Chapter 6 : Cool down

We have seen and experienced a lot of cool stuff in our digital business course already, even though it has been running only for a couple of months or less. But this week we had a chance to have some sort of a "cool down" in a form of a lecture break. The number one rule was to take our minds off the school for a while and just have a ball with our close ones. Simply just relax. And if there's something that I can say to be superb at, is relaxing and chilling! Okay, I had a couple of shifts at work but the whole weekend was devoted for me and my beloved PlayStation 4. We had a blast together as we always do.

Now a quick and unorthodox change of subject. Here's a video of a TED Talk presented by Kyla Mitsunaga about balls. Yeah, sounds like rated-R material but believe me it's something completely different. Check it out and be amazed how inspiring can one short, 6 minute video be! Actually I will watch it again also so check it out WITH me (you'll get that last part after watching the video).

Very enthusiastic about the cooperation which we will start with a Korean University and Kyla! I could go on an on about this brilliant speech and reflect it with several different ways. But let the video speak to itself. Only way I'm going to reflect those influential thoughts are related to one of my biggest interests and inspirations: sports. And more specifically, football. 

We were on a local sports bar on Tuesday with my school friends/group members to watch a Champions League football game between my favorite club Arsenal and teenage girls' favorite FC Barcelona. On the video Kyla talked about throwing balls and also catching them, metaphorically. Those balls can be seen as chances in my opinion. In that distinct game Arsenal were thrown balls at them plenty of times which means in this case that they were given a few chances to score. But they didn't, they weren't able to catch the balls. Then Barcelona were thrown some balls at them and they caught them by scoring two goals. So we were at a point where Barcelona were seen as heroes and Arsenal as zeros. Just because Barcelona capitalized their chances better, in other words: they managed to catch the balls.

And that's life there in a nutshell. As I said that I was reflecting the subject by my biggest interest, sports, all the same I actually reflected on the everyday life of ours. When we see a ball coming towards us and eventually don't catch it, should we just give up and accept the fact that there it went, the once in a lifetime chance? Absolutely not. As the Champions League is played every year, so are chances coming by every day. If we don't manage to utilize the first, let's move on to the next one! This world is so big that maybe it will run out of oil at some point, but chances will never, eeeeeeever, run out from the world as we know it!

This came from a proud Gunners fan. There will always come the next season, the next chance to catch the ball and eventually reach the glory! And the same mentality goes with everything else, believe me.

That's about it. Something to think about until the next time we meet. Cheers guys!

Chapter 5 : We are awesome!

Another week is done which will remain in history as amazing as I thought it would. On Monday we had a lecture about social media marketing and it's self-evident that social media marketing will and maybe already is the most efficient channel to reach the widest crowd. As I mentioned the assignment about Lacy Box in the previous blog post, this lecture definitely gave us some tools to make the most out of the quite a difficult challenge which this particular assignment was for sure. The lecture's main point was to concentrate on target markets and how to properly identify them. The marketing campaign's main message should be somehow appealing but how to reach the genuine target audience is the tricky part. The manner of an approach should be considered with a thought: how to reach the customers with a way that guarantees the best possible result. Is it measured by customer contacts, customers' buys or what is not relevant but how to fabricate an appealing and compelling message which will reach the crowd and push the campaign towards its wanted result.

We got some ''homework'' too. The idea was to choose a quote and comment it somehow.

I chose the ditto from Corey Eridon. This guy nailed it. The marketing as a whole is going more and more to this kind of a direction where the customers are used as a marketing tool. Social media allows customers to express their feelings towards companies publicly and I can't come up with a better way to market your product or service than a straight, positive and public feedback by a satisfied customer. Of course not always the feedback is 100% positive but even that can be turned as an upside when the company correctly reacts to the negative feedback and give a professional and helpful image of itself. Social media activates the customers as a part of the companies' marketing and that is the beauty of it. And in addition to that, social media is pretty big channel as a whole to get your company to the people's awareness. Social media can be seen EVERYWHERE in the Internet and gaining the trust (this is the key word by the way) there will be quite essential in the upcoming years.

Here's a video about profits of social media marketing in just three minutes:

On Friday we presented our achievements in the Lacy Box project. Planning and creating a social media marketing campaign about women's lingerie was as difficult as I thought it would be but we managed to get something presentable for Friday. Even though our outcome could have been better, this assignment surely gave us some valuable knowledge and insight about the social media marketing. There is a bunch of things to consider and by doing them right, company's coverage can burst rather quickly.

And then came the groups' SuperPark video presentations which we shot before as I told you guys on the earlier posts. And... wow. WOW! I'm still speechless, always thought that my student colleagues were talented but even in my wildest imaginations I would have never thought that our class consists this kind of a pure talent. Huge respect for every group, the future seems to be bright for us! And when I say us, I can proudly say that our groups' video didn't pale in comparison. Our group member Tommi made an awesome job with the editing of the video and we all put together our best efforts to make this marketing video a success. Which it was in my books, just check it out from below! (WARNING: if and when you're watching it more than once, the music might get irritating at some point).

Cheers guys, see you on next Sunday!

Chapter 4 : Childish mess around

Oh boy, what a week it was once again. Had a privilege to be part of some really funny stuff this week but before that, let's take a brief recap to our week in digital business course. On Monday we had a presentation about developing new ideas and concepts for SSM (Suomen Suoramainonta), specifically concentrating and targeting to employees and SSM's social media marketing. We came up with an idea to engage employees with some additional work assignments in addition to delivering advertisements. These assignments could involve taking care of customers' everyday routines such ass cutting the lawn or clearing snow. Customer expresses the need and the company provides the solution by an efficient and young workforce. Win-win situation, right? I'm pretty positive that SSM representatives do not hesitate any more to co-operate with universities and other school systems as they, according to my understanding, did with this one. Our lecturer Anna had to even persuade them to give it a go. The ideas that we groups came up with were quite solid to say the least that it's safe to say that the SSM representatives won't regret this!

On Friday we received another assignment from our wonderful guest speaker Lynn-Marie Sederlöf-Airisto (hope I got it right). The assignment is to conceive and execute a marketing campaign for Sederlöf-Airisto's own company Lacy Box. Which sells women's underwear... First reaction, well, not so delightful. Group consisting only lads trying to execute a marketing campaign about women's underwear is definitely not in any of our comfort zones. And in addition to that, the theme should be somehow related to bachelorette party. Well it's a challenge for sure but I live on them. In other words, challenge accepted and we're definitely going to make the most out of it.

So about the funny stuff. On Wednesday we visited the Superpark, which I mentioned in my last blog text, with intention to shoot some material for the marketing advertisement video. I was a bit skeptical about the place in overall, would our age of people enjoy ourselves there but damn, was I wrong?! The place was tremendous! Countless of possibilities to do different sports, some of those which I've never had an opportunity to try including baseball and scooting. My inner child woke up immediately as we entered the park. We played and tried some different sports and exercises, such as football, floorball, basketball, golf, hockey etc. and just messed around like some ten year olds! Extremely fun time in overall and we sure got some solid material for our video. After a quite of an exhausting few hours too, we all agreed that we would certainly recommend Superpark without a doubt and could give it another go (if it wasn't so damn expensive for an adult).

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Had some spare time today and thought that I could spend it wisely by surfing on the Internet, looking for some digital business articles. I found some familiar articles from the past but after a few minutes I bumped into a one particular site which is about the 2020-scheme for making Finland's working life the best in Europe. One part of that is to instill the benefits of the groundbreaking digital era to Finnish companies' operations. As it is written on the site, Finland most definitely is one of the top dogs that comes to the knowledge and skills about completeness to succeed in digital era. But we just don't know how to utilize these multiple different possibilities that we sure already have. And that takes some time. In my opinion, 2020 is VERY optimistic estimation for digitalisation getting involved in businesses' daily operations but I would be more than happy to be proven wrong. But for me it seems like assemble a football or ice hockey team. Finland has all the key pieces there and the core is strong but that something is still missing and that comes little by little, season by season and in this case, year by year. Well again, not in four years but we will get there without a doubt and at that point, there's no reason why Finland couldn't take a stronger foothold in the international markets. All the necessary tools are existing within us, we just have to make a better effort to find the ways how to utilize them more profitably and effectively. 

See ya next week!

Chapter 3 : Eat, study, work, repeat...

This week is on its homestretch and have to say that this particular week was for some reason quite a heavy one for me. The original plan was to find a good balance between studying, work and spare time activities but it went down the tube. I had more working shifts as usual and they contained only long evening shifts so it goes without saying that I was pretty weary when I got home. We have a deadline coming up on next Sunday for one subtask which I haven't even started yet. I simply haven't had any time to do school tasks and even if I would've had, I would have certainly had a lack of creativity and text producing because of weariness. Actually, all I did this week was basically eating and working, it was hard to find time even for sleeping. I made it to the gym just a couple of times this week which was also one reason for my "unfreshness", I just need my 4 or 5 workouts per week to keep my mind and body fresh. But I'm more than sure that next week will contain more spare time to do school tasks, work out and just relax, forgetting everything related to school or work.

In addition to heavy work week, we had once again two lectures this week in school. On Tuesday we received an assignment which takes us to the world of shooting and editing videos, really excited! We are supposed to prepare and shoot an advertisement video for Superpark which is, highly summarizing, a firm that offers exciting ways to try different activities indoors. We will also develop some ideas for them how to evolve their social media marketing and get more connected with a wider audience in different social media channels. So enthusiastic about this assignment!

On Thursday's lecture we had cultures as our day's topic. At one point we had to dive in to our history to find some experiences where we had a share in when two different cultures collided. At that point I couldn't get anything on my head but when I got home, I suddenly remembered one moment from my recent history where two countries and their cultures and habits collided. My girlfriend and her family are Estonian and I happened to spend a Christmas party with them. There's a habit in Estonia to sing a Christmas song or recite a poem before you get a present. Of course I was not told about this particular habit and as a Finnish man, I certainly wasn't in my comfort zone when I had to recite a poem or sing to get a freakin' present (yeah I got a few and had to recite some poems...). For them it was odd to see someone so confused and awkward about singing a song before getting a present because for them it was natural and an old habit. But managed to get the presents even though my performances weren't that worthy of praise...

A tough week physically but once again it was very rewarding and I have high hopes for the upcoming week!

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Keeping it a bit more shorter this time because I want to get some well deserved sleep finally but I would like to share this link to a Ilta-Sanomat article which deals with a new tool provided by Facebook. It allows its users to test their average distance to any other Facebook user in the world. The number shows by how many users are you connected to the user you are searching for. So basically it tells you how networked you really are. My number was 3,58 which was slightly above the Facebook's users' average 3,57. Very interesting tool to say the least. Network is the today's trend so being slightly more networked than an average Facebook user is pleasant to hear. Of course it's hard to say how accurate and true-proofed this tool really is but it gives at least a some pointer!

There you have it, let's get back to it once again on next Sunday!