The Big Agency

Although The Big Agency assignment deadline is the 26th, I will be attending the TechforGood Event about Data on the 27th of April. After recently completing my Customer Information Management assignment based on data mining I have gained a greater interest in data and it has quickly become one of my favourite aspects of marketing. Big data is also a unit I have chosen to study for my final year and so I am very keen to attend this event as I believe it will provide valuable in developing my understanding of the topic as a whole. Furthermore, although it has been my job in the past to live stream the event, I am hoping that by going without my group after the deadline submission I will be able to attend the event as just a listener so I can better engage with the talk and make notes. I will update a blog post afterwards with my notes.

In week 18 of The Big Agency we went over the brief for assignment two. This assignment requires us to produce a Creative Group Video summarising key points; I will reflect on this process in my later blog posts. We are also required to use reflective theory in order to demonstrate our professional development. I have written an example below; When working on our Brand Management assignment, Yousaf was delegated the task of drawing logo ideas whilst I typed up key theory we could use and justify our logo choices. Whilst I was typing, Yousaf was suggesting new ideas that I blankly ignored as I was trying to focus on typing up my research. I noticed that through disregarding Yousaf's remarks I had demoralised him and as a result he was not motivated to continue his work. I then immediately brought focus back to his work and praised him for the work he had contributed - as a result he continued to develop more ideas. From this experience and reflecting in action (Schon, 1991) I was

Although my degree requires a placement year, up until recently it has been a prospect I've been burying my head in the sand about.     However, in week 18 of The Big Agency I attended my sisters engagement party where I was introduced to my cousins friend Russell Feingold who works for the Manchester based radio station Key 103. I struck up conversation with Russell and came across the topic of placements, when I mentioned I was looking to do something in Events Marketing he seemed very interested and told me he was the Charity Manager and was responsible for organising the Cash for Kids campaign. Russell then gave me his email and asked me to forward him my CV so he can review it and arrange a meeting. I am extremely excited over this prospect as Key 103 is an extremely well-established company and working for them would be amazing experience. In reflection, from this experience I have learnt the importance of networking and that prospective business opportunities are ev

• What’s the first creative moment that you remember? The earliest creative moment I can recall is from when I was 5 years old. My mother was a child-minder so I was regularly interacting with other children. Me and one of the children my mother looked after, a boy called Ross, were watching 'The Rugrats' on TV. I watched how at the beginning of each episode 'The Rugrats' would unlock the playpen they'd been kept in with a screwdriver and embark on an adventure. It's from this that I created a game where me and Ross would take turns to pretend to unlock the outside gate leading to the garden by standing on each others backs and using a plastic screwdriver to pretend to open it then pushing it open ourselves. We'd then continue by running outside and playing generic childhood games. This activity became a daily ritual between the two of us functioning as an indicator that we were about to embark on our own adventures.  • Was anyone there to witness or a

The premise of week 16 is that digital is completely transforming consumer culture. I learnt that due to the fact children are exposed to social media from a young age, it somewhat blurs their perception of what is real and what is false; this is evident in the fact that 'one in ten believe everything they find on social media is true' and  'most 12-15s are unaware that 'vloggers' can be paid to endorse products'.  Albeit, on the whole digital has transformed culture on the whole for the better. Through digital, stressful activities such as ordering a taxi have become a simple transaction through the development of Uber. Digital has also opened the doorway to new levels of personalisation through analysing consumer data - it is now somewhat unheard of to visit a website and not see your previous viewing history. With digital data, organisations can better target deals and content that suits us, equating to a greater level of consumer satisfaction.  The in

From these seminar slides, I learnt about the importance of the initial Reason Digital brief we chose in order to help inform and guide our work. Creative briefs are imperative to projects as they provide you with information such as; • What is this project? • Who is it for? • Why are we doing it? • What needs to be done? By whom? By when? • Where and how will it be used? These questions are answered clearly in Reason Digital's brief meaning we have a clear understanding of what we are expected to achieve by the end of the unit;  • What is this project? TechforGood - increase podcast views and event attendees • Who is it for? Anyone interested in social good, however we are primarily interested in finding charities and tech people. • Why are we doing it? In order to create a greater awareness for TechforGood and their app developments as well as increase possible funding opportunities .  • What needs to be done? By whom? By when? We have been given the task of setti

In week 15, I competed in the Goals Manchester Women's 5-aside Football Tournament. The tournament consisted of 15 teams from in and around Manchester playing several 12 minute games from 6pm to 10 dependent on the number of points attained from winning and goal difference. After winning four games and drawing one, my team "Multiple Scorgasm's" made it through to the final against defending champs "Croasies Angels" but lost at 2-1 in the last minute. Playing short 5-aside games is great for me in developing my technique - the pitch is smaller and there's less players so you're forced to keep control of the ball for longer and improve on possession as well as stamina with the game having no breaks. In terms of my professional development, participating in 5-aside you're playing with fewer team-member so you have to communicate with each other more efficiently, if one person messes up (lets in a goal) there's less time to recover which can

Following our seminar on market research. I took it upon myself to be the group member that created our questionnaire as I believed I had learnt a lot about quantifiable and qualitative data and wanted to use my knowledge practically following each step; STEP ONE: WHY ARE WE CONDUCTING MARKET RESEARCH? 1. To identify new potential audience STEP TWO: RESEARCH OBJECTIVES 1. Purpose? Identify ways to increase podcast views 2. What information is being sought? Quantifiable and qualative 3. How will the information be used? We will refer to the findings in our creative video to suggest new opportunities for TechforGood STEP THREE: FIND OUT WHAT INFORMATION ALREADY EXISTS The only information we had was number of attendees at events STEP FOUR: DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH THROUGH SURVEYS Developed questionnaire for research       In the questionnaire, I asked classificational questions such as age and gender. I developed attitudinal questions such as “how

The focus of week 14 was presenting data. The lecture slides identified the three stages necessary for conducting effective market research; STEP ONE: WHY DO MARKET RESEARCH? 1. Identify potential customers 2. Understand existing customers 3. Set realistic targets 4. Develop effective strategies 5. Examine and solve business problems 6. Prepare for business expansion 7. Identify business opportunities STEP TWO: SET YOUR RESEARCH OBJECTIVES 1. What is the purpose of the research? 2. What information is being sought? 3. How will the information be used? STEP THREE: FIND OUT WHAT INFORMATION ALREADY EXISTS Primary data is original research that is obtained through first-hand investigation, while secondary data is research that is widely available and obtained from another party. Primary data includes information collected from interviews, experiments, surveys, questionnaires, focus groups and measurements. Secondary data research is attained through internal compan

In light of my disappointing mark in he first unit of The Big Agency I have decided to dedicate more time towards my blog. In order to ensure I am going in the right direction I emailed Mark and asked him to review my previous posts. Mark's feedback provided me with some reassurance that reflecting on my independent research and going over seminars I have missed demonstrates that I do have a genuine passion for learning even though my attendance does not always reflect this. In addition, I have taken into consideration that Mark would like to see more reflection of what I have taken away from seminars instead of simply reiterating the presentation slides. After posting this blog post I will go over previous weeks and correct any spelling errors and add more visuals.

In Week 14, Alicia and I decided we were going to try one of the active campus sessions that the university run free for students. Neither of us have ever played the sport before so it was a massive step out of our comfort zone. Initially we were intimidated to be playing alongside the men's rugby team but we eventually built up our confidence and got stuck in.    After the session, we decided to sign ourselves up for the tag rugby tournament on the 5th of March. I believe participating in a new sport further establishes my ability to take risks and try something new as well boosting endorphin's and making new friends. In relation to the Big Agency unit, I believe this has helped with my work as it has strengthened mine and Alicia's relationship both as  friends and team-mates.  

On the trian journey back home for my birthday, I decided I would try occupy myself by listening to a podcast on the train. The premise of this podcast is to turn big data into big action . In marketing you need to 'be openminded' and require all the basic marketing skills initially before specialising within a sector - a 'holistic view of marketing' - need all basic foundations. Development of data driven marketing is geographically diverse and so it is important to enhance the right local dynamics . 'today is the slowest day of tech development I will see for the rest of my life, it will be faster tomorrow and faster on Sunday' In essence, technology is constantly advancing. The growth of the mobile and its computational power shows how consumers are changing - change in consumer journey. Funnel - straight forward. Need to understand OMNICHANNEL approach (the internet of things)  CHALLENGES - Brand relevency; serving the right message to the right

After the seminar, I watched the YouTube video 'Perfectly executing the wrong plan' and took notes in order to better retain information and refer back to when conducting our questionnaire for the second assignment. The video draws upon how and why app developers fail in developing a successful app. The first problem discussed as to why apps fail is that developers are not IN LOVE with the problem they are trying to solve - the product is rushed without fully thinking through how they are solving a problem for potential users. Problem two comes in the form of inappropriate market research . App developers should refrain from gaining market research from friends in family as answers will be majorly biased and unhelpful to build the foundations of an app on. Problem three is that developers LISTENED to users - 'don't listen to users, instead observe their behaviour' Social psychology states that as humans, we are bad at predicting our own beh

The first focus of the seminar was to understand the video brief for the second assignment of the unit. The 'Group Creative Output' is 20% of our second grade which requires me and my group to create a video-based reflective review, highlighting the research and creative outputs from our project, posted publically on YouTube (5 minutes maximum). We watched an exemplar video describing a PR stunt marketers created in order to generate awareness to Thorpe Park's Island Beats concert. The stunt consisted of releasing a video of 'dad dancing' which went viral, appearing on news channels such as ITV accumulating 10 million combined views and increasing web traffic by 300%. The PR stunt is said to have achieved  the best result on a small budget. From watching the example video I began to understand that for successful marketing creativity is 🔑. The second focus of the seminar was about interpreting research. I learnt that if you do not conduct effective mark

I n week 12 of The Big Agency we received feedback from our first assignment; my grade percentage was 54.7 . I am extremely disappointed with this grade as I know I did not complete the work to the best of my ability. Upon self reflection, I believe this is due to my poor time management, having another assignment deadline on the same day and not providing myself with enough time to complete the PDR. Feedback I received include that within my PDR certain ideas appeared vague and that I need to make more reference to academic content to show a greater depth of understanding.  My online logs provided to be the most disappointing out of all my work as I neglected writing about what I have learnt in seminar and instead focused on the work I have done with my client. Albeit, I received a mark of 80 on peer assessment highlighting that I have worked effectively within my group. Moving forward from this, I will now being to incorporate more of what I have learnt from seminar and d