What Chintage are you?

Chintage, a combination of Chinese and Vintage, is a word I create for this fashion campaign. Chintage is a kind of phenomenon that Chinese old-fashion stuff gets popular.

The goal of this campaign is to create this kind of Chintage in the Melting Pot–New York City. I chose this city not only I am familiar with it but it is made up of 50% non-native residents, so it is generally a city that accept every culture. People here are open, and always ready to try something new and really cool. When Professor asked me about the cultural background that may get in the way of the popularity of the Chintage, I would say sometimes they don’t care the intrinsic cultural meaning when it comes to just a trend of fashion. People wear T-shirts that are full of Chinese characters they don’t understand, because they just think they are cool stuff. As long as it is not ideology or religious sensitive, I think it would be fine.

In order to make this a real phenomenon, I created both marketing plan and Public Relations plan for it. Here is what it would basically look like.The ultimate goal is not making profit but elevate the image of China.

If this program can be supported by my country, I think we are capable of releasing video commercials even on the giant screen of Time Square– to show the world Chintage has come. Also we can invite Talented Chinese designers or corporate with famous designers to put Chintage elements into their design. Exhibition is also a good way to show NYC the beauty and the real meaning of the Chintage, ensuring them to have a better understanding of this fashion. Moreover, we sell the Chintage stuff on line, with regularly promotions. How about a flash mob? People wear Chintage costume or accessories they show up and play a show which is full of Chinese elements. Events in places like Bryant Park is needed, too. I participated the event of “the taste of France”. It was great. I believe people would be interested in an event called “what Chintage are you?”

As for PR plannings, pitching the media, especially the fashion magazine is the top task. Since Asian faces in the fashion magazine covers are so limited, I think this is worthwhile. Of course, I want to create a Chintage that is not exclusive to western world, on the contrary, they can be put together harmoniously. The social media is definitely the most important channels since 100% people that care about fashion are engaged in social media networks. We are going to create official website on social media platforms like Facebook Twitter Instagram and YouTube . which are based on visual information.  Also, we want celebrities to wear our Chintage products as well as fashion bloggers write about this kind of unique fashion. They are opinion leaders and taste makers. Last but not the least, we should also engage the local community.

I hope you guys like this idea and I believe someday Chintage would come true.

 

communication planning for Angela Merkel

Last week, I did a project for Professor Doorley’s class. My client was Angela Merkel, which was pretty challenging for me. Here I want to share my communication planning for her to all of you guys. I’m willing to take any nice suggestions 🙂

Client: Angela Merkel

– Background
~ From East German Government
~ Chancellor of Germany since 2005
~ President of the Christian Democratic Union, the governing party.
~ The second powerful woman in the world, honored by Forbes magazine

– Description (Angela Merkel & Christian Democratic Union)
~ Liberal-conservative political party
~ Dominant Party in Germany

– Audience
~ Young people

– Objectives
~ Maintain and raise her image in the target audience

~ Increase the percentage of young people that is interested in voting

– Tactics
~ Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube)
~ Collage Tour

– Evaluation
~ Hashtags

~ Survey
~ Publicity

Angela Merkel is a German politician and former research scientist who have been the Chancellor of Germany since 2005, and the leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) since 2000. She is the first woman to hold either office. Merkel entered politics in the wake of the Revolutions of 1989, briefly serving as the deputy spokesperson for the East German Government.  In 2007, Merkel was President of the European Council, the second woman to get this charge, after Margaret Thatcher. Merkel is seen as playing a crucial role in managing the financial crisis at the European and international level, and has been referred to as “the decider.” Angela Merkel has been described as the leader of the European Union, and was ranked as the world’s second most powerful person by Forbes magazine in 2012, the highest ranking ever achieved by a woman.

In terms of the key audiences, we are going to focus on the students who might vote for the first time and young people that does not emit their right to vote. Seeing this as an area of opportunity, we are sure that it would be of great benefit for Merkel and the upcoming 2016 election. Most youth do not want to get involved in politics and do not believe in it. Through our objectives, strategies and tactics we want to motivate, encourage and educate them that there are many reasons why they should emit their right to vote. All this, using as an opportunity the factor that most of these young people are unemployed and the Government of Angela could provide them with the tools and opportunities they need to progress.

The objectives of the campaign are to promote her image among the target audience and for them to be interested in vote in a period of one-year campaign.

The campaign strategy is to communicate through forums, most commonly used by the key audience, who is Angela Merkel and what she can offer to these young people.

The tactics we are going to work on are based in social media because the political party is not very active using these tools and there is a huge opportunity to involve our target through these modern platforms. The idea is to track the different platforms as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, and publish everything relevant related to the party and Angela Merkel. The purpose is to create a whole social media campaign called: “The progress is in your hands”. Basically we want to make different commercials about the unemployment percent in Germany, personal testimonies of young people telling their stories since that Angela Merkel has been in the political charge and how she has elevated the productivity in the country and the European Union with her conservative economic policies. As a complement, we want her to form part of the famous phenomenon of the hashtags. Why the hashtags? Because they can be a really useful and helpful tool to measure how many people are talking about her, the party or the elections. It is a tool that helps the evaluation process and it is a continuous communication/feedback process. Also we are going to use the ‘Die Junge Union’, a group of young people who support Angela Merkel and the Christian Democratic Union. What we want to achieve with this group is to get more support and youth voter so she can be re-elected.

The videos would be different in the aspect of content. What we want to achieve are for the commercial to show real facts and we do not want her to be the face of the commercial. In other words, reveal the ad sponsor at the end.

On the other hand, we will assess the impact of the campaign through the amount of followers of the different social media platforms and through ‘hashtags’, which is an excellent way to measure and serves as a filter to know how many people are being impacted with the campaign. Also we are going to use surveys to know what youth think about Angela Merkel, her objectives and the party. The best part is that through social media, people are always giving feedback and we are going to use that to our favor. Additionally, we are going to work with publicity as another evaluation tool, because in that way we can know what forums are covering the news related with Chancellor Merkel, the Christian Democratic Union and the key audiences.

GOOD JOB! DAWN!

First, I want you to know that I am an animal protectionist and hoping you feel the same as I do. Then, just check this out : http://www.dawnsaveswildlife.com/

When saw this ad on YouTube yesterday I couldn’t help saying out loud “wow!” The cool stuff that arouse my feelings so much is an eco-friendly program named “Dawn Saves Wildlife”. You can tell from the name that this is an organization supported by Dawn, a dish washer brand, and its goal is to protect and save the wild animals especially whose habitat is severely interfered by human being.

There are nine episodes of video clips with high quality available on YouTube and their official website that help to illustrate this program. Each video tells a different story, providing a different site to view this meaningful event. Nonetheless, every episode is inspiring, forming motivation for people to be a part of this picture. And, to get involved is easy: to be a volunteer, write a check for that organization, or just buy a bottle of Dawn.

BTW there are really some interesting design in the site that you guys should check out and have a look. For example, once you scroll down the page starts to move and the little duck becomes vivid. There is a picture of ducks consisted by cubes, and when you zoom in you can find there is a name tag on every cube, indicating the slogan of this event — be a part of the big picture.

The part this program impresses me most is that it optimize the whole system so that everyone wins, even the animals. Saying that “you can also be a part of the big picture by simply washing dishes with Dawn,” company’s financial goal be meet, wildlife be saved, people feel good about it, everything is perfect.

I personally hope that there would be more this kind of communication planing.

OMG the Walking Dead is back!

Relax, the world is still in harm and peace with no zombies, but they are on AMC!

THE WALKING DEAD is one of my favorite series. It tells a story that Rick, who woke up in an abundant hospital, found that the world was occupied by extremely dangerous zombies, so he decided to do whatever he can to protect his family and his team made up of several survivors with distinct characteristics. You know, keeping yourself alive in the end of the world is not easy, not only do you have to deal with biters, also those who lose moral standards in SUCH extreme situation. Sometimes, there is no difference between the two.

The Walking Dead  may have a tight budget for advertising because I only see one in the train station. I would not know the latest session was coming up if did not overheard people discussing it. Compared with movies like CARRIE, which has distribute ads on the bus, TV,  and planned special campaigns, WALKING DEAD is a little bit low key or too proud to do mass propaganda (we all know that this show had really terrific performance on ratings).

However, WALKING DEAD is coming together with Hollowing, which I believe was well planned. Also, I see there is a popular app released by THE WALKING DEAD. The app can turn your face into a zombie’s based on your photo, a brilliant idea for Hollowing session. I tried it, it was a great fun！ lol

Once again, I’m so happy that the zombies are back to destroy the world!

 

now, I am expecting CARRIE.

CARRIE is the name of an up-coming movie, which tells a story about a teenage girl, who suffers a lot from being bullied, turns out to be a supernatural power carrier and then starts to revenge the world.

To be frank, this is an old-fashioned story that you can see everywhere in Marvel comic books. We already have plenty of supermen, superwomen and even superanimals that can save the world for like a hundred times. So, how can this movie survive? To me, it is its communication campaign.

Let’s check this out first:

This video was posted on YouTube on Oct 7th by CarrieNYC. Basically, this video is about a tricky game that creates turn a usual coffee shop into a scene in which a girl suddenly finds out she’s got super power like moving stuff by her will. The whole superpower thing is controlled by technical tools of course, but the customer in that shop don’t know that. So it is great fun to see those people’s reaction. In the end of the video comes the real CARRIE from the movie, and with its release date.

It become the hottest video immediately and was put on the YouTube front page for two days. By the time this post is written the video has already been watched for 28,330,114 times and received 186,694 Likes. Amazing, isn’t it?

In my opinion, the coolest part about this this kind of propaganda is that the cost is really low, but brilliant creation is required. If it was an paid advertising, it would cost so much more to get such wide attention and be remembered. It is not the first time I see this kind of interesting propaganda, or marketing, I should say, such as Coca cola. I do not know what it is called but it is really interesting and attractive.

 

Now, I am expecting this movie.

 

The world is experiencing a Candy Crush

“Hey Joy, I might want to borrow your ipad again because all of my lives on Candy Crush Saga ran out”, my roommate said, with obviously agog.

 

This is what happened in my dormitory few months ago, after I downloaded the free game from Appstore and recommended to my roommates. Now, the game Candy Crush has sweep around the world. Time after time I see people holding their ipad or iphone playing this game without even taking their eyes off the devices no matter in subway or elevator. It is so popular that it already became a phenomenon. Also, the triumph of the game leads to the British game maker’s listing process in the U.S, which is actually the motivation why I wrote this post. (http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/british-game-maker-behind-candy-crush-seeking-i-p-o-in-u-s/?smid=tw-share&_r=0)

 

Basically, Candy Crush Saga is like a puzzle game, when three or more identical elements are in a line, they are cleared up immediately. This kind of game has been existed for a long time, Tetris, for instance, but Candy Crush is one of a kind. This even makes me even more curious about its huge success. Listed below is a briefing of some main reasons that I can think of.

 

1. This is an exquisite game that brings the players with amazing visual and sound effect. Unlike simple geometric figures with different colors only, Candy Crush uses, of course, lovely various candies. And with vivid sounds imitating collision of the candy, it makes me feel like I am playing cadies with different flavor! I have to admit that the reason why I downloaded it in the first place is that the icon of the app looks so tasty!

 

1. It is not the kind of game that operates with complex rules and requires you think very hard to figure out how to get passed. On the contrary, most of the time it depends on your luck, because you never know what candies are falling down from the top （life is like a box of chocolate uh?）. So even though you are stuck in a certain level, you would not get tired because there are no exactly same moves. Continuously you think you may get your luck in next trial. More importantly, what do you need after a day of work is a way helps you to relax, not the other way around. You don’t want to look for “troubles”, do you?

 

 

1. The Candy Crush Saga is closely connected to Facebook, you can look for help once you use up all of your 5 lives, and you can see how the game is going on your friends updates, which means, you are connected, you are playing and competing with your friends.

 

In fact, various and even random factors contribute the Candy Crush’s success, I can write only a few of them. Deeper and more comprehensive analyses remains to be conducted.

 

Oh, what happened to my roommate at last? In fact, she bought an ipad4 after a week she had crushed for this game.

hello, I’m already here!

“now I am trying to figure out how this works.”

This is the first sentence I wrote down in the beginning of the semester. Back to that time, I was pretty much lost in the totally different world.

Traveling thousands of miles from home, it is not an easy choice for a student to  come to the US studying nor for his or her family..But here I am, and I will try my best. Till now I still have problem understanding people if they speak too fast, like people who takes my order in Starbucks. I still sometimes cannot understand a sentence even if I knew the meaning of every single word. I still don’t get it when professor tell a joke and  everyone else in the class laugh out loud. But I never doubt my decision coming here to elevate myself.

I would like to share more about my experience and feelings of this program. In general, it exceeded my expectations for this program miles away. Here, I experienced a totally different study environment and methods, which requires an initiative motivation for study. I started to realize that I am studying for myself but a piece of paper with a degree. I met excellent classmates. Yasemin, who is definitely an extraordinary student among the class, works for a Non-profit organization perusing alliance for shared value. She even invited me to her office and introduced their great work to me. Of course she can make serious money in any other jobs such as what Professor Ken offered her, but according to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, she has her self-actualization. We also have Jiangeng Zhang, who works extremely hard to make his way staying in the U.S. and the media industry. We even have super fun student like Daisy. Even at last I may not manage entering this industry which is relatively exclusive for foreigners like me, I will be a better me, and I already am.