From Production to Promotion – Thoughts on Lecture and Personal Musings

Another module is over in two weeks, and the first year of the MA would be complete. Given what is going on in the world at the time (Malta is experiencing the second wave of the pandemic) it is hard to say whether time is going by fast or slowly. The course is definitely keeping me busy though. But let’s look at what this week has to over.

Yesterday I went through the module resource content for the upcoming week, where we are to look at product and marketing aspects of any potential product or services. The lecture was hosted by Dan Parry from Metier Digital. In the lecture he covered the above aspects when it comes to publishing or launching a product. The lecture revolved around the importance of prioritising the potential customer as well as understand their needs. In addition, he also points out that it is good to understand the customers’ psychological behaviours. In my work, since we deal with a lot of online advertising, we use tools such as Hotjar (which is also mentioned by Parry in the lecture) to analyse the users’ behaviour on our product sites. Also, A/B testing is also a very good way to see what works best for any particular function within the site.

Another interesting point that Parry brought up in the lecture was the importance of data. In recent years, data collection had become somewhat of a trend. Terms like ‘big data’ and ‘analytics’ were becoming commonplace even in marketing and advertising plans. Through data, one can unearth a lot of valuable information. For one thing, one can identify what the target market really needs, or what are they seeking. Also, through data, one can base hypothesis as part of the process in building a business model and financial projections. Through data you can determine how likely your target market will use your product or service.

When it comes to data collection, it is important to see what sort of information you would like to collect. Whether it is qualitative or quantitative. Personally, I like a mixture of both. I usually start with the quantitative, as it gives a clear picture of were the research path is heading. Following that, I normally base any qualitative research depending on the initial quantitative data. For instance, let’s say there is a survey about a person’s favourite pass times, and turns out that most people like reading and knitting, it is useless to probe further to ask them whether they would choose to include physical activity in their free time. If used correctly, both methods can yield good and reliable results. I find that surveys are a quick way to gather up some data too and a tip that I keep in mind is that I avoid questions were respondents need to write a short paragraph and open-ended questions. Reason being that you want to make it as easy as possible for whoever is answering the survey, and also more my own sake as  multiple choice questions are easier to collate and add up total answers as opposed to lengthy paragraph were you need to decide for yourself who has similar and different answers respectively.

It was a very interesting and informative lecture indeed. Definitely lots of valid points. In addition, I also went through the book shared in our resources list named Brand Media Strategy by Anthony Young. I did not have time to go through the whole book, but I would a very interesting chapter discussing the impact and uses of different media channels on the consumer. Amongst other things, the author talks about how social media changed the whole advertising game by taking the concept of ‘word of mouth to the next level’. This is because of the way people use it to interact makes the ‘word’ travel a lot faster, plus it has a sense of permanence.

The most interesting part in this chapter was the part about the shift between the communication planning and the media planning strategies. I would need to go through this chapter again this week, because there is a lot of interesting information. However, from what I have read so far, I know that media planning is focused on the ‘reach-out’ concept: that of reaching out the right customers at the right place at the right time, whereas communication planning is influencing people. It allows a more strategic way of determining key media choices and connection strategies. In short, it starts with the consumer’s perspective rather than directing the outcome at the consumer.

Looks like an intense yet interesting week ahead. So far it was a very interesting module. Demanding in terms of reading and processing theory, yet I gave me a lot of insight on how the creative industry is progressing. In addition, it has made me think on what I really want to achieve with my skills and experience, after completing this course and beyond. Who knows, maybe I might start my own business after all…