating a survey to find out how people interact with brands online. From this we hope to create recommendations on how Toilet Twinning should position themselves and enhance their digital presence.
In today’s session, we received our assignment feedback. I was extremely happy with my mark, as it reflected the hard work I had put into the previous term. I listened to the constructive criticism so that I could use this to improve for the following final year PDW. I learnt that I should refrain from saying ‘I believe’ as it limits my effectiveness in terms of achieving my goals I set out in my PDR. Instead, I should say ‘I will’ to plan how I should achieve my goals. This will also prepare me for my placement year as it will allow me to be productive. Looking back at my assignment, I understand that I must clearly define and set out a distinct action plan to achieve set goals, and this is something I can work on in my final year PDW. Before we left the session, my group sat down together and discussed our action plan for the new year. Furthermore, we also shared our feedback from our assignment and agreed to take this on-board with our project also. For example, I shared how I was told to act more productive and to achieve this I should lay out a specific plan with objectives for tasks I must carry out within our small project. |
Lottie Kempl Archives
March 2017
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