#IamSocial: The halfway point
Time is flying by and we’re just over halfway through our graduate scheme rotations! Alex has been writing his socks off in editorial and, since my last post, I’ve been looking for brand insights with the strategy team and helping organise video shoots with the production department… my hands even had a starring role!
Taking a ‘hands-on’ approach to help with Facebook video content for one of our FMCG brands
So, what is strategy?
Strategists, planners, strategic planners … whatever you choose to call these guys, they definitely have to have their heads screwed on. By extensively researching the market and understanding the target audience, they must establish the key strategic insights which lie within a business problem. Equipped with this information, they then agree upon a strategy with which they can produce a creative brief to help get the right ideas to power this and bring it to life.
I quickly learnt that this is no easy task, and the team let me get involved at every stage of the process. This involved finding and analysing examples of great competitor work, trawling through YouTube video comments to understand audience motivations and sitting in creative briefs and brainstorms to see how the professionals really do it. This all gave me a greater understanding of the extensive background work that happens before an advertising idea is even a spark in the creatives minds.
Alex and I hijacking a Christmas shoot for some cheesy grad family photos
How about production?
A relatively new team to the We Are Social arsenal, production are behind almost every large-scale project in the company, ranging from website builds to YouTube series to big photoshoots. They are involved at every single stage of the process to make sure it goes to plan, is kept within budget and is delivered on time. To do this, they often need specialist knowledge, for example to know approximate costs, equipment needed or legalities surrounding an idea.
During my time in production, I spent an amazing day at the F&F live Twitter takeover event with celebrity stylist, Angela Buttolph. The brand set out to solve the online community’s Autumn style dilemmas, people could tweet in their problems using the hashtag #AutumnSOS and would receive personalised responses and video content answering their fashion questions. It was a really enjoyable and successful day, which even beat the summer event results.
One example of content created on the day using the real-time catwalk
But it’s not been all work! We returned to the Twitter offices for an informative workshop about the platform’s updates and Twitter cards. We also attended the expertly named ‘who wants to be a WAS-illionaire’ company quiz night; involving some pretty horrendous team names, copious amounts of food and drinks plus debatable quiz-playing ethics. All in all, it’s been a busy couple of weeks, so I shall leave you with a few learnings from my recent graduate scheme experiences.
Some things I’ve learnt so far:
- Strategy taught me the importance of having clearly defined audiences and content pillars to make sure everything that gets made has a purpose, in keeping with the saying “don’t make content for the sake of content”
- Twitter showed off their new feature, the Buy Now button, allowing users to purchase items through the app without ever leaving the platform. It is in the early stages of development and currently only available to a select few US brands, but is an interesting move for the company and should further establish Twitter as an advertising platform to be reckoned with
- Stretching your legs and arms into unnatural positions in a sweaty office, is a sure fire way to break the ice with new colleagues at the twice weekly WAS yoga classes…. or you can just stick to rounds of Jagerbombs at company socials
- Also remember, in case the other grad pops up on your dating app, swipe left, delete the app, throw your phone under the nearest bus
