Law Week

Hi Everyone!

What comes to our digital business course, this haven't been the most active week for my part. I spent nearly a week at my childhood home in Central Ostrobothnia, and therefore couldn't participate on Monday's lecture about law. That's pretty sad because I see that legal affairs are kind of important things to know when it comes to business or any marketing.

Anyway on Monday our team Di6iBrainiacs started to work with three exercises about law. In the first part our task was to make a short review of what should be taken in consideration, if you want to establish a shop online. We studied about cancellation right in distance sales and notice of cancellation, confirmation of order in distance selling and information to be provided prior to the conclusion of a contract.

In the next exercise we were asked to visit a website of an online shop and find out what kind of a description of a person file and form of a cancellation right they have on their page. Our team chose Verkkokauppa.com's webpage, and our common opinion was that the pages were really easy to read and understand. They weren't trying to mislead customers, but provided very clearly all the required information that law demands.

Our third exercise was to prepare a presentation about recognisability of advertising in blogs. The legal regulations and praxis in case of blogs are very similar to any other sort of marketing. Below I have listed the most important aspects from Consumer Protection Art that an enterprise and a blogger need to consider when marketing in a blog:

• Marketing shall clearly indicate its commercial purpose and the party on whose behalf the marketing is carried out. 

• A trader who seeks to advertise a product through either a professional or amateur blog is obligated to obey all legal regulations in his or her activities.In practice this means that a company has met its obligations with respect to the recognisability of the advertising when it has instructed a blogger to act in such a way that no hidden advertising is practiced. 

• A company that sends products to bloggers, hoping that positive reviews might be written about them, should instruct the blogger to act in such a way that cooperation or receiving gratuitous benefits should be disclosed openly in connection with the posting.

• Advertising must be recognisable as advertising at first glance without closer examination. Vague expressions, such as "some of the products have been received via the blog", or "product x dropped through my mailbox" shouldn't be used because the reader can't know on the basis of that information if it involves advertising or not.

• When writing about a product, a reference to the company that markets it must be made each time that the product is mentioned, or if it's otherwise significantly connected to the post. Having mentioned it in a previous post is not sufficient.

Pinpuff.com's blogger Anja Logožar have also listed in her blog post three key legal issues online marketers need to know about. Very briefly they are:

1. Data collection and privacy. Make sure your customers know that you will be collecting data from them. Prompt them to comply to your data collection policy, and once you collect the data, keep it safe on a reputable storage provider. Also, make sure to protect yourself from liability in case of data loss or a security breach.
2. Intellectual property. Make sure to protect your services and products and have trademarks and copyright, but do not infringe the intellectual property of others. The most common way many marketers infringe on intellectual property is by using images that are protected. In order to avoid this use stock photos or free images
3. Advertising. The regulations you should follow are: do not use any misleading marketing messages,do not use deceptive advertising. speak truthfully about the product and do not leave out relevant information about the product, abide by the advertising standards: you should compare products fairly and transparently.

Alright, this was all about my law week's thoughts. Next week I'm gonna pop to the e-commerce fair in Helsinki and I really hope that after all the inspiring lectures and meetings there I have learnt a lot and have some fresh thoughts to share with you too! 😊

Behind the scenes of video advertising and being brave

Market visually

Pekka Tuominen, the CEO of Digi People Studio, was lecturing us about video advertising. Digi People Studio is located in Lauttasaari, Helsinki and it currently employs eleven people. The company produces different kind of videos, 2D and 3D animations and info graphics. Pekka talked about compressing content and how to visualize it. We got an assignment about writing a synopsis, which is a usual tool for Digi People Studio to do their job. We were also suggested to plan or create a mood board, that Digi People Studio uses for selling their productions.

Compress & visualize

Tuominen emphasized that because people in our hectic world are affected by thousands of advertising messages every day, it's especially important in their job to compress the content.

Another good reason to use more pictures and videos is the fact, that human brain can manipulate or manage a picture about 60 000 times faster than pure text. On the right side of the brain there are all visual things like art and music. On the left side there are all the facts that we're managing in our brain, numbers and language for example. Usually companies try to explain things by facts but actually the decisions are made on the right side of the brain, with emotions, so if you want to make an impact you need to go from the right side to the left side. A blogger Kayla Darling has also written a very interesting post about "left-brained vs. "right-brained" marketing. She tells her view about that there are either left-brained people with logical personality, or right-brained people with creative personalities.

Source: Pinterest

Animation & Info graphics

According to Tuominen his company's goal in producing animations is to keep the animation on high and emotional level. Animation consists of different kind of graphics but for telling the facts the company is used to use also info graphics. Info graphic is the visualization of information so that information is easier and faster to embrace than for example in text format. Whether it's info graphics or videos or films, it always has to start with a good story.

Why, how, what

Tuominen showed us a business guru Simon Sinek's very informative video about "Why?". Sinek stressed in his speech for several times that people don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it. Every single organizations know what they do 100 %. Some know how they do it, but very few people in organizations actually know why they're doing what they're doing. By "Why?" Sinek means what's your purpose, your cause, and what you believe in. Why does your organization exist? The goal is not to do business with everybody, but with people that believe in what you believe. And, therefore goal is neither to just hire people, the goal is to hire people that believe what you believe.

Pre-Production process

When a company like Digi People Studio produces videos or info graphics, there are a lot of things to do before the actual production.

First thing to do is to book a meeting to a client. It takes about 20 phone calls even when you reach the right person and then about 2-4 people allows you to meet them.

Then get a brief in which you need to somehow convince the customer that they need this film or this info graphic tool.

Then you need to produce something to convince the client that your company is the right choice. Producing starts with writing a synopsis, probably creating a mood board. Synapsis is a short story about the film or animation or info graphics. It's mainly plain text and it has to visualize your story when he or she is reading it without you being present. Mood board is mainly only pictures to show the feelings about the possible video. It shows the style, the mood and the atmosphere.

After that comes booking another meeting for presentation with a quote, after which you hopefully get the confirmation and the actual production can start.

Train to be brave

 

Power hour motivates to act

Later this week we got another guest lecturer Ronja Salmi, who is a writer, a host and an entrepreneur. She was telling about courage and being brave. Ronja wanted to remind that being brave is a skill that you can learn like language or another skill. It's not a trait that some of use were born with. She also told that courage is actually something that tells that you are really afraid. Courageous people do feel fear, but they are able to manage and overcome their fear so that it doesn't stop them making action.

Ronja had a good point in there that we really don't need to be brave all the time of our days. You can choose the part that you are brave and the parts that you are going to be afraid and not to do it. Ronja shared with us a very useful tool for being brave. She called it as "a power hour". It means that you choose an hour, five or thirteen minutes a day, any time you need to be brave in your day. On your power hour you can transfer into a brave role, and leave the afraid person behind you for a while. Transferring between different roles of yourself is a skill that is also definitely worth of practicing.

Source: Pinterest

Keep on doing guys!

About practicing networking Ronja told that she always decides to be brave for 15 minutes and get to know with at least with one person in a party, for example. Ronja also told about her great attitude for new experiences. So that she could learn as much as she can, she often says yes to things that she actually has never done before or doesn't have idea about how to do them. With that attitude you get a lot more opportunities and doors open.

A thing to remember is that you can't gain more if you don't do more. If you stay in your comfort zone you are not going around or expand your zone in any way. But in case that you want to end up somewhere new, you always have to show people something more that you are asked to. So there is no point in waiting that you would become a master of something before you actually do it. You have to be able to present stuff to other people that are not finished and not perfect. Because there will be no moment that you are fully "ready" to do something. Nobody is a master when they start, so you have to get used to the idea that you can be bad in things when you start, and it's a part of the process. Being the best is not important, even doing it is really enough!

Huffington post has written a good article about acknowledging and managing your fears. Here in a compressed form the article's six tried-and-true ways to loosen the grip of fear on life - and become more courageous than you ever imagined:

Be vulnerable.

Acknowledge your fears.

Expose yourself to what you fear.

Think positive! ☀

Manage stress.

Practice courageous acts.

Personal branding and presentation skills

Digital Hello again!

This week started with Anna's lecture about personal branding and Facebook advertising. We have had already one lecture about personal branding on this course a couple of weeks ago by Petteri Avilia, but  the topic is still pretty interesting and I see that there's always something new to learn and realize in any case!

Personal brand is..

• A combination of your image and reputation
• How you conduct yourself daily forms the foundation for your brand
• What words, concepts and ideas do people associate with your name and image. Does it make a clear understanding of what you do and what value it brings?

It is therefore very important to remember that wherever you go, what you say or do, it will all effect to your personal brand. Today, it's especially important to take care of your brand in social media channels and in the internet in general. Your future boss might well check your Facebook profile, even google you. So, make sure that you are the first search result! If you want to be particularly available for employers, you should have a profile on LinkedIn and keep it up to date as much as possible. 

My personal brand, according to my classmates. Got to be proud! 😍

Also in social media you have to stand out from the crowd and make your unique promise of value. Your brand is a promise that you have to fulfill to clarify what makes you special. It tells who you are, what you do, and how you do it. And most importantly, what makes you better than others. Create your own unique selling proposition. Business site Balance have listed some great tips for creating a unique selling proposition.

After the lecture we had a work shop with our team. Our task was to figure out what are our client's, SSM's brand and roles in social media. Social media brand is kind of important for the companies too. Think about what is its role, motivation of the role (what are the advantages), what are the support roles, what are the contents of the natural role and support roles, what social media channels do you use and what kind of marketing campaigns you should make.

Presentation skills

On Thursday we had a lecture about presentation skills from Viliina Kettunen. Viliina is one of our digicoaches and herself a great example of a good performer. She is so lively and really captures and holds peoples attention. 

Viliina's goldworth tips for performing 

• Pay attention to: gaze, shoulders, hands, shifting weight, stepping
• Be aware of the ticks and how to control them
• Take into account what is your audience like and what kind of people does it consist of.
• Talk TO them, not AT, them. And be active.
• They are humans -just like you
• To improve - acknowledge your faults
• Practice beforehand by talking to your mirror or taking advantage of your family or friends.
• Put yourself out of the comfort zone and practice, practice, practice.

Presentation skills are really important especially in the business field and big part of the personal brand as well. Performing is challenging and you can always make progress in it. I think the most important thing to remember when performing is to have a good contact with the audience and just to have fun! When you have fun, the audience have fun, and they are willing to hear all about what you're telling to them.

Looking forward to next week's challenges! Stay tuned ✌

Human centric designing and social media

Hello dear readers!

Let's start it honestly, my head's empty and I don't know what to write! I have pages of notes that I've done during my school days.. but don't know what to say. Maybe I start telling about my weekend instead. Well Friday was kind of basic, I had Russian lessons in Leppävaara and after that I somehow ended up to a shopping marathon in Sello. Not so that the lessons would make me feel so desperate that I fall for shopping. No, I really like Russian lessons, our teacher is so inspiring and supportive, and students as well are so motivated to learn the new language. Hope that I will learn a lot of it during the semester. I meet so many Russian people in my work every week, that it seems kind of important to be able to speak even something in their language.

On Saturday I had a work shift, after which we headed to Itis Party with a couple of my co-workers. Itis Party is organized only for Itis shopping center's employees and there is served a lot of good food and drink. This year we were entertained by rap artists Karri Koira and Seksikäs-Suklaa. I knew in advance that Karri Koira would be there, but Seksikäs-Suklaa with him was a happy surprise! I like them guys. Afterparty was in Maxine, but afterall I didn't go there. Free drink tickets made their duty. All in all very successful night. It's always as much fun to party with co-workers, and it was also so nice to get to know some employees from other stores of the mall.

Social media marketing

On Monday Anna held us a lecture about social media marketing. I found it kind of interesting, and I especially liked the example emotional advertising videos that we watched. In fact, most of advertising campaings are made to be emotinal. And a simple reason to it is that 31 % people's purchasing decisions are based on emotion. 26% are based as much on emotion as on logic. Only 16% percent of purchasing decisions are made completely for rational reasons. This supports well also what author & marketing guru Seth Godin have said: "People do not buy goods and services. They buy relations, stories and magic.

Maybe this is the thing that makes marketing so interesting. You every time have to get inside the consumers' heads and know what they feel. If you don't know what are your target group's values and what they feel and think about the world, marketing is waste of time. You need to convince them why will your product or service make exactly them happy, smart, good looking, desirable or whatever your target group wants to be. In general, however, people are seeking a better life. Better relations and easy solutions for their problems. They also want  that purchasing provides them good experiences. That's why fluent communication with the customers in every step is the key to success. You have to stand out from from your competitors by being the easiest, most effective and most available option. To win consumer's on your side, your company's brand and values also have to match your target group's values. 

Thanks to social media, today's communication with the customers is much easier than before. It have enabled InBound marketing, in which the communiaction is interactive and two-way. Using InBound marketing marketers often seek to entertain or educate, which definitely provides added value for the consumers. This kind of marketing is much more productive than "old styled" OutBound marketing. In OutBound marketing communication is one-way, pushes products or services on customers and provides just a little added value.

 Service designer Anu K. Nousiainen from Futures Fit and senior lecturer Anna Ikonen from Laurea UAS.

Human centric designing and value creation

After Anna's lecture we got a guest speaker, future and value designer Anu K. Nousiainen from Futures Fit. Anu wanted to emphasize that it's a relief and a challenge that services are never ready. That we always have to be thinking what benefit does the company provide to the customer. What is the story behind it? What thoughts does it provoke? Is it easy to use, or does it make artistic or delightful feel? What is the real practical value that your service provides? What is the company's strong vision?

Anu mentioned about being omnipresence in digital and physical world. Being omnipresence means also that a person has two different behaviors of consuming. That's why the better you know the person, the better. To get to know a person, use proper tools of design like interviews, researches and personal descriptions. To understand consumers better, stand in the position of a critic and a dreamer and think "What do I hate, what do I love? What could be better or easier?"

Empathy map helps to see your service through  the customers' eyes, With the map you'll find out what do they say and do, what do they see, think and feel, what do they hear? And ask often; why? According to Futures Fit, today organizations invite people into their production processes while they should try to find their role in people’s value creation processes – every day. Value network map is a good tool in this. There you at first ask "Where, by whom and how meaningful value is created and co-created?" and secondly "What is our organisation's role in the big picture? What opportunities do we have?"

Anu told that in human centric design personas are keys to meaningful and valuable solution design. Keys to a successful human centric design are briefly to:

1. Understand people's every day life and value creation.
2. Identify value networks around personas.
3. Visualize service experience in the contexts of everyday life.

Work progressing

Of Thursday's guest speaker's lecture I didn't get so much. But what I remember from it is that we should spend more time on LinkedIn than Facebook. In case of job searching, I really don't question it.

After the lecture our team showed to Anna and our digi coaches what have we done. We had therefore made SSM's company analysis almost ready, excepting trends and key factors. Next we'll go on to the customer survey/analysis and creating specific buyer personas. This far I'm very proud for the good teamwork, so looking forward to the upcoming tasks!

Here some motivational music for the new week!➷

Project kickoff and other meetings

Behind me there is undeniably one of my busiest but also the most fun weeks for a while. I hadn't a single day off this week, but I am nevertheless glad that I got to meet all the new great people and spend time with my dear friends. This week has included studying, work, career planning, getting to know new exchange-students, as well as partying until the wee hours at the Freshmen party. I am sure that especially about hectic weeks such as this, it is certainly fun to read afterwards.

Brief for the main project of the spring

On Monday, we had guest lecturer Pasi Latva who is sales and marketing manager in SSM, Suomen Suoramainonta. He presented us the company and its business operations, and as a most important thing; our main project that our team will be working on this spring. Our first task in this project is to make a company analysis, in other words make clear what services the company provides and who the customers are, and making a research of the target group and analysing the results. 

SSM is Finland's largest private direct mail company, whose distribution network reaches 2.1 million households at the same time twice a week. The company works closely with a huge number of city newspapers and national and local direct advertisers.

Reasons why direct mail is an effective marketing tool

• People remember direct mail better and for longer than traditional paper ads. Therefore, unaddressed direct mail is an effective media channel that has managed to maintain and increase its significance, in an increasingly digital world. Direct mail help consumers gain information about offers in shops and online.

• Targeting makes it possible to reach a certain target group or all households in a district. The smallest distribution area is a district and a district is a couple of blocks. When combining your ad with a competition, which requires a coupon to be returned, you are able to collect names and addresses, whilst gaining a better understanding of how your campaign is affecting people.

• About 85% of all households accept unaddressed direct mail. This means that a large number of people will receive and read your advert.

• When you print your advert, you have multiple choices of formats to select. Your product can be a tiny flyer or a thick catalogue; it can really be any size and format you want.  With the use of coupons, QR Codes, etc. you get your customers actively involved.

        Source: Suomen Suoramainonta

Check also the tips that Summer Gould, president of direct marketing company Eye/Comm, have listed in her Forbes article to help increase interest in direct marketing in 2017.

Creating a personal brand

On Thursday morning we focused on a completely different topic, when a company shareholder and a show dancer Petteri Avilia told us about personal branding. He told us a very interesting way the different stages of his life; as an entrepreneur starting from 2004, being jailed for serious drug offenses in 2010, and the present life and his new attitude to life.

Petteri wanted to stress the importance of personal brand and networking. He reminded that being successful always means that you're good to be around, because no matter how rich or smart you are, alone you won't succeed. By being authentic and honest people will probably forgive you more easily, as well in relationships as in the business world. Petteri highlighted that honesty is especially important in digital marketing, because in social media things blow easily out of proportion, and once you screw up your reputation in the social media, it's done and will be remembered for ages. 

Social media is a remarkable thing also when building your own personal brand. You have to keep in mind, what do you want them to know about you, what do you want them to do, and what do you want them to feel about you. 

According to Petteri there are 3 important points to remember when creating a personal brand:

1. Creativity
2. Reliability
3. Reputation

I certainly agree with Petteri Avilia that the key to happiness is to be and stay real, and of course positive. And  what comes to networking, I have to add that blending in is not an option, standing out is a key!

Case EsPa

After Petteri's lecture we got to think about in teams how to develop EsPa's (Etelä-Espoon Pallo) digital marketing so that it would especially increase the sales of supporter cards. Working as a team was once again very rewarding and we came up with many ideas together. I would say that the most important areas of development are updating the website, media manager, new slogan and commercial or high light videos in social media.

Di6iBrainiacs working on it 😃

Making-of: Introduction video

Hi Everyone!

On Monday this week our seven-person team got its first actual task, which was making a video. In the video we had to introduce all the team members, and ideally use our imagination and be creative.

At the beginning of the day Laurea's student Viveka Kulmala was giving great tips for filming and editing video. I have almost never filmed, let alone edited video, so the tips really came for need.

1. Do not change the filming direction
Film from either the horizontal or vertical direction, not both, because that kind of video is cumbersome and annoying to watch.

2. Good video equipment
If you don't own a camera for filming videos, use a mobile phone with a high quality camera.

3. Lighting and sound
Pay attention to good lighting and audibility. They will significantly increase the quality of the video. The video is more pleasant to watch, when people are visible and you can hear their speech.

4. Learn how to use editing softwares

• iMovie for Apple devices. Free to use.
• Windows Movie Maker. One of the simplest and easiest tools to edit videos. Free as well.
• Adobe Premiere Pro. Paid.
• Final Cut Pro X. Paid.

5. Royalty free music

• Free Music Archive
• Youtube Audiolibrary
• PCMag UK

We had time for making the video until Thursday morning, so we started to get busy right away. Our team had from the beginning good visions of video content, especially Joni was really creative in the brainstorm. We got a large part of filming done as soon as on Monday. The scenes have been filmed in different parts of the Otaniemi campus, in a grocery, in a bar and some at the team members' home. The next day, when the boys started editing, it became clear that some of the content of the video was gone, so Iiris and I we had to film our introduction parts again by ourselves.

However, I'm really happy with the end result, and through the small adversities we always just learn something new! I'm also really satisfied with the logo that boys developed for us. The logo appears at the beginning of the video. Just perfect! For timetabling reasons, only a part of our team members was involved in video editing. Next time we'll share our tasks in a slightly different way again, so that everyone can learn the secrets of editing in practice. So, a big thank to our team's menfolk for your great editing work!

Enjoy watching:

On Thursday, our video was presented to the whole class, and we were able to take a look at the other teams' outputs. It was so rewarding to see how different videos were created in different teams. So great boldness and creative thinking in all the teams. It was also nice to get to know a little more of the people, which I haven't yet had time to get to know so well.

Also on Thursday, we got two guest speakers from two different companies. The first speaker was from a company called Nielsen, which studies consumer behavior in over a hundred countries around the world. By studying the needs of customers and the factors influencing their purchasing decisions, Nielsen is able to help its corporate customers to increase sales. We learned, among other things, why after the entrance of department stores there is always some free space before any products set up, and how much the average consumer spends time to select one product in the grocery. The lecture was overall very interesting and gripping.

Later introduced a representative of AFS, the American Field Service. AFS Finland is politically, economically and religiously independent, volunteer-based international education organization that engages youth exchanges. I think that the activities of such organizations are very respectable and I appreciate the work being done on behalf of a more open-minded world and to bring cultures closer together. It was great that there was also a Laurea student telling about her experiences as an intern at AFS.

I think the week was just a good balance between practical and theoretical. More of these, please!

New year, new challenges

Hello dear readers of my  blog!

My name is Viivi and I'm 23-year old business student from Laurea University of Applied Sciences. Along with my studies I work in a clothes shop and dream of an internship among marketing and sales. In particular, sales have always interested me very much, and I believe that my work will always be among sales one way or another. At least I hope so.
In this blog I will update mainly things that I learn on digital marketing course , as well as my own thoughts on digital marketing and its development.

For me this year has begun very busy and rushing in, and I knew in advance that it would give me a lot of new experiences and things I've never before been up to. For example as a tutor student, I have got an opportunity to meet and get to know a huge number of new people from both Finland and abroad all over the world. Starting to blog  is also something completely new for me. I have read a lot of different kind of lifestyle and fashion blogs during the youth of my life, but never written any blog myself. Sometimes I've thought about it a little fleeting moment, and envisioned its appearance, themes and pictures of my posts. Due to time constraints, however, I have always buried my dream somewhere far into the future.

But then, this week, my teacher Anna Ikonen told us that we all need to set up a blog. I was excited and terrified at the same time. Terrified, because the time is still my biggest problem of all, and really excited because now someone has given me a permission to do what I have dreamed of for so long: spend time just to write up my thoughts and feelings. Even though the topic of the blog is quite limited this time, I think I will learn and benefit from this so much. During the course we work in groups with both exchange students and Finnish students. Including me there are six Finnish second year students and one exchange student from Netherlands in my group. This week was just to orientation and get to know each others and our three wonderful digital coaches.

Yet I am not entirely sure what will happen and what we're actually going to do, but I'm really looking forward to it. Maybe the next week will show us. In terms of learning my goals are high and I do my best to keep you readers up to date of all the interesting aspects and happenings during the course.

You'll hear from me within a week again!