Sarah:

The first thing we did (and that which was the most fun) was create our radio spots. We had two sessions in the studio. The first time, Kevin couldn't attend, and so we had to improvise the male voice for the second radio spot. Alicja provided the base vocals, and then we played around with the pitch until we came up with something we could live with. It wasn't perfect (and therefore funny as hell), but it would do. Unfortunately, we had planned on getting the blog "corrupt.blogspot.com" rather than "corruptsurvey", but that plan fell through-after we'd already recorded our spots. So we went back to the studio a second time. We easily re-recorded both my and Melissa's voices saying the proper address and edited them into the spots. This time, we also had Kevin (although no Alicja), and we had him read the male part for the shower spot, which worked wonderfully.

I really liked the idea of the radio spots, partly because it was unique, partly because it was free, and also partly because I knew it would be almost impossible for the other groups to subvertise it without radio time of their own.

I also put up two of our largest posters in the Student Life Centre, around the bannister in the food court. Upon seeing them up there, I would redesign them significantly, given a second chance. I would make the URL quite a lot bigger, and I would make sure the posters were trimmed properly (I didn't realize there was so much waste space on them until they were up), to name but a couple of major things. I put up some of the smaller posters and distributed some flyers around Toronto, as well. Again, on reflection, I would have made up some of the fortune tellers myself and distributed them, as well, given another chance. As it was, at the time I was simply interested in moving quickly through the subway trains and not getting stopped for littering.

Overall, I think we did quite well. Our group worked together nicely and we wound up with some good results. The radio spot was fun to make, and pretty much subvertisement-proof given the circumstances.

What might be interesting would be to have two projects throughout the term. I know I at least learned a lot just through this project that could very effectively be brought to bear on a second.

Kevin:
I think one of the most important things our group did was follow the advice given in Pricken's book, Creative Advertising, to keep coming up with ideas and avoid settling on the first thing we come up with. So we ended up with flyers that can be interactive and interesting, rather than plain posters that people could dismiss easily, not matter how well-designed and rhetorically interesting they may have been. Although one of our ideas, to have an insert ad in Imprint, would have been really effective, it was too costly. And, I guess, the posters we did use ended up being effective, but I'm glad we had something interactive in our campaign.

In distributing flyers, I put them all over campus. I concentrated on areas that had a lot of computers, often just putting a few right in front of or next to them. I also placed them on stacks of Imprint and other campus newspapers, because that is where people go when they want something to look at. The ads I put there also did not get thrown out, and I saw some stacks slowly shrinking over the week.

In making the radio ads, for my part, I tried to make the ad funny, and have some buildup toward the URL so that people could remember it. But, having spent no money in this campaign, if we had known we would have been able to do that going in, we should have bought our own domain. It would have been easier to remember and more professional-looking.

I think the strength of our campaign was the wide distribution we created. Though we did not have a major attention-getting centerpiece like some groups, or face-to-face interaction, I think those things are not as powerful as a widespread campaign on limited resources. But I think having a major on-campus event or object, coupled with widespread advertising that connects with the event or object would have been very effective. But in choosing one or the other, I think we did the right thing with a widespread campaign with no major center point.

Alicja:

I designed the paper fortune advertisements, and distributed them in Waterloo, Kitchener, and Burlington. I constructed about 100 of paper fortunes, and left them on desks throughout the St Jerome, Dana Porter, and Davis Centre libraries sitting on their tear-off sheets with our website's address. I designed our webpage and "click here" icon, and installed Google Analytics. I did a lot of chalking throughout Kitchener and Burlington. I chalk-grafittied quite a few buildings... good thing chalk is non-permanent!

I helped out with our initial radio ad recordings, but in the end my computer-altered voice could not compete with Kevin's manly one. I sent out an invitation to our site to every single person on my Facebook friends list. Exhausting work THAT is...

I really enjoyed this whole experience. I'm very happy that I had the chance to work with Sarah, Melissa, and Kevin. I think we all worked really well together and because of that, the process went quite smoothly. I wish we had more time to continue with our campaigns, just to see how effective our marketing strategies were. Like professor O'Gorman said, I think what made this whole process so interesting was the fact that we didn't really have anything concrete to market. It really enhanced our creativity.

I'm happy that we chose to use a scatter-shot approach. As of Wednesday, we were in second place, which means that SOMETHING we did had to have worked.

All in all, this was a really unique and interesting experience for me. It would be nice if other English courses offered the same type of hands-on interdisciplinary projects as this one.

Melissa:

I coordinated and booked studio time at the radio station. I wrote three different radio scripts and, together with the group, decided which we should go with. Additionally, I did a pretty extensive chalking circuit around campus and around KW. Originally, I started doing the ground, but with the snow we ended up getting, I instead found classrooms. I went out postering with the 11X17 “Are you Corrupt?” poster designed by Sarah. I targeted computer labs on campus, the PAS building, Hagey Hall, and the Applied Health Sciences building. I affixed the poser anywhere I could, from washroom stalls to food booths using heavy duty packing tape.
Also, I did the Facebook route and went to many of my friends to ask for their help to click our link.


Additionally, I took our cootie catcher flyer and distributed it around key Laurier lounge locations (the Dining Hall, Concourse, and Solarium). I even saw a few groups use the fortune tellers. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a camera at the time.

I think that we did very well with the resources that the group had. We were able to do our campaign for zero costs thanks to connections our group had. I also wished we book the radio ad spots to go until Friday as it was a key part of our campaign. I’d be surprised if we will get very many hits to the site after Wednesday.

I wish that the flash mob we wanted to plan was feasible.


Also, I suppose that it would have benefitted us to have a brand or a logo for our campaign. I guess I kept remembering O’Gorman asserting that the hits to the website were much more than the design process and I think that shows with our web design. It’s very clear what we want our target audiences to do. A special thanks to Alicja for developing our blogsite strategy.

Overall, I’m happy with our campaign. I’m proud to say that as a group we didn’t use dirty tactics against the other groups. We worked well together.

Kevin - Site Remix

So yeah, I changed the site a little. It's surprisingly easy. Tomorrow night I'll trim a lot more stuff. Don't worry, I won't delete anything, but I'll make the archives and stuff invisible so that when people come to the site, it'll just be a message saying to go to Dane's site. I may also make the site look more like Dane's so people don't feel like they've been redirected somewhere else entirely. But I figure this site won't have enough content to really qualify for being marked, so those marks will go into our other stuff.

Kevin - UW Ad Campaign

Yeah, that campaign bothers me too. I just think it's a dumb quotation that everyone uses when they want to seem like a cool visionary. I see it in online discussions all the time when someone is proposing a dumb idea, or talking about how they're outcasts because they "see things differently."

But I think Waterloo's most effective advertisement will be its rankings in Maclean's Magazine. I think I remember someone telling me that it was the president of UW that suggested the "best comprehensive university" category because he knew we would win it, and we weren't winning any of the existing categories. If that's ture, then that's very shrewd marketing.

Melissa noticed a subvertisement on the bus yesterday

I was on the bus yesterday and there was a sign that read: CHASTITY! The choice of the new generation.

Underneath "chastity" in black marker was the word "sucks" and the tag line was transformed into "the choice of the religious agenda". If only I had a camera...anyways, I had a giggle. Since this class I'm noticing stuff like this a lot more.