This past Wednesday, we were all in need of a little inspiration. Marc Reede, who works with motivational speakers everyday, came to give us the push necessary to get us through the next two weeks. Although it didn’t correlate directly to our New World curriculum, Marc’s words were encouraging and motivating and exactly what we all needed to get through these final two weeks of the semester. Marc told us moving stories and hit on three helpful points that we should all follow: find a mentor, create a network, and accept failure. When telling us his personal stories about the importance of a mentor, what Marc really emphasized was the power of one person. This is an interesting concept in the marketing world considering that we are normally so focused on gaining the most views, impressions, sales, and reach we possibly can. However, Marc made an excellent argument for the power of one’s influence. Marc told his story about the influence of his mentor, which was so strong that one comment from him pushed Marc to go to law school. This is a significant influence that one person had one him, and he has gone on to have a significant impact on others like his daughter’s friends and their career paths. In regards to our projects, he emphasized that while we may not help everyone, we will help someone, and this is more powerful than we give ourselves credit. If one person was able to nap, feel well rested, and perform better on their exams, then Nap Nation has done its job. The second lesson Marc stressed was to create a network. This is something we hear quite frequently in the business world, but Marc put an interesting spin on it. He told us the story of Magic Johnson using the help of his courtside audience to get into the business world. Of course, who would turn down helping Magic Johnson? He is one of the most famous NBA players, and with that much fame and fortune people are bound to help you. However, Marc claimed, “You don’t have to be Magic Johnson to have a courtside.” We all have a network that can serve as our courtside, and as long as we maintain these relationships and connections they will be there to help us when we need it. To achieve the best opportunities, we have to be persistent when going after what we want and have a strong network behind us. The biggest lesson Marc taught us was how to accept failure, a lesson that is extremely relevant to this course and project. He told us the story about a writer that had written 10 failed TV scripts, but his eleventh ended up being Modern Family. This was because he had failed so many times and took these moments as lessons to learn what success looked like. In this project, my group had hit a few walls. But instead of being discouraged, we took these moments to improve our brand and make our project reflect the successful elements rather than the failed ones. With Zecret, we had some good ideas, but ultimately the idea wouldn’t have been successful because of its complexity and inefficient elements. Looking at this model and evolving into Nap Nation is the perfect example of changing an idea because we now know what success looks like. We utilized the elements of Zecret that worked, and eliminated or updated the ones that didn’t to become what we are today. We accepted the failure we may have faced rather than become defeated by it. I am positive that we all took away something insightful and inspirational from Marc’s speech, and that we are all feeling recharged for the next two weeks. Whether you look at these tips through the lens of this course or life in general, Marc was able to impact and inspire all of us in different ways.
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At Steelhead, the production arm of the agency Deutsch, we learned about a creative form we have yet to really dive into: short, disruptive creative content. A few weeks ago with Ronnie Lee, we discussed copy and brainstormed potential campaigns that we could run through Facebook and Instagram posts; however, we have not officially discussed the idea of short-form disruptive content with production experts like the Steelhead crew. Our guest speaker, Eric Kaufman, took us through the ins and outs of what production takes, from photo shoots of glamourized food to the fine-tuning done in postproduction. He explained the unique nature of his role and described himself as a director with visual, creative storytelling roots from his photography background. He works on brands for Steelhead including Volkswagen, PlayStation, Taco Bell and Target. After taking us through the production progress, he shows us some of the spots he had worked on for these brands and explained his process to create disrupting content. One significant take away we learned from Steelhead and Deutsch was to expect change and know how to successful adapt quickly. This sounds simple, but in reality it can be hard to manage changes that come at you while creating a campaign. Our Deutsch guest speakers taught this to us from their experiences with the Volkswagen World Cup campaign. They explained that as they were beginning their strategic and creative process to make a campaign for VW during this highly publicized event, the USA team lost a game that got them out of the running for the World Cup. How do you create a campaign for a team that is no longer in the running? Well, you hop on the Wagen of a new team! This brilliant pivot was what the Deutsch team came up with for Volkswagen as their World Cup campaign, and it shows that although changes will come at you, you can still produce something clever and work with them rather than against them. Similar to what we learned at Team One, when these changes occur you need to go back to the basics: what is the problem. Our Deutsch speakers told us to always keep in mind what it is you are trying to accomplish and how will you measure the benchmarks of success for this. In a project like ours, there are many changes that occur. Considering time and resources are not extremely abundant, we sometimes have to make changes from our original plans in order to spread our resources across more beneficial avenues. This presentation from Deutsch helped me realize that encountering these changes are not negative elements of the campaign process, but natural ones that can be solved and help you get to a successful end product. Another take away from Steelhead was to be strategic with your content by knowing the culture surrounding your topic. Kaufman showed us a spot he did for Taco Bell to celebrate National Taco Day, another Internet-made holiday drowning in a sea of other national holidays. He knew his problem: he needed to make National Taco Day celebrated and significant like an actual holiday or occasion, placing it above the mundane group of other Internet holidays. The spot he showed us replicated a jewelry/proposal type of commercial with the comical twist of the special gift being a taco rather than a piece of jewelry. This was authentic and used the culture surrounding Taco Bell to produce a comical advertisement that would respond well with their audience. This style of disruptive content wouldn’t appeal to every demographic, but knowing the audience of Taco Bell made this strategy successful and well received. Another strategy about content creation was to know the behavior of your audience. Kaufman told us about his “Revival” pharmaceutical advertisement created as an Easter egg for Eminem’s Revival album release. The brilliant stunt may not have caught on with everyone, but knowing Eminem’s audience allowed this strategy to blow up online on sites like Reddit and created serious buzz and conspiracy theories surrounding Eminem’s album drop. Both of these examples use the quote from Kaufman, “Design for the deepest experience possible.” By strategizing content that plays upon the culture and behaviors of your audience, you provide them with content that goes beyond entertainment and truly provides them with an experience with your product. Keeping this in mind for our content ideas made us think more intentionally about whom we are trying to target, what we are trying to say, and how our audience will interact with it. This visit at Steelhead left me feeling inspired and ready to jump into the content of our campaign. I have gained perspective on how to be more adaptable to changes within a campaign and know how to use culture and behaviors strategically to design deeper content. The process won’t be easy, but I feel more confident in my team’s ability to create disruptive content that spreads our message. On Halloween, we headed to the full-service agency Team One, and things got spookycreative. Chief Creative Officer, Chris Graves, took us through fundamental points on how to make business models that shift mindsets and change perceptions. As we’ve learned from multiple discussions, creative is an extremely important part of a brand’s campaign and messaging. However, without substance and strategic thought behind it, creative can fall short in regards to persuasion. Rational thinking is important to projects and leads people to making conclusions; however emotional thinking in creative work leads people to action, which is especially valuable in campaigns that aim to change behaviors. Before we can do any of this, we must clearly define the problem. We watched many award winning commercials and campaign case study videos, all demonstrating how to change behaviors through multiple different methods. After reviewing how many creative avenues people take to portray the same message, we turned to our projects and analyzed their creative substance with some amazing Team One creative directors and copywriters. This was exactly what our team needed to have the creative breakthrough we were searching for. Many of the creative directors thought our idea did an adequate job in changing perceptions, however one of them, Jason Brady, pushed our idea further and argued that it did not yet change behaviors. He thought our idea and branding was consistent with the problem we were trying to solve, but encouraged us to look further into the audience that we were selling to and tailor the product to match their needs more specifically. Chris Graves was also listening in on the workshop session, and made a comment that really stuck with me. He said that half of the fun of college is staying up and doing the fun things that restrict college students from getting sleep. Of course, our group had previously thought of this issue as one we hoped to change, but our subscription boxes did not connect directly with solving this issue and relaying our message. Subscription boxes are a reliable product method and are currently successful for unorthodox subjects, including shaving and dating. Because of this, many agreed that this would be a good product for our sleep project. The logic behind our product was that that the market for sleep subscription boxes has not yet successfully been tapped into, and sleeping (being a daily activity) could benefit from products that are consistently replenished. This is a rational thinking argument that many could agree with, but as we learned, it did not hold the emotional thinking behind it that would truly connect with our target audience and change actions. After this visit at Team One, one of my group members and I discussed how we could pivot our idea to make our product more relevant to our college student audience. Because of this visit at Team One, our new product line is more focused on napping which is more specific and an activity that can occur during the day rather than at night when there are inevitable obstacles that will affect college students’ sleep schedule. Napping, which we have previously included as one of our activations in our larger sleep brand, is more relevant to our audience. Focusing on napping makes our problem more targeted and approachable, and having a product line that included nap related items will give us a better chance at more directly solving the issue of college students not sleeping enough. This visit at Team One made my group rethink our product to better represent our brand and ultimately have a more successful project. I learned that creativity must be cohesive and present in all aspects of a brand, including how the creative is represented through the product. This means more than just a logo and colors, but what your product will truly mean to a consumer and if it resembles the same idea as the brand’s message. I also took away the idea of clearly defining the problem before getting into the solution. It seems so simple, but we often jump to conclusions without ensuring that everyone is on the same page with what the problem is we are trying to solve. And, as we also learned, there are countless ways to solve the same problem. As we saw with the gun awareness campaigns, creativity can lead you in countless different directions as long as you fully understand the problem you are trying to solve. I have left Team One today with fresh insights about creativity and our project, and I am excited to see where the next weeks Our session with Ronnie Lee from Hook Studios was one of my favorite presentations thus far. Since starting this project, I have been waiting to get into the traditional creative aspects of our brand, especially the copy. I have come to admire the foundational work that needs to be done prior and the creativity it uses, but I have always been fascinated by the art of copywriting. Not only was Ronnie Lee genuinely helpful and entertaining, but his wit and creativity were also shared to all of our brands. The session went through the goal behind copywriting, steps on how to successfully do it, and a “creative springboard” for us to jump off of.After going through the copywriting classics with us, we were able to brainstorm copy and headlines for our own brand. Before we jumped into the hard-hitting headline making, we had to refer back to the key tip Ronnie mentioned multiple times within the session: you have to know what you are saying before how you will say it. As a group, we went through an exercise that analyzed Zzzecret’s attributes, functional benefits, and emotional benefits. The attributes (tangible features and functions with no inherent value) included things like variety, daily use, and reoccurring delivery. Our functional benefit that ranked most relevant to our overall brand message was a better night’s sleep. This led us to the emotional benefit of being healthier, happier, and able to do more with energy. This insight was fun because we are able play with how counterintuitive it is to stay up late to be productive because the affects of not sleeping will make you even less productive the next day. This led us to countless potential campaigns as we continued to brainstorm headlines occasionally with matching graphics. After doing the exercise and brainstorming potential campaigns, we were able to present these to the class and get feedback from Ronnie and our professors. It was helpful to hear them comments, as well as review what other groups had thought up. We were able to bounce ideas off each other about everyone’s projects, and it was beneficial to have this creativity flowing between us all. We played with the idea of the phrases, “You can sleep when you’re dead,” or, “Sleep is for the weak,” as well as the idea of bags under your eyes as your “baggage.” We also worked on using irony and a simile to compare not getting enough sleep to another counterintuitive situation. Not only was this session fun, but it also allowed us to really determine what our brand is trying to say. Through these exercises, we were able to being the creative process of copywriting and branding, and think more critically about Zzzecret’s main message to our audience. For the past 8 weeks, our groups have been working tirelessly on building a product and brand from the group up that is not only profitable, but has a “marketing for good” cause driving it. At TOMS on Wednesday, all our hard work thus far came to fruition. We gave our midterm presentations where we pitched our ideas to TOMS panelists and competed with the other teams for investment money. Although there were stressful moments leading up to the presentation, I could not have been more proud of our team. We all pulled together and used our strengths to complement one another and pitch our idea in a creative, engaging way. The judges were supportive and receptive to our Zzzecret brand and products, and we were given $1000 to invest! Overall, this experience was terrifying and exhilarating simultaneously. It has been amazing to go through the process of starting a product from the ground up, and I have gained a better perspective on how entrepreneurial work begins. All of the presentations and agency visits leading up to this one were immensely helpful, and they did a great job of preparing us for this pitch. And what better group of people than TOMS employees to give us feedback on our disruptive, helpful cause? The employees at TOMS have goodness hardwired into them, so to hear feedback from them on how we could make our ideas more disruptive and beneficial to others was extremely helpful. One of the panelists told us “The Three D’s” that would help our presentations and brand ideas become stronger: Disruption, Distortion, and Differentiation. These are helpful key words that our team can better consider when carrying out our brand activations and displaying during our final presentation. All in all, I am happily overwhelmed with Zzzecret, and ready to take TOMS’ feedback and begin our 7-week plan! I am excited to see where we will be in 7 weeks, and am hopeful of the progress that we will make on shifting perceptions of sleep’s importance and prioritization. The agency Ignited really delivers on what they promise—I left our Wednesday session feeling absolutely ignited! We heard from Eric Johnson, the founder of Ignited and El Camp, as well as Michael Weiss, also known as the “Pitch Doctor.” These two gave perfectly complementary speeches. Johnson taught us about the numbers—what is the business model, know your numbers and know what the investor gets—while Weiss took these numbers and showed us how to make a story out of it. Both elements of this presentation were extremely helpful for our group because we gained insight into what the investors and general audience needs out of our presentation. The investors need to know the money. It is their money on the line, and it is our responsibility to know how it is going to be spent and be able to answer their tough questions. However, as Weiss added, these people will be listening to 5 presentations one after another. Throwing numbers at them may not be the most effective, but telling a story that will get them to care will make your presentation stand out. My biggest take-aways from Michael Weiss’s presentation were to be respectful of the audience, find the narrative in the story, and most importantly make them care! I have been working on this project all semester, so to me it seems obvious why one should care about prioritizing their sleep schedule. However, after presenting in front of Michael, it was clear that although we all cared about our project, we did not explicitly state why everyone else should care. We lacked the narrative that would make the audience get on board with our project over others, which is critical to have for this project to succeed. The feedback we received was a great jumping off point for our first draft of the presentation, and I feel much more prepared for our pitch this upcoming Wednesday. The significance behind the naming of the El Camp business space was that Eric wanted to make it a place that people couldn’t wait to come back to after they left, like you feel after camp. This space truly lived up to its name in that respect, but I also think that it had the imaginative, creative elements that a camp can spark in its attendees. The space and our time there felt collaborative; we spent time learning from Eric and Michael (our “camp counselors”) and then tried the activities on our own using their techniques. We were able to collaborate and learn from the other teams presenting, as well as learn within our team from our own members’ suggestions. Overall, the experience from Ignited at El Camp exceeded my expectations and has sparked my excitement to pitch our idea! Last week, we visited the full service agency MullenLowe in El Segundo to discuss the importance of media placement and metrics within campaigns with Matt Jordan and Bryan Rivas. I had high hopes for our visit here, and the agency did not disappoint; the entire office is open and collaborative, and the work they produce is well renowned and respected. The presentation started with a brief description and history of analytics, which I had a previous understanding of. However, they then explained a basic campaign timeline (pre campaign, mid campaign, and post campaign) that media teams follow during the process. This addressed elements such as research, setting KPIs and targets, and future recommendations. Although I had known all these steps were critical to the process, I had never thought about when in a campaign they should be carried out. Since our groups are still in the pre campaign stage, we are doing research about our consumer and message and should be starting to think about our KPIs and target. Another helpful insight that Matt and Bryan revealed was the KPI Ladder. This was basically the plan of how you could track success in a campaign and what all of your KPIs should be leading to. Starting with the ultimate goal, the ladder when from the Business Objective > Marketing Objective > Comm Objective > KPIs > to Diagnostic Metrics. This was an extremely helpful visual to have in my opinion because I often can forget the ultimate goal when working so closely on one part of the project. To be able to define the overall business objective and make sure everything is working towards that will not only make the process run more smoothly, but make the overall campaign more successful. After hearing the down low on metrics and analytics, we were given an exercise to put these processes into the story of our campaign—as if we were giving a mid campaign media report. I always appreciate the exercises during our visits because it allows us to put the helpful information we just learned into action on our own projects. I will admit, I was slightly confused at first by this exercise. As we pushed through it, however, it was helpful to see what obstacles we may run into and possible solutions to tackle them with. The insights, optimizations, and recommendations may have just been apart of the story for this exercise, but soon enough they will be the truth. It was also helpful to hear general feedback from the mentors about our idea and where we are at with our campaign. Media has always been the most elusive part to me about an agency. I am not a particularly data-heavy type person, so all of the talk about analytics normally made me tune out. I knew media was a critical part of the campaign’s success, but never knew the processes or how it can be interpreted. Although I still wouldn’t call myself a data genius, thanks to MullenLowe and Matt and Bryan, I have a much better understanding of the media concepts and can apply them within our own project. This week, we were visited by Nick Virginio, a Senior Brand Manager at Dollar Shave Club. The focus of this session was the power of a persona and how a brand becomes a product. Nick did a wonderful job at taking us through how Dollar Shave Club has built up a brand so significant and resonant to its target audience that it members ask customer service for dating advice. The members of Dollar Shave Club truly identify with the club aspect--it is as if they have joined a brotherhood. But how did a brand that started by selling razors for lower prices become an empire of loyal customers? That is what Nick led us to figure out. Nick began his presentation by explaining the difference between a Master Brand (e.g. Dollar Shave Club) and Sub-brands (e.g. Boogies, the company's hair care line of products). The reason why these products are marketed under different names is because each brand contributes a different set of values in the consumer's mind. Dollar Shave Club often triggers the price value over quality in a consumer's mind, whereas these sub-brands make the consumer first associate quality, while still recognizing significant value. From this point, Nick then described the 4 steps of bringing a brand to life: inspiration, strategy, development, and adoption. Although the deck presented was specific to Dollar Shave Club, these steps were helpful to envision the need for a strong brand presence in our own project. The inspiration step of a brand is critical because without it your brand will not target the right audience in the most effective way. This step includes gaining qualitative and quantitative research about your consumers in order to create a vision that unifies the brand's persona. The strategy, step two, is the method by which you influence your consumers to see your brand as superior. Step three then focuses on the development of your products in alignment with your brand's vision, and the final step, adoption, includes maintaining a good brand image to gain loyal customers. In our own project, we are currently working on the inspiration and strategy phase. We are researching more about our potential consumer, LMU college students, and their sleeping habits, as well as brainstorming how we can influence their preference to our brand once it is established. This will help our group form a more cohesive brand image that aligns with what our target audience needs from a brand with sleep prioritization as the goal. This presentation played a significant role in forming these beginning ideas of who our brand voice is, and was exceptionally helpful by using the concrete example of the successful brand voice of Dollar Shave Club. This past Wednesday at the TOMS Playa Vista HQ was filled with inspiring stories and impactful products. TOMS is most famous for their shoes and their One for One business model that the founder, Blake Mycoskie, has implemented since the beginning. This brand has grown to sell more than just shoes; they now include eyewear that helps give sight and coffee that gives clean, safe water. The headquarters authentically reflects the company's values through their employees' vocal passions and beautifully designed open floor plan. The company's "One for One" mantra is also constantly present physically and spiritually throughout the building. The company not only support's giving back to those in need abroad, but also focused on the community around them. For example, during our visit, the outdoor area of the office was decorated with encouraging messages about registering to vote and staying politically involved and aware. This truly illustrates TOMS’ dedication to back to others, whether that is sharing education or clean shoes and water. I found TOMS especially interesting because of their for-profit model. It is not a company that has incorporated CSR into its profit model, but one that built profit into a CSR model. Throughout the visit at TOMS, I was constantly reminded that for every product effort, the impact value must also be present. The Director of Global Brand Marketing at TOMS, Kate Faith, presented the in-depth process that goes into TOMS' marketing to ensure both product and impact value. Recently, they have shifted their focus beyond basic human needs and now want to showcase shared human values. They disclosed an upcoming project that does this beautifully, and allows people to tell their stories in new ways that before. These values act as the company’s north star—the goal that guides them and their work. Normally, companies mainly focus on the product value within marketing materials, so to see the impact value factored into their company was extremely helpful and relevant to our project. They have created a framework that helps them envision the entire product journey beginning at brainstorming the idea user through the impactful marketing implementations. The four steps they encouraged us to work through were Product > Changemaker > Impact > Marketing + Amplification. In this stage of our Marketing for Good project, this framework was extremely relevant and helpful to determine whom we were helping and how we were going to do it. For our project, we want to help students prioritize sleep and raise awareness about the physical and mental importance of sleep. Thus, using this framework as a reference has allowed us to determine who exactly we are targeting, what the narrative of our project is, how we will measure its impact, and the strategy we will use to make the project happen. Not only was this visit to TOMS helpful, but it was also incredibly inspiring. Every agency aims to make innovative work, but Deloitte has the process down to a science. This Wednesday, we visited Deloitte Digital--a creative digital consulting firm that focuses heavily on innovation within their work. Our session was led by Danny Ledger and Gianelle Veis who analyzed the ten types of innovation. These concepts were extremely useful and pushed us to determine the elements that made our hero companies innovative in their respective business problems. The elevator pitch exercise was the most helpful learning activity in my opinion. This forced our group to decide how we could use these innovative types in our own project, and allowed us to condense all our ideas into a short, more directed solution to the problem of sleep. Because of this presentation, my group is significantly closer to finding a sustainable result that encourages sleep prioritization in an innovative way!
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December 2018
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