Final Evaluation

The Client And The Project

The Bath Chronicle first started it's publication in 1760 as a printed newspaper but has now made it's way online as a website as well as accounts on social media. Although the Bath Chronicle are now targeting an online audience, they're younger demographic audience is still yet to be directly targeted. 

My task was to create a product for Bath News&Media that will encourage people between the ages of 14-25 to have more interest and engagement with the Bath Chronicle in whatever way I felt that it would work best. 

After researching the target demographic, I decided to focus on a more condensed demographic between the ages 14-18 as I can relate well to this age range therefore meaning my product would be as accurate as it can possibly be, making news become more appealing to a younger audience.

I decided to take the route of social media, developing the Chronicle's YouTube, Facebook and Twitter as well as setting up an Instagram account that would encourage a whole new community of young photographers.

Strengths And Weaknesses

Strengths 

• The simple, minimalistic Instagram competition poster with a basic colour scheme and neat layout looks professional and expensive.
• Social media is free to access meaning young teenagers with no money don't have to payout any unnecessary outgoing costs.
• Teenagers already access social media heavily so they won't have to start learning or downloading new software that they aren't sure they will enjoy or not.
• Short, basic and relevant content on the YouTube channel is engaging and means that teenagers don't have to think in an in depth way about it or spend a lot of their time consuming the information.

Weaknesses

• Someone, or more than one person may have to be assigned the job or running all of the Bath Chronicle's social media accounts which may not be affordable for Bath News and Media.
• All of the social media accounts will have to be clearly branded as part of the Bath Chronicle, if the content is mainly aimed at the interested of teenagers then the social media platforms may start to veer away from a way of presenting news.
• If the online content isn't consistent then teenagers won't stay engaged or have reason to keep coming back, this links back to having someone that can focus all of their time on keeping the Bath Chronicle's social media up to date and whether this would be financially possible.
• As well as posts being consistent, the content ideas will also have to be consistent, the social media accounts, especially YouTube could potentially start off strong whilst ideas are fresh but then become boring when all of the best content ideas are used.

Theme And Influences

I wanted the theme for of my product to be arty and attractive- to show that the target demographic had really been researched rather than just leaving the task up to someone who isn't well informed about what the demographic really want or need as that way the style and content wouldn't have the right visual or contextual appeal.

My mood board is a collection of images from brands that successfully promote themselves on Instagram for example Starbucks, Oreo and Nike. As well as images I found out how they manage to succeed on Instagram, this is where I found the idea for my Instagram competition as I was influenced by Starbucks White Cup competition.

I took inspiration for the Bath Chronicle's YouTube content from YouTubers who're currently very popular with teenagers like Zoella, Alfie Deyes and Makeup by Mandy. All of their content is specifically directed at people between the ages of 14-18 although they also have a wider audience who show interest in their videos.

I thought that by making the Bath Chronicle's YouTube content similar to that of popular YouTuber then they have a good chance of gaining the interest of the younger demographic as well as maintaining the attention of their current audience.

Experimentation

I experimented with every part of my product. The poster was developed over a series of hours where I looked for style ideas I liked from posters that already exist and then altering my own poster design by created thumbnail layouts and adjusting colours and images until I developed a poster that my peers and I were happy with.

My 'What are students wearing this week?' video was inspired by Outfit of the Week videos on YouTube that gain millions of hits. I collected a good amount of footage to work with, all shot in different styles and angles so that when it came to editing I could see what I liked the best.

Firstly I edited the video so that each shot was detailed and the whole product wasn't extremely fast pace and I collected some feedback. It was suggested from that feedback that I could reedit the video and make it more fast pace with jump cuts so that the video would be even shorter and possibly even more engaging for teenagers to view. After creating my two final edits I did some more peer reviewing for comparison.

Comparison 

Above is the poster I took design inspiration from and below that is my final poster design. One of the main aspects I really liked about the poster was the geometric border which helps the poster to remain minimalistic but shows that you have thought about the design and spent time on the design rather than the blank spaces appearing unthought about.

The idea of having my text centralised on the poster also came from the poster above as when I looked at the poster my eye was automatically drawn to the centre of the page, most people are this way inclined and are unlikely to firstly focus anywhere else first. 

My font is far more simple than the inspiration poster as I have included more text. If I was to write a fairly large chunk of text in a serif, arty font, the poster would look very noisy and unprofessional. That however doesn't mean that the serif font doesn't work for the other poster, it works for that poster because the text is very minimal. 

I wanted to keep the text on the poster as minimal as possible but still including all of the necessary information, the other poster uses circles that follow it's colour scheme to include any extra information but I didn't want to do this on poster as I planned to include images. To much art dotted around would add to the noise on the poster that I didn't want to create. 

Development

• Reflecting on my development so that if I alter any ideas and could look back upon how I reached those decisions.
• Having an insight into other people's ideas and thoughts helped me to develop my ideas further as their ideas helped to provoke thoughts that I hadn't previously considered. 
• Feedback about the writing on my Instagram ad helped me to experiment with different colours to make the product more legible, resulting in a more effective product.
• Being set the task by Steve (teacher) to step away from the computer and use the physical tools that are all around us.
• Experimenting with the jump cut editing technique after feed back, that I hadn't previously considered using.
• Having the freedom to present my research in the way I prefer the most rather than following a strict brief, it made my work more expressive and creative.
• The initial pitch presentation to tutors was key for my development for creating a better pitch for the Chronicle.

Reviewing Proposal

In my proposal I kept my idea open as I knew that if I stuck to one fixed idea for one big product then I will struggle to make it exactly how I invisioned. Deciding to improve the Bath Chronicle's social media in general, focusing on Instagram and YouTube in particular, meant that I could decide exactly what I was going to create after plenty of research. 

In my pitch proposal, I said that I was simply just going to develop an Instagram account for the Chronicle, but after feedback on this idea it was suggested that I make some sort of advertisement for the account whether it be online, print or video form. I expanded the idea by designing an Instagram competition for which I made a poster for, I then adapted this adverisement poster to fit the rest of the Chronicle's social media sites.

I am happy with the progress I made with developing the YouTube channel, by creating two edited versions of a 'What are students wearing this week?' video. As well as the video I have made blog posts discussing what my aim for the YouTube channel is and how it could work, so there is an action plan.

I am happy that I have completed everything that I set out to do as well as more.

Adaptation

If I was to adapt anything about my product I would have another go at shooting my fashion YouTube video. I would spend more time on the camera settings to make sure the lighting and exposure look much better quality. Also I would spend more time on each shot, making sure it's set up exactly how I invision it and take more shots so that I have more to work with.

After reshooting the video I would spend longer editing and putting it together, whilst trying to specifically following my storyboard. I created a storyboard for my first video although I didn't actually follow it as I prefer to improvise. 

Have I answered the brief?

'Your job as a Tempa Media Producer is to devise contextual research, propose, plan, produce and pitch a media product to attract young people to the paper and BNM’s other interests around the city.'

I feel that my work is appropriate for the client and I have met the brief. I did indepth research and recorded everything I found out meaning that I had a very good insight into what the client and the target demographic would be interesting.

Using the pathway of social media was a good choice for me as I can garuantee that the target demographic use it heavily and there would be no problem in engaging them to use it more and expand their use of it.

With a garuantee of engaging the younger demographic, this means that the brief for the client will also be met as their audience will expand and their interest around the city will increase.

Pitch Reflection

Before the pitch I felt nervous, I produced some flash cards rather than a long intense script as I felt it would work best for me to improvise from my main points rather than stressing about following a script word for word. I was worried that I would struggle to improvise and would do a lot of 'ummming'. 

Thankfully, the pitch went better than I expected! I didn't even have to rely on my promo cards, I briefly glanced at them a couple of times which I was really proud about. I was confident and didn't get stuck for words. My improvisation worked and I even managed to talk about things I didn't initially plan to go into detail about.

The feedback from the client was very helpful. They didn't have anything to criticise about my idea which was a shock for me, a pleasant shock though. Lynne, from the Chronicle, told me that she had been working on some sort of picture competition for people around Bath to enter and Instagram seems like the best way to do it, as it's simple and cost effective. 

Ed, my tutor, suggested that my competition could go even further and people could enter 15 seconds videos using the feature on Instagram as well as just pictures. Then potentially at the end of the competition the short videos could be made into a longer 15 minute documentary with the title 'Bath in 15' or something similar.

Overall I am very pleased with how my pitch went and the outcome of it. The only thing I would work on is condensing it so that I could manage to finish the whole presentation. I didn't manage to discuss my plans for the YouTube Channel which was a shame however I feel the that Instagram account idea was strong enough. Time keeping whilst presenting is going to be my target for the future.

Reflection 21.01.2015

What I did today?

The past few days have been spent rounding up my project and bringing it all together so that my pitch is ready to be presented in a couple of weeks.

I created a detailed schedule to follow for my final week of work to make sure that I get everything that needs to be done complete to a good standard. The schedule kept me on track and helped me out when I finished my tasks for that day. If I finished my daily tasks I began with the next days tasks that I had already set up, this meant I was ahead of schedule as everything was planned and ready for me to start as soon as the previous task was finished.

I created a detailed schedule to follow for my final week of work to make sure that I get everything that needs to be done complete to a good standard. The schedule kept me on track and helped me out when I finished my tasks for that day. If I finished my daily tasks I began with the next days tasks that I had already set up, this meant I was ahead of schedule as everything was planned and ready for me to start as soon as the previous task was finished.

What were the main three elements that helped me develop?

• Rewriting my notes to make them as useful and understandable as possible.
• Testing different presentation software.
• Thinking about an interactive element to my presentation.

What did I struggle with today?

I struggled slightly using the Prezi software to create my pitch, I have had little experience using it before which meant I had to teach myself how to navigate my way around the site and learn all of the aspects of it.

Was there a ‘what happens if’ in my day?

'What if my presentation is far to simple and doesn't give me enough support in my pitch?'

Were there any eureka moments?

Experimenting with different pitch software rather than sticking with the simple Google Slides presentation software.

How can I improve on today - tonight or tomorrow?

Familiarise myself with my pitch. Practice what I'm going to say, how I'm going to move and how myself and the computer presentation will compliment one another. Making sure I am confident and prepared to pitch when we come back from half term.

Creating My Pitch

This week I have been working on my final pitch that I will present to the Bath Chronicle in just under two weeks.

I started by looking through all the blog posts I've written throughout the project whilst making notes about the aspects of each post that I feel should be included in the final pitch. I wanted to keep my note taking brief by mainly using bullet points so that I don't get used to having to read large amounts of text from a screen or paper.

After making the notes and separating them into groups that will work as different slides, I begin to build the presentation using the Slides tool on Google Drive. Whilst creating each slide I kept in mind that I wanted images, little text and opportunities for interaction. There will be an interactive element in my presentation when I give the clients a physical copy of my poster to look at.

Whilst developing each slide, I rewrote my notes to emphasise how helpful they will be to remind me what to talk about in the pitch presentation. I will put these bullet points onto flash cards rather than keeping them in my note pad as I feel this will look better prepared and professional in my pitch.

So that I could experiment and challenge myself my using software that I'm not as familiar with, I recreated the presentation using Prezi. I find that Prezi looks more creative than Google Slides as it has a very wide range of themes that are very arty and you can adjust them to fir your style. I even managed to find a theme called Social Media, which is very fitting to my product.

Product Feeback

As my product for Bath News & Media reaches it final stages, I have asked for some feedback from my peers and teachers to that I can see whether my product has reached the requirements of the brief.

I sat with James, my lecturer and he looked through the links on my brief, commenting on the positive aspects of each one as well as the steps I could take to boost my grade to the next level. The main way to do that will be to include some more core information on the blog posts for the first couple of written assignments. This way I can make it clear exactly why I chose to develop my final product in the way I have.

To review my poster, I printed it then presented it to four members of my peer group along with a table, one side reading positives and the other reading negatives. I asked them to look at the poster and together, write their comments in the boxes on the table.

The feedback I will take on board from their comments will be to separate the text out more and make sure the correct bleed is applied to the document so that I don't have a white border around the edge and so that the poster fills the whole page. As you can see above in the image of my printed poster, the bleed hasn't been applied.

After adjusting the text so that it's more spaced out and clearer to read, I changed the print settings so that I can see the cutting lines, this means that when I cut along those lines my poster will have a clean finish and the image will fill the whole page. Here is the outcome, the peer group feel as thought the small improvements make the poster complete.

I sent my peers links to both of the videos I made, asking them to comment their opinions on each one and also specify which one was their favourite.

Comments on the longer video without jump cuts:

Comments on the shorter video with jump cuts: 

The majority of my peers preferred the longer video which was my original idea, they liked how the shots were more detailed and varied. However the jump cut video was popular with some of my other peers as they preferred the faster pace and the length of the video was more appealing because it takes less time to watch.

Overall I don't see a stand out favourite in the videos, I will discuss this in my presentation and suggest that the Bath Chronicle's YouTube channel contains a variety of video styles as different people engage in different things. Sticking with one video theme may get tedious.

To review the Instagram account I held a focus group where I showed three members of my peer group the online version of the Bath Chronicle Instagram account and I did a screen recording to capture their opinions in real time. I also showed them the mobile version just so that they could get a feel for the way it will look on both platforms.

The feedback was all extremely positive. My peer group think that it's a great way to engage the target demographic and it works really well on the mobile app which is what most people access Instagram on. They liked the competition and how the account still has a link to the news site.

The only criticism is that that the link in the bio looks quite long and messy so it would be worth looking into a URL shortener or something along those lines to make that area look more clean as it's right at the top of the page.

Bibliography Of Sources

Fernquest, L. (2015) Introduction to the Bath Chronicle Presentation. [Online] Available at: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-RkO7t8hZU9VFhYdWx3X2FBUGs/view Accessed on: 19.05.2015

The Bath Chronicle. (2015) [Online] Available at: http://www.bathchronicle.co.uk Accessed on: 19.05.2015

Wikipedia. (2015) The History of Newspapers and Magazines. [Online] Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_newspapers_and_magazines Accessed on: 19.05.2015

Bath News and Media. (2015) Bath Chronicle Love to Shop Awards. [Online] Available at: http://www.digital-thisis.co.uk/bath/lovetoshop/ Accessed on: 19.05.2015

The Daily Mirror. (2015) The Pride of Britain Awards. [Online] Available at: http://www.digital-thisis.co.uk/bath/lovetoshop/ Accessed on: 19.05.2015

Frome Standard. (2015) [Online] Available at: http://www.fromestandard.co.uk Accessed on: 19.05.2015

Wikipedia. (2013) Somerset Guardian and Standard. [Online] Available at: http://www.fromestandard.co.uk Accessed on: 19.05.2015

Slideshare (2011) Consumer Behaviour- Family, social class&life cycle. [Online] Accessed on: 17.02.2015. Accessible at: http://www.slideshare.net/rainbowlink/family-social-class-life-cycle?related=2

Youth Net. Young People’s needs in the digital age. [Online] Accessed on: 16.03.2015. Accessible at: http://www.youthnet.org/what-we-do/key-facts-and-figures/media-factsheet-young-people’s-needs-in-the-digital-age/

Pew Research Centre. Teen and Young Adult Internet Use. [Online] Accessed on: 16.03.2015. Accessible at: http://www.pewresearch.org/millennials/teen-internet-use-graphic/


M. Stanley (2009). How Teenagers Consume Media: the report that shook the City. [Online]
Accessed on: 19.03.2015. Accessible at: http://www.theguardian.com/business/2009/jul/13/teenage-media-habits-morgan-stanley


BuzzFeed. (2015) [Online] Accessible at: http://www.buzzfeed.com Accessed on: 19.05.2015

BuzzFeed YouTube. (2015) [Online] Accessible at: https://www.youtube.com/user/BuzzFeedVideo Accessed on: 19.05.2015

The Bath Chronicle YouTube. (2015) [Online] Accessible at: https://www.youtube.com/user/BuzzFeedVideo Accessed on: 19.05.2015

Steele, A. (2014) Fall Outfit of the Week! [Online] Accessible at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLHIcj_KiXc Accessed on: 19.05.2015

Starbucks. (2015) [Online] Accessible at: https://instagram.com/starbucks/ Accessed on: 19.05.2015

Oreo. (2015) [Online] Accessible at: https://instagram.com/oreo/

Pitch Practice To Clients

Before today, my only practice in pitching in front of a client was the pitch of my initial idea to lecturers. After that initial pitch I was given some feedback that I took on today when creating a presentation on a classmate to develop my pitching skills.

After spending a short amount of time interviewing my classmate, Dan, I had made notes and written about the points I wanted to include which were: name, age, location, awesome facts and future ambitions. My aim was to make the pitch short, snappy and informative.

When creating the presentation, the main piece of advice that I remembered from my previous feedback was that I should minimise the amount of text on the slides and add more visual elements. Each slide had just a few words, with the main attraction being an image.

I presented my pitch to the class and got some positive feedback. The things my classmates and teacher complimented were my confidence in presenting- I was sure about what I wanted to say and din't show nerves. Also, I moved around just the right amount so that I didn't look awkward of fidgety. 

There was however some feedback suggesting some room for improvement. It was suggested that I could use the space in the room more to engage and involve the audience rather than remaining in the small amount of space around me. Another point was that I came across a little too smiley and friendly, for a serious pitch that may come across slightly unprofessional.

For my final Bath Chronicle pitch I will use my time to practice the way I move to engage the audience as well as some more tactics to involve them. When presenting to the Bath Chronicle team I think I will naturally act more professional due to the environment and nature of the topic.

Instagram Account Design

Here are three different profile icon pictures for the Bath Chronicle's Instagram account. Using Photoshop I took my own photo's that I've taken around Bath and I added the Bath News&Media logo and the Bath Chronicle's logo to them, so that the account can be recognised as there's straight away.

If the Bath Chronicle or Bath News&Media logo isn't in the icon then the account won't be recognised as there's straight away, if people just think it's a generic account of someone who posts pictures from around Bath they are less likely to show an interest.

The good thing about Instagram is that you're free to change your icon whenever you wish, meaning that the Bath Chronicle can alternate between different icons for example having a bright icon in the Summer and a more Christmas themed icon in the winter.

During an event in the city, the icon could even be changed to fit the theme of the event. For example, fireworks in the background in the lead up to the university's firework display.

The bio for the account can be anything up to 150 characters so you have to keep it short and sweet. There is only one opportunity on Instagram to share a link to your website or content you want the audience to look at so you should include the link that you feel is the most important whether that be a link to the Bath Chronicles home page or a link that takes you directly to a specific article.

My plan for the link in the bio is to update it everyday in the morning with a new link to a news story of interest on the Bath Chronicle's website. Each day a photo from the article or related to the article will be posted on Instagram with a caption that reads 'To read more about this article, click the link in our bio any time today!' 

The link will be updated again with a new story the same time everyday, with a corresponding picture on Instagram so the followers are kept updated. The date will be written in the caption for each picture so that if someone views the picture a few days later, they will know the article in the bio will have changed, which saves any confusion.

Instagram allows you to post video clips up to 15 seconds long. With a simple, free 'video downloader' app you can download any YouTube video onto your mobile and then select a 15 second clip from it that you would like to share on Instagram.

Adding short, taster video clips onto the Instagram page as well as photographs creates some variety and also gives you a more in depth feel for what is being shown. For example, instead of uploading a picture of a street performer a short video would probably be more effective. 

To get a variety of posts on the Instagram account without someone from the Bath Chronicle having to spend a lot of time going out and capturing pictures, anyone from the town can get involved with providing content. 

If you take a picture that you would like the Bath Chronicle to post on their Instagram page all you have to do is tag @BathGram in your picture to give them permission to share it and of course give you credit!