Since Raymond Postgate founded the ‘Good Food Guide’ in 1951 and Michael Young founded the Consumer
Association and ‘Which?’ in 1957, consumer guides and commentaries have become commonplace in all sections of publishing, the media, and the internet. They remain critical to the social economy, both in assessing products and services on the basis of social criteria, and in providing publicity to social enterprises. Countries like Cyprus have used the model of a ‘Good Food Guide’ to upgrade the quality of the island’s food and restaurant industry.

Consumer guides and reviews always work; it started with basic books as mentioned above, then with the internet the undeveloped forums ruled the world. Now thanks to technology we have beautifully designed websites, great apps on our mobiles…

This friday was quite productive in terms of having an efficient brainstorming session and then doing a pitch again. The brainstorming tips were again beneficial. Our pitch was on the translation, volunteering and the web site. Suggested to sell online pink ribbons, to contact with universities all around the world to have some volunteering translation services, personalized web widgets, calendars, etc..

As a whole it was the last of the apprentice challenges and I think it was a good finale the clearest and most realistic business above all.

Now it’s time to get ready for the trade fair. This time we won’t have some irrelevant goods since we have a finished product now We even have a good competition which is the answer to visitor students’ “what’s in it for us” question. We will see…

Anyway total hours spent this week is again 8 hours which includes all of the above

About GRM TV; actually it was a typical client, who does not want to mention the budget and for that giving the reason of not limiting the creativity of the agency. Actually this time it was fine since we were not working on a real project.

Our presentation was not perfect but we developed many ideas. Not surprisingly we weren’t called to the stage of winners, which was fair and fine.

Anyway the exercise was fun and productive in a way. And it was nice to hear other teams’ ideas. But generally all ideas were similar. Maybe that’s because of the age group similarity of the class and the limited time issue. Hope the next challenges will be more fun and more productive…

Frankly, I would prefer to have a normal class that we used to have last semester instead of these challenges though.

For the exhibition part, it was really non-disruptive. Businesses handed out fliers, pens and candies to promote their E-mail Marketing and/or Content Management System or hosting services. A question arises naturally; why even bother to show up if you do not have anything original or relevant to give to your potential customers. It is just a waste of money, time and energy for the business! Here’s a general picture just the give you a brief idea.

The Seminars:

Apple got the buzz award without even participating to the event by being referred to at least twice by all speakers! Another proof of the success of Apple as a brand, like we needed

The seminars started really good. Especially the first day. We had; A.Friedlein (CEO and co-founder, Econsultancy – The Future of Online Marketing is… Offline Marketing!) Here are some of his key points;

And then the seminar from Head of Planning, AMV.BBDO, C.Mawdsley with the subject “Embracing a New Business Philosophy in the Age of Uncertainty ” was really informative.  Here are the main points of his speech on strategy principles;

1. Doing beats thinking.
2. Listen&Learn
3. Apply 5% Rule (Allocate 5% of your marketing budget into experiments)
4. Fail small, win big.
5. Collaborate.

And the last one by Bruce Daisley, Leader, YouTube UK was a little bit disappointing. The main point of the whole seminar was on how good Youtube is to advertise as a medium, and how successful were their channel to promote brands.

If you want to watch the seminars free online

But wait, the second day is getting worse and worse with the participation of Google. The subject; The future of Mobile. The content;

“There are things called aaapps, and it is how you work them on a google phone, and GMap (yes google maps!) can work on your phone and do amazing things like showing you the way to your desired place, or finding you the restaurants around you, and there is another application called Business Card reader, which reads the business cards by scanning! Waow!!!

And then it didn’t get any better with D.Chaffey - Optimising your Digital Marketing Mix. It was about some stats, generally hundreds of them fit in one slide. So really didn’t make any sense.

In a nut shell seminars had long queues for lots to learn, then speakers sold their own businesses not expanding on issues or solutions, except 2 or 3.

But did we have some important contact details for Passport2Guides? Definitely!!

Did we have fun? Obviously!!!

Even I go part time, today’s session with Catherine was quite beneficial in terms of starting to think about my dissertation. And to decrease my ignorance level on the subject…

New To Do’s;

• Start to create your own library, write down the quotes you like,
• Check previous years’ dissertations,
• Think about key words,
• Try to answer the questions of App 4.

And Pier’s session was again really useful in terms of having another look at the concept of leadership. Nothing you do not know but (not) doing automatically, without paying any attention on what you are doing.

• Be aware of people you are working with,
• Forget about the ego,
• Be flexible,
• Listen to other people, and do not kill the idea, participate and develop it instead,
• Focus on what you do,
• Be aware of your tone of voice,
• …

And some bizarre stories, and monster & chair games… Ah and again oranges, when it comes to leadership, why it’s always about oranges? My keyword for the leadership essay, hmm??

Before after is quite popular nowadays, unfortunately I forgot to take a screen shot. But I give you a shot from my similar designed blog instead;

And this is how it looks now;

• The web site theme that we’re working does not work properly in terms of consistency, format etc… So we’ll switch to a wordpress one. ““Fail early and fail often” What a nice motto!
• We handled the hosting part as well, but it will take some time for the setup process.
• And we know have some more great content elements and a nice to-do list, thanks to Seb! (In a good way of course )
• Pictures taken at the end of 5th hour, you can tell that I guess

Anyway the team surgery was good as well, and we were quite happy with the results I guess.

And the session with Corrine how clients act, and the street fight demonstration was really cool. Felt like I’m at the cafe of TBWA (Used to work for some years, I call them the most depressing years of my career) and complaining about some clients of ours. An endless and unsolvable subject! But felt good to share it!

This week we will work on guidelines with our team’s fellow designers; Seb & Gin this week. And the site will look more professional and cleaner… I’m also working on the potential advertisers list this week. And will see the results in the coming weeks…

And worked on a “Why Use Social Media” presentation for a Factoring company. They definitely know what twitter, friendfeed, a blog, etc… but do not know how it can add value to their projects, new business development, etc… I guess that was what Corrine meant last week. It took such a time, but definitely worth it, a good brain exercise from an optimistic point of view! (Would like to upload it, but unfortunately not in English)

And to conclude here’s a nice talk from Edward De Bono about Creative (Lateral in his terms) thinking.