#grouptask

Painting With Light 

We were given 6 shapes and  2 images to copy with the torches we brought to college. 

For the first week of this module we were put into groups and were given a sheet that had a list of different locations, objects and tasks that were scored individually, to gain the points we had to draw what was on the list quickly. Our goal as a group were to gain as many points and complete as many tasks as possible in a time limit. This task was a good way of getting to know people in the class, getting to know Cardiff and finding out what opportunities the city held for drawing, it was also a great warm up for the day and an exciting way to start off the first year of Illustration. During this task I was a bit worried because I don’t normally draw on paper and I personally noticed that quick sketching was one of my weaknesses and its definitely something I want to improve so I will practice and try to improve on my drawing skills.

This GIF was created in a group as our task was to come up with our own ideas and create the gif by shooting a series of images on our own to practice the time based medium. The process of coming up with ideas was easy as we already had a basic knowledge of a gif as well as doing some research. 

We also came up with some of the following ideas:

- Blowing a bubble using bubblegum.

- A crowd of people walking in a certain direction

We then went to shoot our idea outside and in order to create the affect of the coke fizzing up / spilling when it was opened, we had to shake the bottle. However, during this we came across a few difficulties as we had to buy another drink. This was because the first bottle did not fizz as much as we would have liked. The GIF consists of 5 images taking consistently, one after the other, however, I would improve this by using a tripod next time so that the camera stays still as I feel that this is what makes a successful GIF. 

Marketing tool for the next contact day : Cross-promoting

“A cross-promotion is a marketing program that targets buyers of a product with an offer to purchase a related product.” We chose “cross-promoting” as our marketing tool which we will perform at the workshop together with the group Bumblebees.

Cross-promoting is a marketing tool where together with a partner with a similiar target group (their product cannot compete with yours) you will do marketing where you can both promote your own products. For example, two companies with different products but the same target group can spread each others flyers in the waiting areas/lobbies etc. Nowadays cross-promoting is very popular and useful between businesses and companies, because it will get cheaper and easier way to market their products in a succesful way.

Another good ways to do cross-promoting:

Co-produce an event: You can team up with a partner and then produce your products in different sections at the event.

Gift certificates/cupons: When a customer is using your product, they get a cupon for your partner’s company. e.g our customers come to Tom of Finland Festival and they get -20% off cupons from the coffee shop we collaborate.

Social Media: e.g mention your partner in your social media page or make social media competitions together with your partner

Business cards: Spread each other’s business cards towards customers

Workshops: e.g an art teacher from art school can come to make a workshop to Tom of Finland Festival

Using mailing lists: Both of the businesses could promote each other by sending an e-mail to their e-mail lists of customers

Think about what kind of business with the same target group could be your partner for cross-promoting? Remember that the business should not compete with you or your product. Think about 3 different ways to do cross-promoting and write it down. Think about the most useful ways to cross-promote in order to reach your customers better and get them to know your product.

3 social platforms: Twitter, Instagram, Jodel

Jodel:

Jodel is an app  where anyone can share anonymously a post about what’s going on in their lives. Basically an user can follow what is happening in his area. In Turku, Jodel is very famous between students, so there are channels for Turku University students, Åbo Akademi students and Turku University of Applied Sciences students. We made a post about Tom of Finland in those channels, both in English and Finnish. The Finnish side was a big disappointment because it seems that people really take an advantage of commenting things anonymously and some of the comments were really rude. We felt like some of the people didn’t take us seriously with comments like “I’m not here to make anyone’s school work” or “this is too gay.” On the other hand, some of the comments really showed to us that Tom of Finland is high-appreciated between Finns, as someone referred him as god and some of them were ready to go to the festival.  The English-post did not get as much as feedback but in general the comments were not very useful for us, as for they didn’t seem to be interested in our festival. We felt that Jodle may not be a good place to collect feedback as people can comment anything they want which may not even be related to the topic.

Instagram & Twitter:

We created a page both for Twitter and Instagram and tried to collect feedback from social media. As we all know, creating a social media page that would get attention takes a lot of time, but with our best we tried to spread those two channels and get new ideas and thoughts from our target group in order to develop our idea. We still want to get a lot more feedback, but to accomplish that, we need to keep updating our social media pages in a hope for our target group to reach them. Here’s some useful feedback we’ve collected so far;

“Interesting event which mixes fashion and art. However, I don’t feel like I belong to the target group as I don’t find Tom of Finland too interesting. Tom of Finland as a theme is both good and a bad thing, because it can limit participation of people who are not interested in Tom of Finland’s art, but at the same time it could gather new people who’re interested in art and make the theme more general.”

“You could also have social media pages in Finnish in order to reach your Finnish target group, especially if the main point is to encourage Finnish people travel to Turku area to see the festival.”

“I would need some kind of red string in the events. I think it’s a good thing that you’ve planned a lot of programs for the events, but some kind of conclusion for the event could be useful that would summary all the 5 events in one conclusion. If I would participate in this festival I would like to know if the same ticket could have an access to all of the 5 events.”

“I don’t really know anything else about Tom of Finland than the post stamps, so it’s kind of hard to say if I would be interested in the festival.”

“I think it definitely would be interesting and selling event!”

Pitching on 16.11. – Preparing for presenting the innovation

We have been planning our pitching for the 16th of November when we will finally meet our target group and present them our idea about Tom of Finland festival. Because our target group includes 20-30-year-old people, mostly students and Finnish people – not to forget that we’re also trying to promote our event for foreign students – we decided to have our pitch at one of the lectures at Åbo Akademi. Mai is currently attending a class where exchange students are participating, so we thought that could be a perfect opportunity for us to get feedback from our target group.

This time we’re working even harder on making our Tom of Finland Festival appealing to potential clients. We came up with multiple ideas which are listed down below.

- the festival would take place in Turku, multiple locations (so that people can travel around Turku and see different places)

- as far as music go - there’s no particular music connected to ToF, but we think that Pop music would be the best one playing during our Festival

- fashion show

- motorbike run

- parties in the evenings

- art-connected workshops: Joy of Painting, Cartoon Workshop, Nude Painting, Tom of Finland best-dressed competition, ToF exhibition

- speed dating wall, ask sex questions (LGBT friendly), how to get a ToF body (bodybuilding, fitness related)

- collaborations with museums and art galleries

How do we find out if it’s going to work? TOOLS!

Facebook Page of the Festival

ToF Festival Event

Focus Group Thing/ NABC Pitch  – on 25th of October we met at Paula’s place in order to get some feedback from a group. We discussed with four students in their twenties (a Spainish girl, a Slovakian girl, a guy from Georgia and a Finnish guy) and asked them what they think about our idea of Tom of Finland festival and if there’s anything they would change or improve it. We got both positive and negative feedback (mostly positive).

Their thoughts and worries were:

- a pricey bus ticket - multiple locations, too expensive

- maybe we should have our own festival bus?

- people dressing as ToF characters and walking around town - isn’t that too much?

- Finnish folk music - too boring, not really fitting -> maybe as an introduction to the festival?

- explanation about ToF -> what is this, all about him, introduction about him

- multiple locations arts oriented or LGBT oriented -> a good idea

- workshop - a very good part

- knowing more about ToF - history, why he started doing that

- exhibition about his life

- setting up a tour around his house

- food trucks

- book cafe place in Turku - maybe they’d like to collaborate with us

- marketingwise - Tinder, Grinder, Fb, posters around city, culture-related websites, events section (Turku website), hashtag for the event (Twitter), coffee shops/bars -> flyers

- saunas? -> portable ones

- archipelago - around the sea, beaches have saunas

- one day - opening up the doors for people to use their personal saunas -> wouldn’t probably work, we can’t control the experience in other people’s homes

- LGBT Parade? ToF Parade? -> maybe as an ending to the festival, may not work as we would want to though

- fashion walk - catwalk with a motorbike? merchandise, something similar stylewise

- motorbike run - not sure about that, maybe it’d work but not really

- in the evening - music parties

- we need a lot of options - people want to be entertained all the time

- security measures

- decor, lightning, ToF statues etc.

- performance of the ToF musical -> definitely a good idea, we can get them to promote our festival as well

- discussion panel - about LGBT related issues, gender studies, some people who were bullied speaking up etc.

What have we learn and how did it help us?

We know now that our idea is appealing to potential customers (students in their twenties), but we still have to think through a lot of things. We’ve learned what our target group would actually like to see while attending ToF festival. Our group was not particularly interested in ToF, so it was helpful to find out what would appeal to a person who doesn’t really find ToF that great.

FB page + Facebook event

We’ve created a FB ToF page as well as an upcoming FB event (ToF Festival) in order to get some feedback from FB users. Besides that, Paula tried to promote our event on Reddit but it didn’t work out that well due to some following reasons. Firstly, we didn’t have enough time to promote the event that is not known – people need time and constant reminder that something’s going on and is worth seeing/attending. Secondly, in the title she wrote down that it’s a school project, so maybe that was also the reason why people were not that interested in it, since school projects always sound boring and stuff.

Tinder

We have created a Tinder profile dedicated to Tom of Finland Festival. It didn’t work that well since we haven’t got any feedback yet. The reason can be that  we had just few days to test it. What’s more, that was a risky idea, because people on Tinder are not looking for commercials or events, but a soulmate or a romantic interest. We’re curious to see if it’s going to 

What I’ve learned?

This weeks task is to come up with 5 different personas which may be in our target market and compare their personalities to the assumptions we came up with a few weeks ago! So here goes, look below for some awesome descriptions and photos of our personas!

HOMOPHOBIC FRIENDS FORCED TO COME ALONG SO THEY DON’T MISS OUT ON THE EXPERIENCE

Name: Matti

Gender: Male

Age: 22

Occupation: Student

Nationality: Finnish (Northern)

Quote: “Well everyone was going [to the festival] anyway…”

Activities: Sports ; Picking up chicks ; Hanging with Friends; Clubbing; Blackjack

Description: Matti is a party boy, who loves to “get the shift”. He plays Rugby, Football, and attends college (he’s studying Engineering) but is just waiting for the chance to party with his friends. Matti likes to follow the crowd and doesn’t tend to like people that don’t. He has decided to attend the festival because a lot of his friends (mostly the girls in his group) thought that it would be a fun idea to experience a “homosexual festival”, even though its not his scene.

LGBT MEMBER

Name: Tom

Gender: Male

Age: 30

Occupation: Small Art Gallery Owner

Nationality: American (L.A.)

Quote: “We have the same name!”

Activities: Art; Socializing; Dogs; Running; Watching Movies; Gym/Fitness

Description: Tom fell in love with Tom of Finland from first glance. As a gallery owner, and an active member of the LGBT association, he was able to see the prolific images in their true beauty. He takes his health and fitness very seriously, as he’s always looking to attract a new man.

A FINNISH PERSON

Name: Veera

Gender: Female

Age: 25

Occupation: Hipster (but a writer for her day job)

Nationality: Finnish (Turku)

Quote: “Keep Calm and Buy Tom of Finland!”

Activities: Visiting Galleries and Museums ; Underground Clubbing ; Vegan Food; Blogging and Social Media; Smoking

Description: A young edgy kinda chick! She spends her day in Cafe Art writing her blog and articles for her work. She has recently achieved 5,000 instagram followers for her awesome vegan food photos and creations. She loves Tom of Finland  and her prized possession is her ToF bag! Fashion is really important to her and ToF is the only non-secondhand shop she’ll buy from! She loves partying, and festivals and music are a huge part of her life (and the perfect place to catch a good pic!)

INTERNATIONAL TOURIST

Name: Alejandro

Gender: Male

Age: 20

Occupation: Bartender

Nationality: Spanish

Quote: ” Siempre estoy buscando algo nuevo que hacer”

Activities: Party; Travelling; Fitness; Photography; Wanderer

Description: Alejandro is a big hunk of man who longs for adventures. He thinks that the ladies in Northern Europe are extra beautiful and has always wanted to travel to Scandinavia. He appreciates good pictures and good parties. So Finland has the perfect mix…

PARENT

Name: Jarkko

Gender: male

Age: 40

Occupation: Entrepreneur

Nationality: Finnish (Eastern)

Quote: “Well my daughter managed to twist my arm… but I couldn’t let her go alone”

Activities: Chopping wood; Watching Television; Reading; Cross Country Skiing; Holidaying in his cottage in Lapland

Description: As a man who set up his own business, Jarkko knows the risks in this world. He loves his family and while he runs his own shop his goal is to spend as much time with them as possible (when he’s not relaxing with a good book). He likes to make his daughter happy, she’s 15 years old, but quite demanding.

TESTING OUR ASSUMPTIONS

In our 12 hour lecture we came up with the following assumptions that would pain our target group, and here’s where we’ll test them!

Expensive (tight budgets)

Boring (should be humorous)

Too sensitive (content may be too erotic)

Complex Transport Routes

Weather

Homophobic Behaviour

Additional Hidden Costs

Bad Image of the People / bad image of the eventfulness of the place

Not an ideal tourist destination (apart from Lapland)

Flight connections

For international attendants, such as our Spaniard Alejandro and our LGBT member Tom, cost is definitely a factor.

Matti, our homophobic persona, is a student, which automatically means that cost of course is a factor, but in particular because he would be “dragged along” by his friends, cost is a huge factor.

Jarkko and Veera are the only two who MAY not fall into this assumption as they both have steady jobs. In particular as a writer Veera may get paid to cover the event.

Definitely every persona we have imagined would consider one of their greatest pains to be boredom. However, Jarkko, as a parent would be used to being bored (to a certain extent).

In general we feel that this assumption still fits.

We feel that generally our personas would be okay with the “erotic” nature of Tom of Finland and would not be particularly sensitive to this.

Especially as most are native Finnish people who would be very familiar with Tom of Finland and his merchandise being a regular occurrence.

In terms of the visiting people, they would not travel all the way to Finland if they would not accept this part of Finnish culture.

We think that in general this assumption is not one of the things that will pain our consumers the most.

This is because most of our consumers will be Finnish and either have their own transport or be familiar with the transport systems set up in Ireland.

While our tourists would not be as able to manage the transport system easily, we feel that the system in Finland is fairly simplified and manageable for tourists (as 4 of the 5 members of our group are technically “tourists” here we can vouch for this).

We can not predict the weather but in general, even if things are planned for summer, unexpected or bad weather is always a pain for anyone, including our target group.

Thus we feel that this assumption is vital to bear in mind for the duration of our innovation process.

Over all we feel that homophobic behaviour has to be considered one of the biggest pains of our target group.

Even though we have a homophobic persona we feel that it is very possible he would identify as “not homophobic” in his own ignorance. Regardless, we believe that considering our Topic Tom of Finland continuing with the assumption that homophobic behaviour shall not be tolerated is essential.

It is common consensus that hidden costs are always an unpleasant surprise.

Whether you have spare money or not , if you arrive thinking that you have paid a certain amount of money for everything included and discover otherwise, it is annoying and problematic

For those with a tight budget (like much of our target market) this is even more crucial.

We have no idea what we meant by this assumption and will create a new one at the end of this list to replace it.

Many people in Finland don’t like travelling within Finland as they see it as a waste of time/money to experience the same country and spending money on it.

Tourists as well don’t often think of Finland as a tourist destination as it is not commonly talked about for anythingg other than the Northern lights (which is more publicised in Norway and Denmark to be honest)

While Finland in general has many connections ( including extensively to Asia ), Turku in general is not serviced by many areas.

This would definitely add complications and many people wouldn’t realise how easy it is to travel from Helsinki to Turku by bus or by plane (but that may be more expensive).

OUR NEW ASSUMPTIONS!!!

to make up for the failure of two of our current ten….

Accommodation

Alcohol/Gambling Culture

The hardest part of travelling somewhere is  finding accommodation that is close, not too expensive and not too dirty! This is a pain no matter what .

This can be a really big shock for tourists outside of Finland, seeing how other countries regulate alcohol and gambling

Seeing gambling machines in supermarkets and blackjack in nightclubs was a huge shock to the foreigners in our group, and we feel that could be similar for other tourists. Within Finland we expect that the extremity of gambling varies from place to place. (e.g. no blackjack in nightclubs but still machines in shopping centres)

In regards to Alcohol a similar scenario applies. Different cultures have different attitudes towards alcohol and it can be a huge pain adjusting to it.

In order to complete the task no. 3, we met once again, this time in a different place. 

On 6th of October we decided to meet in order to come up with 5 personas for the next group task. Some of the ideas were: a gay person, a homophobic person, a hipster, a tourist, a parent, an old person, a foreigner. 

That’s us working & having a good time at Cafe Art