Last week my group presented a proposal in class, our professor is Rhonda Ried, president of the Chamber of Commerce of the Tonawandas here in NY. This campaign was meant to build a consistent brand between the cities of Tonawanda and North Tonawanda.
*Apology for some missing ‘s’s or any other errors in the presentation. As you can tell, I like using 280slides.
On slide 7, we were stuck between “home, canal home” and “canal, sweet canal”. I was leaning towards the latter because it would emphasize the canal = home and seems more grammatically correct.
Mentioned the Ithaca Commons Cam that was done by AWP and @sursly was kind enough to respond to some questions I had regarding the cam.
After the presentation, Rhonda and I talked via email and brought up a volunteer position that I may take for the Tech Committee for the chamber of commerce.
What was learned
I noticed a lot of things watching the other groups present, both good and bad.
I disliked that several groups followed their marketing plan write-up so closely. I believe the presentation should concentrate on the broader concept of the campaign. It seemed some groups took their marketing plan and split it up into slides.
The way our group put our slides together was in this fashion:
- Present results from primary research. Explain what stood out from the research and how we used this for the campaign.
- The concept/theme that is behind the campaign. This is the big idea. This is where we introduced the logo.
- Application. How this would be executed. This included our creative.
- Consequences. What would this require of the client. This is the cost estimation.
One thing that we really missed was not including/emphasizing our objective. We were really pushing to build a brand, since the main issue was awareness of the Tonawandas. A lot of groups were trying to set up events, which I thought may not be the best tactic in this situation.
Another thing that several groups did was insult the client. One group said that they are good with clients who have gone ‘stale’.
On the first day of presentations, many groups did not use the primary research that was given to us. They quoted stats from their own secondary research which was limited to our own efforts (~30 people surveyed) and the results differed. The survey actually stated that around 60% rated the Tonawandas a 4 or 5 (out of 5).
Results
We won (well our professor picked two groups out of ~10)! They said they liked a lot of our creative, use of research and social media implementations. Got a Tonawandas Gateway Harbor t-shirt, confidence booster and a volunteer opportunity out of it! Presentations are always a learning experience for me. I’m able to keep it together, but I still need to slow down and be clear. I think I may take a public speaking course.
