One of my Advertising-Marketing Communications students, Katy Treble, explained in her Campaign Research Brief for Advertising Strategy 2011 (quoting Cowling, 2010): ‘Australia has one of the highest uptakes of social media in the world.’ She advised: out of Australia’s ‘population of 21 million, 14 million Australians are Internet users…The huge amount of Internet users in Australia resulted in $2.3 billion in online advertisements sales in 2010’.
For Advertising-Marketing Communications students social networking needs to be part of their routine, even though there is nothing routine about it. They not only engage with sites, but due to the volume of online advertising they have the opportunity to evaluate and critically analyse the effectiveness of campaigns, greatly assisting them in their critical thinking, conceptual skills, and creativity.
As discussed in the post ‘It’s all about you…YouTube’, social networking platforms enable the industry to share and showcase their creativity, as well explain the effectiveness of a creative campaign through an online case study. As highlighted in the post ‘You want evidence…you get research’, proving the success of a campaign either through sales or behavioural change is what all campaigns are trying to achieve.
One way to consider it is: ‘to expose students to expert performance is to give them a model of how a real practitioner behaves in a real situation’ (Herrington and Herrington, 2006. p5).
Treble (2011) explains that YouTube has been the global leader in delivering online videos to a mass audience. Its success it has also assisted in encouraging other sites to develop, such as Vimeo www.vimeo.com , a New York based social networking site that allows open membership so as to share creativity (videos). In an effort to enhance the users creativity, the site features tools to assist users in producing their videos (source: Vimeo, 2011).
Another site that is more focused on the sharing of creative ideas is the Australian-developed The Inspiration Room, http://theinspirationroom.com/daily/ (source: The Inspiration Room, 2011).
What both have in common with other similar global social networking sites, is that the industry uses these sites as a vehicle to showcase their work and promote their achievements. In a teaching and learning context it means they provide easy access for students to source some of the leading and innovative creative campaigns. As mentioned previously, this supports students as they have the opportunity to source campaigns that might appeal or be in a style that reflects their own work. It also enables them to analyse the success or lack of and how this could impact on their own work.
In my classes I actively encourage the sharing of ideas and I promote this through the online learning platform Moodle. I establish discussion posts where students are encouraged to source campaigns and analyse their effectiveness against theoretical concepts. In addition to YouTube, students tend to seek out case studies from Vimeo and The Inspiration Room. Two examples that were sourced by students were the Litago Cow Shake http://vimeo.com/19249751 and the 2010 Ad of the Year (2010 Cannes Lion and Primetime Emmy), the Old Spice ‘The man your man could smell like’ http://theinspirationroom.com/daily/2010/old-spice-manmercials-man/ The students who analysed and shared these campaigns through online Moodle forums were able to explain strategic industry approaches that were used in both campaigns.
As Herrington and Herrington (2006) describe: ‘In many university courses, students are given no examples of experts performing (a) task, or of expert comment, to enable them to model real-world practice.’ (p5). By encouraging students to use digital platforms, especially social networking sites, as they might use an academic text book provides them with first-hand experience of industry’s innovation and creativity.
References:
Annous, N. sourced: Proctor and Gamble’s Old Spice ‘Smell Like a Man’ from The Inspiration Room:
http://theinspirationroom.com/daily/2010/old-spice-manmercials-man/ and http://theinspirationroom.com/daily/2010/smell-like-a-monster-on-sesame-street/ as referenced on post: ‘The Man Your Man Could Smell Like’. University of Canberra Learn Online Moodle, Client Relationship Management 8137, Tuesday, 12 October 2010, 04:41 PM.
Bakk-Rostad, L. sourced: Litago Cow Shake online case study from Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/19249751 as referenced on post: ‘Guys, you really need to see this’. University of Canberra Learn Online Moodle, Advertising Strategy G 7732, Thursday, 17 February 2011, 01:33 PM.
Herrington, A. and Herrington, J. (2006) What is an Authentic Learning Environment? Idea Group Inc.
Old Spice (Proctor and Gamble) 2010 creative campaign ‘The man your man could smell like’ produced by Wieden+Kennedy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owGykVbfgUE Winner 2010 Grand Prix Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival http://www.canneslions.com/ and 2010 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Commercial http://www.emmys.tv/
Further reference Wikipedia ‘The Man your Man Could Smell like’ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Your_Man_Could_Smell_Like accessed 7 May 2011.
The Inspiration Room, http://theinspirationroom.com/daily/ accessed 7 May 2011.
Treble, K. (2011) Campaign Research Brief for Heineken. Produced for University of Canberra Advertising Strategy G 7732, Semester 1 2011. Referencing: Cowling, D. (June 2010). Social Media News, ‘Social Media stats in Australia – Facebook, Blogger, Myspace’, retrieved from: http://www.socialmedianews.com.au/social-media-stats-in-australia-facebook-blogger-myspace/
Vimeo, www.vimeo.com accessed 7 May 2011.
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