For the assessed group- work assignment we came together of a group of 5, having previously worked in group beforehand. I believe everyone was quite happy to work together again. We knew from previous group group work assignments that leaving it to the week before its due date was a mistake, so giving ourselves more time we were able to have an in depth plan, delegate and tackle the assignment for the best outcome. Working with the groups members I did, I was confident we’d time manage well to meet the deadline and I was certain we’d work well together. Everyone in the group knowing each others key strengths, helped us to delegate tasks between us. The assignment having an interesting task of creating a campaign video, brought something different to what we had done before that made me motivated to try something new. I was happy to produce the content for the campaign video, as it’s a way of bringing out my creative side. With other members contributing, I was happy with the hard work that was put in by all group members. In blog post 1 all members of the group contributed to individual sections using google docs whereby we accessed the document all at once, and helped one another.
With the group having met before and after university contact hours, with all group members present. We’d given ourselves a sufficient amount of time to work together using Google Docs, where all members of the group could access the assignment as not all group members lived near one another. The group meetings helped everyone have a clear understanding of assignment and meet deadlines of tasks. The communication between the group played a big part in everybody understanding where they were at with the tasks. Understanding group members skills that are similar to mine, would benefit tasks as we could work together on the task to produce a strong piece of work. The overall performance of the group was very strong, all group members put in an equal amount of work and encouraged each other throughout this assignment.
When I’m working in a group next time, I’d be happy to work with the same people as we work well together. We all seem confident around each other, and with everyone being hard working we produce work to an excellent standard. As a group, not everybody was confident using word press and were unsure on a few things. So in the future I think spending time as a group with everybody learning how to use word press would benefit us all.
In this part of the assignment I will be reflecting on my contribution to the team, determining whether or not what I provided towards the team was poor or excellent. During this reflection I will be keeping in mind Gibb’s reflective cycle.
To begin with I chose group members I was already familiar with. As we have worked on previous assignment, I knew that there would be no issues in distributing the workload and communicating with each other.
I was assigned a part of blog post one in which I had to provide an example of how our chosen digital platform (social media) has been used in a recent campaign. In order to aim to do this successfully I conducted research on many recent campaigns. However, the campaign I chose to include as an example was the Mercedes-Benz USA No Limits campaign. The reason for this choice was based on the aim of the campaign, it was to achieve something other than the increase of sales. As the aim of our campaign for our client, The Makers Market, was to raise awareness I felt that it would be a suitable example, showcasing that the aim of marketing campaign’s does not always have to be to increase sales. I would not describe the outcome as excellent as there are aspects that I most likely missed out; however, I would like to believe that I went into enough depth for this example to make it a valid and successful one.
In addition to that task, I also had a role in the making of the video. It was my idea to have the video as a PowerPoint slideshow with a voice over as it was the easiest yet most professional way to display our pitch. An idea we all had in mind for the video was to take inspiration from Pecha Kucha. Displaying just images and minimal text on the slides while explaining their meaning in the voiceover. One group member was assigned to do the voice over as we felt that it would ensure the video flow is smoother. As a group we all arranged a meeting in which the recordings for the voiceover took part. This allowed us all to contribute in the script writing as well as to support our team member so that they did not feel uncomfortable recording themselves.
Overall, I felt like my participation in this assignment was not the most successful, this may have been due to the workload being spread evenly between all group members. What I contributed to the team may not feel like much but when looking at the assignment as a whole all of our individually set tasks come together to form a well written blog.
In future assignments I will be more proactive within the team, ensuring that I always offer my help to team members and communicate at all times to always be aware of the progress of other members.
To begin this assignment, we were first told to find groups that we could complete the assignment with. The group I chose to work with was a familiar one for me as we have worked together before in a couple of previous assignments. This worked well for all of us as it allowed us to work to each other’s strengths, delegating different tasks dependant on this. I personally excelled more at the online side of things. This lead to me stepping up more to create the actual blog post and present the information in an aesthetically pleasing manner. As a group, we do not think that ‘Wordpress’ is the easiest site to use, meaning it took a fair bit of perseverance from me to completely figure out how to use it. Other roles were also given based on other people’s strengths. For example, we picked our strongest speaker to speak over the campaign video, while others helped with the script writing. Furthermore, we all played a part in writing for Post 1 and 3, while the references, for post 4 came in conjunction with this. I focused a larger portion of my efforts onto the ‘Critiques of social media’ section. I figured I could excel more at this again, due to me being more comfortable with writing things from the internet.
As for overall performance, our team worked increasingly well. Being confident in each other allowed us to work to our strengths and not have to worry about covering another member of the team. As a blog was something we had never attempted before this task, it was good to learn and an interesting task to complete together.
As said previously, I believe our strong team work helped massively with the justification. The strong teamwork allowed for us to complete all of the tasks well, along with having easy explanations for why we did each thing. When we had all completed our individual tasks, it became easier to present them to each other and this was what our justification consisted of.
In any future group tasks I would be more than happy with working with the same group. As mentioned above, this is not the first task we have completed together and the familiarity helps massively. The one thing I would consider improving about future group tasks would be to ensure we begin slightly earlier. This could potentially allow for better content as more time would be left for small improvements and minor changes. Although, I believe that this helped us improve all round as a group and it helped me improve myself as I learnt new things and another confidence boost.
For this assignment we were told to get into groups and create a blog. The group I found myself with worked extremely well together due to each of us working with each other in the past and knowing each other’s strengths from previous assignments. This has enabled the team to work together effectively and efficiently. An example of excellent group teamwork shown by us all was the fact everyone stepped up and said what they were comfortable with doing within the assignment, I gladly stepped up to make a large contribution to blog post one as well as help my fellow team mate with the campaign video by helping produce a script, I also helped contribute the justification why we chose the Makers market. However, when we discussed the overall roles within the group, I felt most comfortable with writing and finding resources and references, this is where I could show my skills and perform to the best. As team we decided that one of us would speak over the top off to campaign video, so we chose our strongest speaker who was comfortable with taking on this role. Overall the group worked fantastic together with excellent communication in and outside of university, with the help of social media this impacted the overall task positively.
Overall working as a team was very positive and we all helped each other when there was help needed. This increases productivity within the group. Once the roles were assigned, we were then able to get on with the work and create this blog on Makers market. Since we all get on really well this increases the overall experience and made the assignment and fun task to complete.
At first when we got told about the assignment I felt rather uncomfortable about stepping up to roles as it was my first time creating a blog, I felt rather set back to present the campaign video but I was happy to help with the script, after seeing the campaign video made and how easy it is to speak, I now felt more confident to potentially step up to this role along with many other roles. With everyone working very hard throughout the assignment it was important we all had our fair share to contribute to the assignment so we could complete our individual goals set at the beginning of the assignment, towards the end we could see that everyone including myself had excelled with the work and completing it to a high standard. Due to this our justification was good as we were all able to come together and present our work to then work together to create the justification.
For future group work I will be pleased to work with the same group as I know they all pull their own weight and produce excellent work. With the help of each other we were all able to improve as characters and writers which helped improve the overall performance of everyone and individually.
Instagram. (2019). Mercedes-Benz USA on Instagram: “This #NationalSTEMDay we’re partnering with @NGCProject to bring Ewy Rosqvist’s inspiring message to thousands of girls nationwide. And…”. [online] Available at: https://www.instagram.com/tv/B4nFJRpAEq_/?utm_source=ig_embed
The reason for the choice of the Makers Market is because it stood out the most with the way they work and what their ethics are, Makers Market is placed over the North West with a vast spread of stalls, they visit many cities and towns to sell their homemade produce to the public. Makers Market most used digital platform is instagram, this is where they connect to public by posting many photos with captions about their team, food and locations they will be visiting next. With around eighty thousand plus follows across all three platforms, this makes their brand widely known by the public making them able to sustain dominance within the market they operate in.
The digital media platform that will benefit Makers Market is social media, this is where they post any updates with their business whether it is to do with where their next stall will be or any new items they may have for sale. Makers Market has a wide range of people who follow their accounts making them able to carry on selling their products across the North West. Makers market will want to minimise costs in any way especially with any unnecessary advertising costs when they have the use of social media at their disposal for free, thus maximising their profit after general cost.
Our creative ideas and how Makers market can use Facebook and other social media platforms for free advertising is a great idea for the company because it will decrease the costs in which they could spend on advertising, instead they are able to focus more money into the making of the goods they produce for the public and ensuring they are of high quality.
We expect our audience to have a positive and respectful response to Makers market, and to visit the stalls if they are interested along with spreading the word about the business in order to gain repeat customers as well as new potential customers. This will not only be through the word of mouth but also through the use of social media with the use of hashtags. The hashtags will allow recognition to grow and for a far wider range of people to see it who potentially would not. Moreover, the consumer loyalty that grows over time will allow for an increase in revenue and consequently profits. This will allow Makers Market to grow and provide better quality in response, leading to plenty of positive multiplier effects.
(Bendor-Samuel, P. (2018) states multiple components comprise a digital platform typically a data-ingestion engine, a machine-learning transactional engine to perform tasks or tools that allow digital platforms to talk to other software. These components must be aligned and integrated to create better experiences for users. This links to social media as companies and businesses will use online apps to promote and advertise their service and product, social media websites uses cookies which allows them to see previous search histories and therefore be able to advertise a specific product to the specific user. This means the tools allow for these platforms to integrate with others to increase the users experience. Social media can be viewed either on the internet of mobile based channels, some examples of platforms; Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, LinkedIn, Snapchat, YouTube and WhatsApp, a lot of these are used to connect with others and ecommerce advertising. The most popular platform ranked to date is Facebook stated by (Lua, A. 2019). Facebook is the biggest social media site around in today’s society with more than two billion users every month, making it the best social media platform.
Social media platforms have penetrated into people’s everyday routines, changing the norms of social interaction. The idea behind social media is to create channels across the globe to create a sense of community whereby users have the ability to post, share and express ideas (Pizano, G. (2019). Hashtags being a technique associated with social media, can be seen to be used across all platforms to draw attention, to organize, and to promote. A hashtag “#” written in front of a word or phrase without any spaces would make a post more interactive, that could be useful when promoting a campaign on a platform to appeal to a wider target audience stated by (Barnhart, B. (2018). A technique Facebook allows users to do is create an event, whether it’s public to everyone or private to the users friends. On Facebook events, users are able to expand the reach of their audience by using Ads to allow users to drive awareness of the event (Vaccaro, S. (2018), targeting the audience dependent on their age, location and gender.
Social media offers various benefits to companies and users of the platforms as it allows them to reach out and connect on a more personal level and gain more attention of new potential customers. It allows for a business to personally brand themselves and connect with millions of users, especially with today’s world where traditional advertising is not used as much as it was. Recent surveys show that social media also enables businesses to get exposure, traffic and gain market insights. (Newberry, C. 2018) presents a view of of digital usage around the world in 2018 with the amount of people using the platforms.
(Newberry, C. 2018)
The advantages of companies and users using social media are that it will increase brand awareness as well as humanize your brand more, this means adults don’t trust brands until they see ‘real world proof’, more advantages are that it allows businesses can generate trends, boost sales especially through linking up with social media influencers the gain more coverage, this allows for the business to use more ‘real life’ reviews on their product or service, with the use of social media this will help boost sales and increase revenue. The use of social media also allows businesses to keep an eye on other businesses as well as being able to see what they are doing. Target marketing includes demographic information, geography, language and other online behaviours, this means they can craft specific messages that will best engage the groups of potential customers and other businesses. The way to target advertise is with set prices by paying for the exact amount of viewers you are trying to reach making it a niche way to market.
The rise of social media is ever growing with more and more users logging in each day, social media has changed the world and the way businesses and people work themselves. (Ortiz-Ospina, E. 2019) suggests ‘social media platforms are used by one-in-three people in the world, and more than two-thirds of all internet users. The rapid and vast adoption of these technologies is changing how we find partners, work, many other resources and how we access information from the news, and how we organise to demand political change. Thus, making the use of social media important to move forward in today’s society.
Privacy is easily one of the biggest critiques of social media. (Joseph Walther, 2002) identifies ideas as to why he makes the point that people have “a misplaced presumption that online behaviour is private”. This means people unknowingly post sensitive information, believing once they delete it, it is gone forever. However, in reality once information is online it can always be found. This can then lead to the theft and manipulation of data, as seen with Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica data breach. Facebook “failed to safeguard its user’s data and that it failed to be transparent about how the data was harvested by others”. (Hearn A & Pegg D, 2018) Facebook’s dramatic failure shows that regardless of the size and reputation of a company, data breaches are still a huge possibility.
Another critique of social media platforms is that they can easily lead to cyberbullying. Numerous data studies indicate that social media is the favoured medium for cyberbullies. (Cook S, 2019) Anonymous or fake accounts can be made so easily with the real identity of the person extremely difficult to trace. Although over recent years, huge emphasis has been placed on trying to reduce cyberbullying. A study in 2007 found that “32 percent of teens have been victim to some form of cyberbullying”. (Cook S, 2019) Cook then goes on to say that by 2016 the number is still very similar. This infers that cyberbullying is still very easy to do, regardless of the increased attempts to prevent it.
Many organisations and companies understand that in order to reach a wider audience they should implement the use of social media marketing into their advertising campaigns. Although many organisations acknowledge the need for an active social media profile the challenge they often face is identifying how to effectively do so (Hanna, R. Rohm, A. Crittenden, V. 2011).
An example of how social media was used in a recent campaign can be seen in the Mercedes-Benz USA #GirlsHaveNoLimits campaign that was launched in 2019. Mercedes-Benz was founded in 1926 (Mercedes-Benz, N.D), since then it has created a strong a reliable brand identity for itself offering consumers luxury cars. It is recognisable and successful worldwide therefore not all of its campaigns revolve around increasing sales. For this campaign Mercedes-Benz partnered with Mattel, ‘a global learning, development and play company’ (Mattel, 2020) and National Girls Collaborative Project, in order to erase the social stigma of ‘that’s for boys, not for girls’ and to encourage ‘girls to pursue science, technology, engineering, and math careers’ (Nathaniel, M. 2019).
Across the US, workshops were organised for young girls where they were able to ‘engineer toy racetracks, design cars and engage with female role models’ (Nathaniel, M. 2019) this allowed them to expand their visions for their future. As a reminder that girls can do anything Mercedes-Benz USA and Mattel gifted ‘50,000 Matchbox die-cast toy replicas of a very special Mercedes-Benz 220SE to participating children’ (Nathaniel, M. 2019)
The social video that was launched as a part of this campaign was shared on all of the brands social profiles with the hashtag #GirlsHaveNoLimits, including Instagram, where it received praise from fans. The hashtag was also shared on Twitter, with different users participating in the discussions of the campaign. Mercedes-Benz utilised Instagram’s IGTV feature which allowed them to upload a longer video to showcase the campaigns effect on young girls. The video was shared along with an informative caption:
“This #NationalsSTEMDay we’re partnering with @NCGProject to bring Ewy Rosqvist’s inspiring message to thousands of girls nationwide. And we’re not just sharing her story. We’ve partnered with @mattel to transform her championship Mercedes-Benz 220 SE into a Matchbox car – A powerful reminder to girls that they have no limits” (Instagram, 2019)
On Instagram the video received over 19,000 views (Instagram, 2019) and over 8,000 views on YouTube (Mercedes-Benz x Matchbox: National STEM Day, 2019). The engagement towards the campaign was not overwhelming, however the aim was encouraging younger girls to follow STEM careers and believe in themselves as well as to break the social stigma.
The reason this client should invest in social media is because it allows a full insight into the world of online marketing and how it is beneficial to the current and potential users as well as companies that use social media, this is shown through the use of brand awareness and how the brand situates itself in the market through social media thus making the product/ service known around the world more potentially increasing the sales and revenue off the specific company, especially through engaging with the potential customers in the correct manor in order to grab their attention and help boost their decision in purchasing their goods. This therefore with the clients help they can afford to pay for more online advertising, boosting their portfolio. However, this allows the investor to gain a wider clientele, this increases more knowledgeable aspects and creates new contacts whether it’s with a business or a fellow user, due to the rapid growth of social media investing sooner rather than later is most likely to see a higher return from the initial investment generating potential profit. (Frost, P. 2015) summaries three main reason why investing time and money in to social media will be beneficial, the ‘three reasons are to boost your channels, control your reputation and how people see you and how you want to be seen and keeping your audience engaged’. These three reasons are ideal as it will not only help with the investment but increase the investors profile and link the investor to many more people and companies. Furthermore, another reason for investing is the campaign and how it is portrayed to users as well as how the critiques will respond, everything is there to be seen so this makes it easier for the client or users to adapt to what needs hanging through primary research.
(Newberry, C. 2018)
Deep, Dark and Dirty Digital Advertising Agency 