The semester is now over, and I have completed my Advertising class. At this point I am going to be honest…. I was NOT excited to take this course, but I need two marketing electives to graduate and this was the only one that fit my schedule -_-
With that said I am glad I took this class with Jane and had to opportunity to learn from her! I still do not want to be an advertiser and I still do not think I would make a good creative, but I do think I have a better appreciation for the art.
The class was broken down in to four parts, industry overview, advertising planning & strategy, creative content & context, and pulling it all together with presentations. I am only going to blog about the last tree which affected me the most. I am also going to mostly be talking about them in terms of our application and group project.
Planning and strategy were hard! I felt completely lost when trying to create a creative brief from nothing. Cutie’s was extremely hard, because searching a citrus fruit with such a name is a task and a half. In a big agency setting I am sure it is very different. I liked the speakers in this part of the course. We had Steve Grant and Brandon Thronton. They are both creative, smart men who understand what planning and strategy is all about. What Steve left me with was finding brand identity and brand truth. It makes so much sense to say, but it is harder to find and follow. When you do find it, it gives your strategy a sense of direction and a place to go. Research is essential to this part of the process and Steve also hit on that. His big hit with Prudential came from research realizing what part of the business was underrepresented, but relevant. His speech gave the advertising world a real meaning. He let us know they go through similar struggles and it is normal. Thank you Steve for the great advice, I will always remember it.
The second speaker was probably the best of the semester, Brandon Thornton. I listened to him twice and was impressed each time. What I like most about him is he is real. There is no fluff when he talks about the advertising world and what he does. He also gave a lot of insights in to the business and what he does on a day-to-day business. While I know that is not for me, it was awesome to hear about. He went over so much, and you can check out two of my older blog posts to read about them. One thing I liked that he brought from W+K was their Wiedenism or short statements of advice. They are simple, to the point, but they make you think and almost seem dumb. The resonate with you. Thank you Brandon for keeping it real in your speeches and coming across as a real person. Thank you for all of your tips and examples in class, and finally thank you for the Wiedenisms.
After a lot of struggle my group came up with a good creative brief for Cutie’s and I was very happy with it. We did out research and realized Cutie’s has the market of kids. We did not want to change their market, but we wanted to add to it. We wanted to add the busy on-the-go high school student and the young business man. Another hard part of strategy, planning and the creative brief is thinking like an advertiser, not like a marketer or business person. I have a tendency to think like that but I had to stop and try to word things better.
Nest was the creative part and making executions. The hard part here was dropping Cutie’s and picking up a brief we had not worked on. Being honest, I did not read about Uniqlo at all while I was working on Cutie’s so they were completely new to me. Again the creative executions are hard because you have to think differently in order to come up with a big idea. I still do not think I understand or know how to do that. It is a whole lot easier to jump right to ads, commercials, etc. I learned some techniques and tips, but if I were to do this again I would need some help and coaching. I tried to encourage my team toward one idea, but we came out with two and as we presented I felt us making the mistake Jane had told us about! We did not cut our final presentation by one-third. If we had I am certain we would have one. If we had shortened the Ir0n Chef idea and made the Facebook app and wardrobe center more clear it would have been better. The wardrobe center and linking it with Facebook was my favorite idea and it would be great to tell Uniqlo about it.
One recommendation for future teams is to have a point of contact for the teams. It could be a local place or a place like Burt’s Bees, Riunite, or Got Milk? where there is a contact already in place. Sometimes it would have been nice to talk to someone about the brand itself and see if our ad were in the right direction.
I learned a lot this semester and grew to like the class and appreciate advertising more. I want to continue to notice advertising and pick up tips here and there as I move on with my career. This knowledge will help in different ways and is not just applicable to creatives. I hope to channel my inner creative while working in the business world and use it to my advantage.
I am not one for long blog posts, but it was only fitting for this recap. Any reader from Virginia Tech that has the opportunity to take Advertising with Jane should definitely do it. It will be a challenge and there is group work, but you will not regret it.
As Jane would say, cheers! (I will miss her British accent haha)
-MM
A Schmedalling Pearl 