The Final Roundup – Prototyping, Promotion and Marketing
It’s that time of the module again – the last sprint and Module 3 will be done and dusted. For this last week we are looking at prototyping of a product or service, and ways of promoting it. I have some ideas and some form of framework for it, but I need to formulate it better.
This week’s lecture, hosted by one of the tutors – Alec Dudson – was a series of case studies of different forms of promotional projects. This included portfolio, publications as well as PR agencies. In addition, the lecture also included some tips and tricks that can benefit designers starting out in the business and would like to publish some work or promote their own work. The promotional projects were interesting in their own right. I especially liked the ‘Instanovels’ projects by the New York Public Library.
It is a very innovative way of putting social media to good use. Essentially the project consisted of publishing classic stories on the ‘insta tory’ of the library. One can still access them today from the highlights reel on the New York Public Library Instagram page. I think that it is a good initiative to encourage teens and young adults to read. As we are always heading towards an era were we are constantly looking at screens, it is a great way to create a digital space where there is good-quality and well curated content.
Another interesting project was the FIN digital zine by DR:ME. (Read more about it here). The idea in itself was not exactly revolutionary, as they simply uploaded their work that was discarded or rejected by clients in a digital publication for the world to see. However, the catch was that they made this work downloadable for a limited time. This built a hype and demand for the work to be seen and used. In addition, this gave the ‘rejected work’ a second chance, and for the creators, they saw it coming to life again.
In all the examples presented in the lecture, the three elements of success where the following:
- Idea – Of course it is important to find a niche or a gap in the market.
- Documentation – In the creative industry, the process is as important as the final product. In addition, the way you present the documentation is key. Meaning that it is important to document the process with high quality visuals and well-written, high quality content.
- Strategy – Lastly, a good promotional strategy is very important. Just like the content or service provided, promoting it is important to get your target audience to interact and respond to the product.
The second part of the lecture consisted of tips and tricks on how to benefit from free tools and social media platforms to jumpstart your product promotion. As expected, Instagram was mentioned, as it is the go-to social media platform for promoting products and services, including the creative industry. Although the reason for being so is unclear, one can say that Instagram offers a good number of options on how one can publish content as well as push them to gain more popularity. The most popular tools are the insta-stories and the hashtags. Hashtag are a very good way of getting your content to feature on many people’s news feed. In addition, following up on some popular Instagram feeds helps in getting followed back, hance boosting your page as well as content.
Apart from social media platforms, finding out some good art and design journalists can also work in your favour. It could be something as simple as following their work, and writing to them that you like their work, and maybe introduce your work in the process. Although the industry is ever-increasingly competitive, nowadays there are a lot of cost-effective ways of exposing your work to the world. If the tools are used in a smart way, it would definitely yield some good results.
In the upcoming posts, I will be talking more about my project and marketing framework. I have some writing in place, although I would definitely like to see if I can find a better name for the project and subsequently the publication. Also, as part of the prototype, I was thinking of presenting everything in a ‘pitch book’ format of sorts. Meaning, that the cover would be along the lines of the final product, considering also a couple of spreads with some content (that is subject to change of course should I choose to take this further), and the ‘plan-of-action’ so to speak, will also be presented in a similar format. I just need to get my jitters out of the way. Good thing I took a whole week off from work to focus more on this…
