3rd - 4th Week of Progress

It has been an extremely tough fortnight of work for this advertising production. My whole group, especially me, spent a lot of time for producing each individual advertisement for each aspect. And of course I made a final decision in doing my advertisement on education.

Throughout this week, Hanna and I had a hectic schedule to follow with our assignments and tests, whereas Reagan and Daniella was in a different class and had their assessments scheduled differently to ours and so they didn't have as much on. But then again, Hanna and I worked a lot on throughout this Business assignment, trying to improve and do as much as we could.

Although, I must say that Hanna did work a lot harder than me, because had continuously done many drafts for her advertisment until she got it perfect. I saw her progressing with her ad each day by day, and I was much lazier and I still haven't fully finished my ad by this stage. Not that I don't know what i want to do, but it's just that I really want to take time to spend on making a very attractive/enticing ad for the audience. I have really about that, because I was assigned to do the speech write-up for the Promotion section, and this section challenges me to think and reflect and making the ad and finishing product successful and extremely appealing to the consumer/audience. Another thing that struck me to finish my advertisement is that I couldn't find any pictures from the internet that I can overlap and contrast my pictures into forming a well, sympathetic-feeling piece of work of a UNICEF ad.

Well, what we completed during this fortnight as a group is to mainly form a caption phrase (heading) for the ad. We have come up together with as many captions as possible during one lesson, and it was extremely difficult. I was trying to contribute to the group by browsing through the Internet for ideas, but then Reagan said that I wasn't helping the group and i remember that I was really angry at that moment. Finally, I said to Reagan that it's not that I'm not contributing to the group, but i really want to find the best possible caption we could make for the group, and it doesn't require only 10 mins of thinking, it should require at least 30 mins to make the caption as alluring/charming as possible. I even said that so far what Hanna and Reagan's come up ideas aren't really that good. (As I told you before, the whole group always contradicts with me, I don't know why).... I realised I was a bit tough on them so I said sorry, but after all I want our group to look good and come up with an extremely good ad!
Some few of them that Reagan and Hanna previously came up with were:

• Why can't they live like us?


• Every child deserves a future.


• Dollars from you will be their brighter future.


• Throw away a dollar, throw away a future.


• Each dollar gives us nothing, but to them it means a brighter future.
  

They were ok, but they were seriously like all average ads... I don't want our caption to be that "boring..." So finally Hanna and Reagan decided to be determined to find a good caption to satisfy my "wanted to be interesting" behaviour. The little quote fromt the Internet they found was "Your dollars can literally provide kids tickets to a new life." This by so far was one of the best captions we found that we could use for our ad. There really weren't any better ones so we decided to use this one. >>> But we all thought that it was inappropriate to copy from the internet, since it's plagiarism. So, as a group we totally remade one up together and re-ordered the words. So, in the end we came up with...

"Your dollars will provide tickets for brighter futures in Vietnam. Literally."

Although I thought it was quite weird to have "literally" to end the sentence, overall the caption was quite good and interesting. And of course, if we had loads more time to complete, I bet I (and the group) would make one up a million times more interesting!!!

We also together looked at each others progress of their ad product pictures and evaluated on them. One day, Daniella showed us her ad picture! She drew it all out by hand, and it freaked me out because it was so good. I literally thought she copied it out of a cartoon book!!! She's amazing, I wish I was like her. It seems that her ad section might be pretty good, and she also portrayed the distinction between a poor Vietnamese girl without a family and one who has a happy family going out together to play all the time! What great ad section she did... I was so envious! >_<

So, what i did as an individual this week... as would be known is working on my ad. The ad is such requires such hard work and effort. (I've described my progress of ad in pargraph 3.)

This is one of the pictures that I found on the internet that I might use... ( I might cut the girl who's drawing...)

This picture later decided on the whole group that we should use the girl on the left as our main theme for poor vietnamese girls...

Another thing that I needed to work on individually was on the Speech. I remember the 2nd week with my 2nd blog I was still was trying to answer the questions on the Promotion section, and i was struggling with understanding on what I was suppose to write for my speech and answer. Finally, within this fortnight, I got the hang of it and asked Mrs Scruton clearly what I really needed to do. The section that mainly confused me was the questions where it asked (e.g. Explain HOW YOU achieved the objectives of creating consumer awareness of the product.) This is because I had to re-do a whole product myself on the ad in creating consumer awareness. Mrs Scruton later told me that it was supposed to be (e.g. Explain HOW YOUR GROUP achieved the objectives of creating conusmer awareness of the product.) And so I understood that it was supposed to be about the group. Anyway, after understanding this concept. I took a whole 3~4 days to write my speech. I remember my first draft when I was practicing my speech, I had at least one thing wrong in every sentence so i constantly stopped in my speaking and had no understanding what I was saying. I even said my speech in front of Hanna and she totally laughed her head off at me, and of course I was cracking up myself too. Anyway, after that I took a few days to fix it up until it was pretty good, and i was pretty happy. I edited my speech until it was pretty much what I call "fine." I looked at how I answered everything and I really do think I answerd everything well. But I had the biggest problem, and that is time. My whole speech is about 7 minutes, and that's terrible. The requirement for an individual's speech should be 2~3 minutes. So, I took another day to occupy myself in editing and cutting down my speech. It finally went down to about 5 minutes. That's the final speech that I sent out to Mrs Scruton. I was so happy when I got my speech but that Mrs Scruton said my speech was really good, and so was "Hanna's". (That's really predictable, since everything that Hanna does are always excellent and good!) Anyway, Hanna and I exchanged our speeches to each other for comments. That's a really good technique for evaluating and editing. =]

Throughout the fortnight, the activities we mostly felt successful as the group was to produce a caption heading and having everyone combine a picturistic ad. (except naughty me) What I did successfully for the fortnight was creating my speech. What we all could have improved on as a group was to discuss our things clearly to each other and not produce so much arguments (especially with me). We should almost make sure in improving that everyone gets the communication on what's going on, and that everyone should have a copy of the group's work. At the moment, Hanna hasn't sent me a document of one of the group's work, so I'll be waiting for it. Another improvements was to make sure that everyone's on task into knowing what to do and what's happening around with everyone so we can start combining what we all did together to become one whole piece of product. What I should personally improve on is time management, because i really should be finishing my ad off right now! I need this whole running of the campaign to be magnificent!

What I learnt a lot based on this fortnight is mainly Photoshop. I took ages to get used to it, but still at this stage I'm no where near understanding most things in Photoshop. I really am terrible with technology, I am totally struggling. Luckily I have the "smart" Hanna! Everyone in the group was experiencing the same problems with Photoshop, and i also need to try and download the software at home. The problem is, I have to pay for it. So I still didn't download it (it's such a nuisance...) I also learnt a lot into understanding the concept of how to captivate the consumer's heart and interest into the product. It is of course, extremely hard. I also learnt to deal with time management (of any kind!!!)

Everyone worked well in our group, although I've been really tough on everyone, because I wanted everyone to do well and that our group to look well. Still the problem is (I'm letting everyone down because of my ad... I'm not an effective part of the group! I need to hurry up!) Reagan was a brilliant member into contributing to the group, but still she was a great contradictor/opposer of me. I guess having arguments to bring us into deciding good ideas! Hanna, was basically the tutor of the group and helped every a lot! It was great, and was effective since she gave advice to my speech, and in return I gave advice back to her. Finally, Daniella... I still wanted her to speak up a bit more, she is definitely improving! And she's putting great effort into the group. Anyway, overall I am proud of everyone and their workings with the group. The only person that i'm not happy with is "me..." I need to work much harder!

I give my trust that our group will present a great campaign!!!

2nd Week's Progress...

It was such a short and tiny week as we only had 2 lessons to work on our group marketing assignment! So in our first lesson of this week in BFM, we continued talking about the assignment and rounded off our ideas to the end. We fully decided our topic to be UNICEF and that we shall we doing this to the target audience to raise awareness of donating money to the UNICEF organisation.

What we did as group this week was mainly focusing on dividing tasks and discussing about the idea splits, design of the product and target audience (specific promotion strategies). Mrs Scruton handed everyone out a sheet of paper that showed the 4~5 focus tips of marketing mix. It contained 5 main elements of what we needed to talk about, it had the 4P's which Mrs Scruton has told and explained to us at the beginning of the term. They included price, place, promotion and product. I was split to be responsible of doing the promotion section of the product.

After all this long discussion, we worked on organising of what we wanted to do for the design of the product. We wanted it appealing, attractive and an piece of ad that entices the audience into interest. It really isn't that easy after all when working through this piece of assessment. I came up with the idea to the group that I wanted a catchy line or jingle... Then I thought of one that was related to the familar proverb --->>> (An apple a day, keeps the doctor away!) So then I was thinking of "A coin a day..." We all thought for so long to find a good ending for the sentence, but it was impossible, so we wasted our time for 20 mins thinking of a good sentence to end the punned proverb.

Later on we just left the sentence and decided that everyone must have a fair share of making and designing the productg ad. So, then Reagan and Hanna came up with the best idea, and it's to split a the ad piece into four parts. So in our advertising sheet, we shall have 4 pieces of "edited, photoshopped" pictures. Then, we had to be creative to make up our own sentence to go with the picture that each and everyone had made.

We tried to get ideas from previous ads that UNICEF had done before. Some were like this: ... But what I gathered from this picture or ad was not really that interesting or appealing to me, but sure, the picture was beautiful and attractive though. Throughout, I only took the meaning that water is precious and nothing else.

There's also another picture that we flicked through, throughout the lesson. It was actually quite a really good ad and picture! But the problem is, I didn't get it at first. (but that's normal, because my brain doesn't operate that fast, and I require I look of looking and thinking before I understood the image). So, after my long think of this image, I was surprised in a way and happy to know what was going on in my picture. It was also partly good, because they wrote the meaning of what they want to say in many different languages, which portray the understanding of the fact that no matter who or where they come from, I'm just invisible to them because I'm constantly ignored whever I am in the world... It's actually quite touching after all, these UNICEF ads.

So, after a long think with everyone of the group, we all agreed to stick to the concept of everyone making a photoshopped picture according to a certain subject they want to voice in. (e.g. Daniella C is doing a picture of child abuse, she will find and photoshop a child abuse picture and then come up with a sentence or too, or any sort of jingle/rhyme that's catchy and place it onto the picture...)

What I did as an individual, which was my individual task were to do and work on my questions and answers for the promotion split section. I also had to find really difficulty from the internet some pictures that I could add and place together to become one fine picture of my idea (topic). My topic of the picture was decided to be on 'Lack of Education in Vietnam'. For some reason, i had no recall of when my group decided the country of being Vietnamese that we're focusing on. Oh well, I had to go with the flow... I really needed to think a good line to represent my picture, and I think that's the hardest that I'll be doing.

I think the tasks that I felt were successful was when we were deciding on who was going to do which for the 4P's. I was the first to pick! Lucky me... Poor Reagan took the hardest one because she was the last to pick, but she worked co-operatively and took the responsibilty to take on the task doing "Price & Target Market".

We definitely need to improve on something as a group, and that is to not always contradict me, because the whole group never seems to agree on a single idea I had. It's really sad... But I guess majority always rules if we were to decide on something. I think my brain operates and thinks differently from others. We also needed to improve on our progress, because none of us has really started to design our product and work on it, even on Thursday we were only starting to fully put effort into our work.

Personally, I have a really big concern about Daniella C, because she's still really, extremely quiet in discussions and everything. It seems like she doesn't know what to do and no one in our group really knows how her progress is. (Fingers cross that she'll understand everything and be able to work through what we're suppose to be doing, since she's a new student.)

This week I have gained lots of knowledge on how the system of UNICEF works, and how they're ads portray powerfully of what they're suppose to be saying. I also understood more of the poor little children in UNICEF and how much help they really need. I hope people do have the heart to donate money to them. Oh, and of course, I learnt how to Photoshop! Hanna taught me all of how to photoshop. It's so confusing and difficult, but I know I'll soon get over and use to it.

To be quite honest, each individual member in our group is working hard and achieving what is suppose to be set out for them. Although, i could see that everyone's progress was falling since on Thursday, because there was so much to do for other subjects that we couldn't really fit Business in to work on. Not that Business isn't important, but other subject's work were due first and were priotised to be finish. The only individual member that I'm concerned with again, as I said before was Daniella Cheong, and also ME!!!!! I'm falling quite behind with what I'm suppose to be doing... Anyway, I shall catch up this week!

1st Week of Progress

This week, was our (my) first week working towards this assignment.
I first had to choose a group. My group consisted of Hanna Kang, Daniella Cheong, Reagan Fletcher-Wode and of course me. Ashley also joined the group, but she wasn't considered as a group member because she was going to leave Australia next week and study at America. It was really unexpected, because I didn't know about it until that day. Anyway, Ashley was just an extra person who can help out for a little while until she leaves.
What we completed this week included firstly and most importantly, going through the task sheet with Mrs Scruton and understanding what we are suppose to do for this assignment. The task was that I (or the group) have just been instructed to design a new, innovative advertising campaign for a new client. What (we as a group) did this week was firstly pick an NPI - a Non Profitable Institution. We decided on the special group called UNICEF that helps children in the 3rd world country that are very poor. And as individually, during the lesson, I just contributed into giving lots of ideas for the group.
Next, we had to choose using which kind of way to market our product. Personally, I really wanted to a TV ad or Internet Ad, but I was only one in the group that wanted to do that. The majority rules with doing Print Ads. Oh well, I can't just disagree with the group!
In the second lesson of this lesson, we identified what target this audience is that we are aiming at and we said that our NPI is targeted for teens, because simply we are "teens" ourselves at the moment.
I felt that as a group we successfully worked together well, because we thoroughly discussed specific details on what we did. We also did well in creating the plan of all the target audience, paragraph of what our NPI is about and most general things that we were suppose to type up during the lesson. However, Daniella was still new and was still trying to contribute as much as she could. =] (She'd be trying her best!) One thing that wasn't good was that we were not concentrating enough, we always got distracted everywhere. So, as you can see there's a certain place we could improve on next time and that's to try and not get entranced to something else anywhere...
Um... to be quite honest. I found that I really didn't learn anything, I just had the feeling of not fully getting what we want and things like that. I'm still on fixed on knowing what NPI we're doing, what it's Target Audience is, what it aims to do for the people...
I should pay more attention to what Mrs Scruton talks about in class so I can get the jist of it. =)
Anyway, everyone participated well except, for maybe our new Daniella, but she still gave opinions which was really good! And as usual, Hanna works the best, thinking quickly, typing lots of information up and lots more to do! Reagan just helped us making the decisions and again she's the idea-giverer. Me too! I gave lots of lots information, but unfortunately, everyone's been contradicting what I want. It's very weird and I wanted to have something in the assignment included with some of what I say.
Besides that, that's the weekly report I have for our Business Assignment!!!!!