Reflection Artefact
"Practice makes perfect"
The ICP course has provided me with many new lessons, experiences, and opportunities throughout the last 12 weeks. As a Professional Communication student, I have been trained to work professionally and on time. Furthermore, the most essential and practical thing I took away from this session was how to implement the client's brief.
It is said that effective communication is the key to project success. A solid, lasting, and healthy relationship requires effective communication. Ineffective communications cause one-third of project failures and negatively influence project success in more than half of the cases. Furthermore, 28% of employees claimed poor communication was the key reason for a project's late delivery (Bit.Ai 2020). Plus, understanding the relationship among project members and the factors that drive brief output will make brief operations more efficient and lead to higher customer satisfaction and project performance.
I am blessed to work with a group of supportive and innovative people. Although there were times when we could not agree on creative concepts, we tried our hardest to contribute to a typical personal view to deploying the project with all of the criteria that the client wanted based on the guidance and feedback from the WIP meetings of clients and teachers.
The communication strategy lesson is the most beneficial for me in this course since I am following my ambition of becoming a media planner and need to develop a practical and accessible approach for the target audience (Hayden 2016). A communications plan is a way to reach out to your target group. It specifies 4 WH questions - who, why, when, and in what form will you engage with them, and how the messages are delivered. Having all of those questions answered will keep everyone on track and work efficiently. A strong communication plan must determine the best medium for the company's outreach efforts, including what is required to reach out via communication channels such as social media, conferences, email marketing, blog posts, and video content. In this industry, the more detailed your message (and pictures) are, even if they appear repeated, the greater your chances of getting people to engage and take action and achieve a better result (Tariq 2021).
Communications Planners work with the Communications Manager to design marketing materials and events to strengthen their organization's internal communication strategy and external reputation with different audiences. A Communications Planner who primarily works with their company's clients may interact with external staff to ensure that they communicate successfully with the public and preserve their desired brand image (Best Marketing n.d). Media planners are in charge of various activities, from collecting the information of the customers to interpreting advertising data to support companies enhance their marketing initiatives (Deahl 2019).
To compare what we have done with theory, I believe that additional experience is required to provide a firm foundation for a future career. Our team discovered that understanding the brief is the most critical aspect of implementing a project. The brand issues we presented were all based on assumptions with no supporting data. Alternatively, our group wanted to hold an offline competition. However, we had not located any information regarding the target audience on offline activity because we are just interested in social media conduct. It was one of the most basic errors we were unaware of until the lecturer pointed it out.
As a media planner, I have worked closely with Hanh Nguyen (a strategic planner) and the rest of the team to study the tastes of the target audience in order to design an effective media plan that matches the client's budget.
With the teacher's and client's remarks and recommendations, I discovered that the group and I still have many flaws that need to be addressed. Our team concentrated on creating visuals rather than analyzing the client's brief. As a result, the primary message we wished to deliver to the target audience was distorted. At first, the creative concept enables the target audience to appreciate every challenge. However, our team concentrated on producing a campaign rather than applying that idea. Therefore, if it is redone, I will create a new picture that's simpler to view and comprehend.
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Figure 1: New creative concept “Your Innovation Matters"
Figure 2: The ideas for the new concept
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I am also in charge of designing the website and slides for the assignments. Although I am not a technology expert and have poor aesthetic eyes, I tried my best to complete the task even when I was perplexed when I received the work. It is a fact that there was a person in the group who created an excellent slide but refused to take the task from the start, so it took me a long time to adorn the slide, and she altered the template of the entire slide at the end - which made me very upset. Nevertheless, it also motivated me to learn more about designing and updating new templates in the following courses and serve my future job.
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Figure 3: Slide and Website making
To sum up, "practice makes perfect," as the saying goes. Since this is my first project, I am still bewildered and have made many mistakes. Getting to know how the industry operates and having an opportunity to work with very dynamic, enthusiastic, and creative teammates through this course make me very impressed and excited. In the future, I will try to participate in event organizing programs to hone those skills to become an expert in media planning, as I dream every day.
