Marketeam’s experience in AD and PR lab
We are students of the Communication, Media and Culture department of Panteion University. During our third year in this journey, we participated in and joined the AD&PR Media Lab, a group class that consists of young people, who are interested in entering the marketing world, learning about advertising strategies and getting the chance to work on some very interesting projects that will develop our skills. Besides that, we also had the chance to get to know some very interesting people, who are leaders in the marketing/advertising industry. They shared their experiences with us, and made us feel like their co-workers, thus making this class even more interesting and challenging. Our first goal was to form a team, that would take the role of the marketer and advertiser on each project, and would do its best so as to fulfill the brief given each week. Each task was quite challenging, but interesting at the same time. The projects felt like a simulation of working as an advertising and marketing agency, and not like an exam that we had to be tested in, which led us to be even more productive. We learned how to work as a team, developing our communication and presentation skills. Furthermore, we were taught that it is extremely important to deliver our work within a deadline, the same way it happens in real life, and our work was reviewed and evaluated. Moreover, our participation in these projects has prepared us for future challenges, both on an academic and professional level.
UX Heuristics
During the semester, we worked in different roles for our assignments, Marketeam was not just a marketing/advertising team. Working as Ux heuristics reviewers was a challenging and different role from what we had been used to. We had to get into the perspective of people that are using an app/website and find out if that system was easily usable for the average user.
We decided to have some fun with this project, while also working as professionals so we tried to evaluate the app called “Tinder’’ as Ux reviewers. Choosing an app was not an easy procedure and we had a lot of ideas in our minds until we finally agreed to review Tinder. In the beginning we were skeptical about our decision as some of the members of the team thought that it was a slightly extreme decision, yet as we worked on the project we were assured about it. Being a Ux reviewer is not an easy job, there are certain rules that an app/website has to follow and we had to make sure that those rules were rightly implemented. It may sound like a simple thing to do but spotting mistakes in famous and well established apps/websites takes a lot of time and concentration. The members of our team had to work alone at first in order to find out possible rules that Tinder does not follow. We gathered and filtered our findings in order to be sure about them. This procedure was really entertaining as we had to use the app in order to come up with our findings. This project was very unique as it allowed us to interact and review an app that most of the members of our team had never used before.
In the end, this project was a big success for our team, we managed to present well-organized research while also having fun throughout the whole procedure. This project made us understand how fascinating the world of apps/websites is. Behind an app or a website, a lot of rules are hidden that the average user does not pay attention to, but this project helped us find out what makes an app/website easily usable and efficient.
Costa Coffee
A consumer sees an ad for a product that seems perfect for them and rejoices over their luck, but this scenario likely didn’t come down to luck. Market research involves gathering data to learn more about target demographics and consumers so a business can market itself more effectively and, ultimately, succeed in the market. The marketer must be the integrator both internally and externally, they play a significant role from research, strategy, and planning- to creative execution- to reviewing and managing results. It is a fundamental shift in the role and purpose of marketing. In a marketplace characterized by rapid change and potentially paralyzing choice, marketers need to be on the qui vive and have a profound insight of how the market moves in the interest of concocting a successful, well researched, exhaustive campaign.
As an agency, we know what market research is and acknowledge its importance in a general sense, and we realize just how crucial market research is to the success of our business since it provides the answers we need to make decisions that will move us forward instead of backwards by empowering us to base decisions on data.
In this regard, as a student-led agency, we were assigned a marketing brief for the brand Costa Coffee and we were asked to act as marketers and advertisers consecutively. First of all, as mentioned earlier, a market research was mandatory to find the brand’s key players and status in the market thus we executed a consumer research, qualitative and quantitative, where, through a questionnaire and face-to-face interviews, we were able to detect the brand’s low awareness as well as the key players renown in the market. Subsequently, we completed a desk research, where we defined each key player’s USP, reason to believe, competitive edge on brand & product level and communication strategy, and afterwards, we put together a 2-dimensional map positioning our key players in an availability-popularity association. Finally, we conducted a SWOT analysis and established our suggested 4Ps based on the results we came across from our research.
When it comes down to the advertising department, Costa Coffee was with certainty our biggest challenge. We participated in many brain-wracking sessions, trying to come up with something unique that hadn’t been done before and would stand out. We scrapped many ideas that could have turned out well, but after a lot of trial and error we came up with an amazing project.
Our big idea was to advertise being unique with our coffee, to be yourself while consuming it. Doing activities you like and not being interested in the judgmental looks strangers give you. That was the premise and the foundation, then we proceeded to take photos of ourselves and individuals from our social circle doing such activities while holding a mug with the costa coffee logo on it. For example one of the photos was a member of our group doing pole dancing, all while drinking from a costa coffee mug. Another was a girl pointing her boxing glove at the camera while holding the same mug. We created a few of these photos and combined them with a special slogan that was suitable for each one of them, depending on the situation. This advertising campaign mostly targets young adults since they are the ones that feel restrained from society and unable to express how they feel, so we hope that this campaign will resonate with them and create a sense that they belong in a group with like-minded individuals.
We did extensive research on how to approach our target group, studying different aspects and ways of advertisement, while trying to keep a low budget. We came up with quite a large amount of ideas. The first one being the fact that we could take advantage of the communication possibilities social media offers, since most young people use social media on a daily basis. It would be the natural conclusion to use them: more frequent posts, stories with our campaign and such things would be the main content. In the physical world, we decided that a good idea would be to create Costa Coffee stands with promotional offers and pop up stores that would hold events like taste testing. Moreover, we suggested forming partnerships and collabs with Gen-z influencers for promotion and special offers through some of the most well-known food delivery apps.
Mobile App
In our last project of the semester, we were asked to take the role of mobile app creators and create a three (or more) question quiz on any topic we desired. Our team chose to work on different topics such as Greek slang, Hollywood actors, Cars, Art, Food and Cats. The whole point of this assignment was for us to think of three questions and three possible answers to each question, one of which would be correct, while the others would be wrong. We had to make the quiz functional so that the user of the “app” would be taken to a different page when they chose the correct answer and another one when they chose the wrong answer.
Needless to say that this project was fun to complete in every way. Our team discussed the project and we got ideas from each other, while we had time to work on it alone. To create the quiz, we used the website “proto.io”, which at first we found very difficult to use. However, as we spent more time using it, we got used to it and in the end we were all very satisfied with the outcome. Our favorite part of this project was that the topic was open and everyone could choose a different subject to match their interests. Except for that, we were given the opportunity to work alone. Given the fact that in every other assignment of the semester we were asked to work as a team, this was a challenge, which allowed us to test our capabilities as individuals.
In this project not only were we able to be in the position of professional mobile app creators and familiarize ourselves with the website “proto.io”, but it also was a chance for us to find out how an app works in general. The procedure was interesting and different from everything that we had done before, as we all agreed in the end.
Our Overall Experience
In this lab, we gained new skills and knowledge associated with marketing. We also learnt how to convert a creative idea into an advertising and marketing strategy, how to create social media content for our agency so that it raises awareness for our brand and so on.
Our instructors led us through our journey and our first contact with real- life briefs that we had to study and then transform our ideas into a creative strategy that will be the advertisement for the brand, such as the Costa Coffee project. Specifically, we learnt about the importance of ads in order to promote a brand and also be aware of the characteristics that an advertisement should have so it can be interesting, attract the consumer and serve the goals that the company has set. Furthermore, as students of the Ad and Pr Lab, we were taught that the advertisements can have social impact, too, so we have to be careful with the practices we use when we want to advertise a product or a service. In addition, we became familiar with the meaning of positioning and how important it is for a company to have a specific cause and thesis that supports it, as well as, a personalized tone of voice that depends on the audience who it is addressed to.
We also became familiar with the importance and uses of all the popular social media, such as Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok. Then, we made our own social media platform for the agency that we had created. Nowadays, social media is a very effective and affordable way to promote a brand because a lot of people use it everyday. An advertisement is considered successful if it achieves engagement with the audience.
To conclude our participation in the AD and PR lab was a life changing experience, since we got the chance to not only work as advertisers and marketers but also to have fun through the process.
Antonis Giokarinis Vasilikinte Naya Venieraki Alex Petrou Marios tzanitis Betty Tsakarestou
