Strategy and Social Media Lab 2020
This year’s Strategy and Social Media Lab, from the wonderful AdandPr Lab, in Panteion University, has been unique in that it was conducted exclusively online due to COVID-19. Nevertheless, it was still a wonderful experience! What we learned can be summed up in these:
But before we get to that, let’s take it from the start. Our major assignment for the course was to create our own communication strategy for a product on behalf of Reebok Greece. We made it in teams and ours consists of Christina Dadina, DELIcious, Marialenadr, Alex Dimou, Sofia Mavragani, Eleni flevotomou and I.
(Yours truly, Team Parachute 😃)
At first, we made a research in order to understand our target group, which was the Gen Z (16–24 years old). After finding out all the information we needed, we created a customer journey map. We noted two personas that are the usual Reebok’s clients. Then, we proceeded to the strategy by creating a few initiatives that would take place in the pre-launch and after launch era. The first tactic was to create a teaser video for the new product coming in September 2020 and add a pre-order feature in Reebok’s official website. Also, we came up with a new hashtag which would accompany all media posts and would appear on the website. It is #thankyourlegacy.
After its launch, a few influencers would take over. It was very important to us to locate influencers who do not engage with our competitors, or haven’t done so in the last few months. We made sure to include both women and men, since Reebok has a huge percentage of female and male clients. Another thing to have in mind was that the chosen influencers needed to be in line with Reebok’s community and mentality. We suggested 8 influencers, from the world of traveling, fashion, arts, comedy and streaming. Our chosen media outlets were Instagram, Youtube, Reddit and Twitch, since these platforms are known to be widely popular in the Gen Z audience.
Then, we came up with a couple of digital partnerships to enhance our communication plan. The first one would be in collaboration with Reddit and the IAMA Forum specifically. A podiatrist was appointed to make a questions and answers event for about nine hours with Reddit users. The next digital partnership was with the video game Minecraft. An appointed by Reebok player would surprise a couple of Minecraft’s players by building some useful and fun stuff in their world. Their reaction would be filmed and then, with their consent, would be uploaded on social media.
Our mega initiative was to create a new channel on Youtube, which Reebok would own, in order to create and upload lots of content regarding the people of colour sharing stories and experiences, in order to educate us about racism. Its name would be “Black Legacy”. More details on the pictures:
The separate Youtube channel and the small presence of the brand in the videos are ways to show, that the brand does really want to help end racism and uses its audience to do so, in action. Not for advertising tricks and “fake” support. On that note, some comments rose that this movement won’t be “relevant” on September, the month that this presentation’s recommendations would take action. We, on the other hand, believe that we shouldn’t wait for bad things to happen in order to talk about racism. This movement should not die out in June 2020, but we should support it till the problem is completely gone. Talking about racism only after something horrible has happened, will not bring the change we, as a society, need. Social issues should always be relevant and we should bring them to the spotlight, till we fix them.
Our course this semester
This Reebok project was the swan song of a wonderful semester course. So, it would be fitting to guide our readers through our whole journey by enlightening them in some of its main aspects. As mentioned above, one of the main difficulties was to transfer the whole learning experience online. Some technical difficulties would occur from time to time, but we managed to stay focused and informed.
The course’s content was up to modern and international high standards. One of the brilliant experiences was the moment all students played the Irrational Game created by Dan Ariely. It taught us about design thinking, how many misconceptions we have regarding human behaviour and adapting to restrictions and opportunities appearing in our microcosm. We were honored to be taught about contextual design by one of the leading UX companies of Greece, The UX Prodigy. Also, we dived into behavioural economics and building relationships based on empathy. One of the semester’s closing acts was content marketing and social media startegy, which is one of the most important aspects of marketing of our time, and then we learned about data analysis and how we can use data to create variations and inspire creativity.
All in all, this was an experience our team members are so grateful to gain and cherish. Thank you for reading us!
A big thank you to our professors Betty Tsakarestou and Lina Kiriakou for the continuous help and guidance and to all the guest members, your knowledge and experience is appreciated!
#AdandPrLAB #CommunicationStrategy #Influencers #DigitalPartnerships #Promotion #Reebok
