Brief finished in eight weeks. This project was part of the Creative Project Management module, where we were put in teams of ten to manage a 8-week live brief. The briefs were selected at random, including brands like Chivas Regal and local businesses like Not my Beautiful House or Vintique Upholstery. When we opened the envelope, we got News UK.
INTRODUCTION
News UK are the parent company of newspapers like The Times, The Sunday Times or The Sun. It comes to no surprise that suddenly working for this company surprised us, both because of its sheer magnitude and its multiple controversies. The Times and Sunday Times are right-wing, conservative newspapers; that although have quality sections, working for them could be slightly questionable. The big question is The Sun, a gossip magazine well known for its countless controversies, imprudent uses of their platform and misinformation. No one wants to be associated to The Sun. For many of us this represented a big ethical challenge, we are young university students and want to go against the norm. News UK is the norm.
The brief was extremelly challenging, it asked us to attract young, diverse people to their job application website. News UK is mainly composed, being frank, of old white people; and being one of the leading news sites, a wide array of backgrounds and ethnicities are necessary to portray the world in an accurate light. But with this company and its history it is no surprise their chosen demographic do not want to interact. They were looking for 1m views, 50k in engagement, around 10k in applications and thus 100-500 staff members. The target demographic was set between 14-24.
We had a meeting with Mark, the main stakeholder for News UK, to ask him about our concerns. He was especially transparent and fully aware of all these issues, but communicated that the company was going through changes and this would be part of it. We would have serious issues with contributing to this, but being part of the change one of the biggest news sites in the world didn’t seem too bad.
TEAMWORK
Being in a group of ten, specially in university, one would assume that roughly half wouldn’t contribute much to the project. This wasn’t the case. Everyone contributed their part (Raabia, Georgina and Athena being specially good at this) and even though people like Abhinav and Harshi may or may not have done a not-so-great job, it wasn’t a problem. I was set, with the help of Georgina and Athena, as the manager of the group. This was an especially challenging brief were we had to be extremely careful with every step, and I wanted to make sure that the direction of the project was correct. Overtime, Georgina got more and more involved; and Athena did the same. Being honest, when the course of the ship was set, i focused on what I had to do and let the rudder to them; handing Georgina and Athena the management position. Being more critical, I got very busy and wasn’t able to micromanage people to the extent required, while that’s something that specially Georgina enjoys. She’s a very hard worker and did a great job, although everything must be done her way (for better or for worse).
DELIVERABLES
At the beginning of the project, we brainstormed tissue ideas into post-its and decided which ones to keep by the effort-impact metric. Our main focus was to do a multi-platform social media campaign. We ended with:
- An Instagram filter.
- A Challenge.
- A Mentor Vlogs series.
- A Personality Quiz.
The Instagram filter is a proven idea to get user engagement, it was based around ‘making your own meme’, where a random headline would appear overlaying the image. This is a medium impact, low effort idea. Would I engage with it? No. But if it were to be put into motion,it wouldn’t hurt to try it out.
The Challenge was quite interesting, with the idea made betweer Georgina and I. This would be a short brief with specialised instructions for people to make their own DIY piece of journalism. For example, an interview with your sibling, a feature about a school cantine scandal… The best content would be posted on the News UK instagram page. This is a high-ish impact, high effort idea, that would promote user engagement.
The Mentor Series aims, as some of these ideas do, to make the company and their jobs less daunting. They involve charismatic workers from News UK vlogging their daily life, as well as live Q&A sessions. This is a medium impact, high effort idea, that although important if someone is considering to apply, would mean a lot of work for a not-so-big reward. I was somewhat opposed to this idea, but the team decided to carry along with it.
The Personality Quiz was my idea and my section, where jobs in the journalism industry (feature writer, investigative journalist) are linked to personality traits provided by the Eynseck PEN model. The quiz would be a playful rephrasing of the ten TIPI questions. These two are widely recognised resouces in the field of psychology, with scientific evidence. This will set the test apart from the endless, pointless BuzzFeed-style quizes; while still being as fun to take as they are. The results will be reliable, and relatable to the individual, as well as providing them with a meaningful and realistic job opportunity. The result page will lead to the possibility of applying to the jobs website in the given area. This idea is high-impact and high-effort. I talk in future tense because this was the deliverable chosen to follow through by News UK. Hehe:)I must mention the help i received from Sophie for the copy in my sections, it was key for making it as persuasive as it is.
Overall, it’s very hard to come to the right decission when there are 10 people involved and hours of labor, maybe we could have chosen the deliverables better, but the final pitch was engaging and rich.
PID
Boring, time consuming and virtually pointless; but apparently key for creative projects (and a big part of the grade). I won’t say much because I wasn’t in charge of arrangin it (thank god) but everyone worked tirelessly. I was in charge of the Work Breakdown structure. I don’t think I’ve ever done so much hypothesising in my life. 10/10 would not reccomend.
CONCLUSION
It wasn’t that bad, I ended up really enjoying my part and was extremely happy I delegated responsability to someone that actually wanted to do it. Not to sound cocky but I’m extremely happy that my contribution is what ended up following through. Even though it would have been interesting to follow through with the entire campaign, I’m glad it didn’t. I won’t work for free, and I’m happy with whatever will come next. If I were to do this again, I would learn Excel before beginning the project.
Thanks for reading.
NAMENOTFOUND// 