Chapter 2: Back to school, mental illustration and cool projects

Winter holidays are over and we got back to business. On Monday we presented our videos to Eija from Super Park and that was exciting because I'm pretty sure that she couldn't imagine even in her wildest dreams how good they're going to be. We also presented our thinking how they should improve their marketing in social media and marketing altogether. My thoughts were true, all groups got only positive feedback and Eija was thrilled. I think Super Park will rise from the ashes to shining star because with the possibilities and potential they have, it would be only fair. Also the winner of which Super Park video got most viewers was revealed and team DigiInspiration won, they got over 1000 views, very nice!

Winner of Super Park assignment, Congratulations DigiInspiration!

Ilkka held lecture for us about thinking. Only thing you can control 100 % is your own thinking. That's true but it's actually way harder than it sounds. We tried this mental illustration thing in school where you put your eyes closed and think of couple of people close to you, then big problem you have, after that you go the most comfortable place you can think of and ask them what should you do. That was variation of Napoleon Hill's invisible counselors method. I had unfortunately such a bad focusing day so it didn't work for me this time but I will definitely try that next time when I have a big problem. I've red this article that people only uses 10% of brain capacity and if we were able to use all of it, we could speak telepathically and we could read other's mind. Reading other minds would be probably little scary but super cool, watch the movie What women want haha. That probably would make world also little quieter place but imagine how different world would be.

Emotional intelligence is pretty awesome thing if you think of it. You recognize your own and others emotions and you can use them to guide your behavior and thinking. Subconscious is very strange but yet awesome thing and power of it can't be denied. It's also one of the things you can affect for example with jedi mind tricks, and i'm not talking about hip hop duo which is also great, check the link Jedi Mind Tricks

Hahaa got ya! I meant this one Jedi Mind Tricks, very nice examples how your mind and subconscious can be changed.

Creativity is everything in the world and everyone. I had wrote this to my notebook because it was so well said, it was from one of the voice messages Ilkka showed us during the lecture. Everything and everyone... that's lot of things. This sentence made me realize all the possibilities we had in world and all the possibilities we haven't found yet. As I told in my pitching video that everything is combination of something, I'd like to add that it's also about finding the right combinations.
Talking about videos, we also made greeting video from our group to Kyla Mitsunaga considering her PET talk. All the groups should come up with one question about her talk. I'm really waiting her to answer us! Well that was Monday.


On Friday we got two guest speakers and we got our fourth assignment, nice! First we had presentation held by Jouni Varpelaide from Nobot company which creates social media solutions for example websites and content in social media. The presentation was awesome and very appealing. I loved that the company keeps young people in the center of it and actually almost all the contracts with customers are made by young employees. That's the way to involve younger people! Nobot's values were also very interesting because their focus was on transparency and lacking of secrets which leads to healthy environment in company. Building trust is crucial. Our assignment was to make short video for them from the book they've made: Guidebook to healthy company (Terveen yrityksen työkirja) which you can download for free on their website. Our video will be from chapter 10 which is about caring, inclusion and celebrating. Task is to create video how those things should be done in our dream working place. Looking forward to it because Nobot was little bit mystic and I wouldn't be surprised if they would use the gestures groups come up with in their company's real life.

Other speaker was Joanna Purosto from MMA (Myynnin ja markkinoinnin ammattilaiset) and I liked it also very much. She presented many basic points about selling but she emphasized meaning of asking the right questions, which is sometimes really hard because you can't read customer's mind. I think every salesman got unique style of selling and it's not about the guidebook which says for example open questions are always so much better than closed ones and you have to follow some specific guideline in every sales event. Environment changes, so should you and you have to comply in each situation you get in. And just to be sure, I don't say that guidebook material is unnecessary, NOO, it's very crucial know the basics and more BUT you don't have to follow it exactly every time, you can think of it more like a red line and everything around the line changes. If you are good enough you don't have to follow every guideline exactly, actually in my opinion when you don't have to do that, you are possibly better than someone else because then you have thought by yourself. As I told you in my last post that it's possible to mix stuff up, pick the best ones, shake them, add your own thinking there and waduuup, you have your unique style. Oh did I mention that if something doesn't work, you can leave it or replace it with something better. I've also noticed that sometimes closed questions are more effective than open ones;D it depends on environment your are in, how impressive you can be and how you have managed to perform the whole sale session. You can be perfect and learn all the books about selling and marketing upside down and still not be the best salesman. My opinion!

Thanks for reading!

- Miikka

Glimpse to my winter holiday

Winter holidays, oh yeahh! This blog post will be little different than my other posts because we didn't have lectures at all. I'm gonna give you little glimpse to my outside of school life and it's not my style at all. I'm gonna keep this post short, so I don't reveal too much;)

On Monday we had little Fifa 16 session  with my friends. After tournament, not much to tell, I won as always. Maybe home field gave me little advantage but I don't admit.

The greatest game ever

On Tuesday we had planned to go see Champions League match Arsenal - Barcelona to Sports Academy. Me as a Barcelona fan since 2004 and Roni and Miro true Arsenal fans. I also got Henri and Tommi along side with me to support Barcelona. After couple of beers and wine bottles Barcelona won 2-0! Sorry guys but I'm not sorry at all. I don't want to brag too much because one game still left and anything can happen in football.

Messi scored 2 goals against Arsenal and led Barcelona to victory

On Saturday I had my old work mate's going away party which made me little bit tired on Sunday if you know what i mean;) And of course I had left all school stuff for Sunday but no worries I got everything done on time. Our only task on this week was to watch Kyla Mitsunaga's video. My hangover little bit distracted my thinking but the video was simply amazing. At first she talked about how different words with and at  can be. After that the topic brightened to me. One point was that teachers should learn with their students and me as a student should think am I learning with teacher or am I learning from teacher Just watch the video, very nice points there. I've actually always thought that learning with others is very good educational method because if you think about it, there's much more possibilities and ideas in group, just pick the best ones and add your own thinking there and VOILÀ. All in all pretty footballish week but what can I say, the best sports in the world!

See you on next week, probably little bit more school related stuff!

-Miikka

Week 5, take a comfortable position and enjoy this blog post!

Week 5 started on Monday with lecture about marketing in social media, again held by Anna Ikonen. First of all I have to thank the teachers for the timing of this lecture because as I told in my last post, we had this assignment from Lacybox to make a social media marketing campaign for them. In lecture we talked about what have to be taken in consideration when starting campaign in social media. What, when, where, who and how is the main guestions basically in every marketing campaign but when going online there are lots of other things to think about. It is a long process from customer's awareness of product to actually buying it and there's different kind of buying scenarios too. Couple of scenarios are webrooming vs showrooming. In webrooming customer searches information from internet and make the purchase in store but in showrooming customer checks the product in store and then makes the purchase online. I thought this through and I came up that I'm mixing of these two. Usually I search from the internet the best solution and then go to store to check it out and then I decide is it cheaper or easier to buy from internet or in store. In my work I hate customers who come to the store and takes my time for half an hour asking questions about something and then says: "Yeah i get it cheaper from online",  that's why I search the information first so i don't have to waste salesman valuable time more than I have to.

Process of making purchase

Anna also showed us examples what kind of things can impact on our minds when it comes to marketing in social media. Especially in videos or pictures you have to think for example coloring, effects, sounds, lenght, pictures, face impressions, texts and much more if you want to succeed and get wanted outcome in marketing campaign in social media. Our group took the lesson and we tried to think all of those things when we did the assignment for Lacybox. Anna also showed us some examples how effective videos can be and this one below I've checked couple of times more because it was absolutely great and I felt united and happy after that. Try also think the combination of all of the effects I mentioned before. By the way I actually didn't realize the lenght of it at all. Enjoy!

                            


On Friday we presented our social media marketing campaign to Lacybox and feedback was mostly positive and owner of Lacybox Lynn-Marie Sederlöf Airisto thought that she could use some of the material in her future Instagram posts. She also liked our humor in the posts. Our team got also little bit criticism because we had used so many pictures instead of using same pictures in different platforms. Sometimes simpler is better. That actually reminded me that in last weeks post I forgot to mention team Funking's idea to SSM which was great. Their idea was that distributors also collect the adverts away from households and recycle them. Effective, environmental, doable and most of all simple. I'm, so idealistic, some also might say sometimes ADHD, I usually got so many ideas right away that I forget that sometimes simple solution could be more effective than hundred ideas. All in all Lacybox assignment was thoughtful and we learned a lot from it.

As wise man once said

That reminded me that Anna gave us also task to analyse one of the quotes she gave us. I chose Wendy Piersall's ''Google only loves you when everyone else loves you first''. In my opinion there's something wrong in this quote. I understand that it means basically that how popular you are in social media channels, how active you are in social media and how much followers you have there, the higher you get in Google. BUT something is forgotten... It's $$$ money $$$, you can buy your place in google if you have enough money. Based on this I made up my own quote '' Money rules the world if you let it ''. Somebody else might have made something similar but either way something to think about.

Right on

Friday's second lecture we got to the point that everyone had waited, presenting the promotion videos which all teams made for Superpark. WOW was the reaction after seen all of them. I really loved the different ankles and stories that teams had came up with. Got to give little bit respect to other teams, I've checked Funking team's and DigiInspiration team's videos again couple of times because I really liked them. But got to stand our team's ground I think that our team's video is supercool too and our ankle was to shoot it for (local) sport clubs and that's why we had our football jerseys on. Our second point was that Superpark should widen their target group because all of our team members are over 20 years old and Superpark's target group is 9-16 years old and we had so much fun there. They could advertise it more like an sport event than fun day at the park because sporty lifestyle is on the surface at the moment. So without further ado, below is our video, ENJOY!

Yours sincerely,

Miikka

Week number 4: SSM and going crazy in Superpark

On Monday we presented our ideas to SSM (Suomen suoramainonta). Like I told in the last post our task was come up with a solution(s) what else distributors can do than distribute adverts and how SSM can improve their marketing in social media. Our idea to them was that they should create a website where is possible to customer put help needed for example cutting lawn, cleaning, snow work or babysit. Then worker can take the jobs from the website. Point was that those are pretty easy skills that most of the distributors can do. When the job is done, customer confirm it, gives feedback to worker and worker gets paid. Check out Handy.com so you might get the idea better. Other point was that in today's economic situation it is so difficult to get any kind of job without experience and this is good way for younger people to get that. This kind of thing also gives good picture and respect for company also because youths are Finland's future. Our point was also that our solution creates value for every part of it for example job experience for younger people, respect and visibility for SSM and of course for customer that somebody helps them with tasks they don't have time to do. We also encouraged SSM to be more active in social media and if they want to reach young people they must speak their "language". Group Fantastic four had taken this idea little bit further and they made an example of the website and how it should look. Well done again!!

Feedback from SSM representatives was only positive and they liked our idea very much because of our viewpoint of young people and how they should be treated. Ilkka also gave us positive feedback about presentations marketing style. All in all SSM representatives were wondering on and on how they are impressed what every group had came up with. Anna also told that they needed convincing to come co-operate with us. Shame on them!! I'm pretty sure that they are thinking differently now and hope they realize to apply projects like this more often because we are the future's working force and we know how our generation thinks

On Wednesday we went to check out the Superpark and shoot some video material for our promotion video to them. WHAT A PLACE IT WAS! We literally went crazy there, we were like kids again. We had such a good time there playing football, floorball, baseball, basketball etc. And we got pretty good material for the video too, you'll see! At the end of the day we were exhausted and we didn't realize it until we left there. What a great way to do sports. We would definitely recommend this place to everyone because you don't even realize how much you get exercise there. For the most people (like myself), I hate just to go jogging, I need something else there, that's probably why I play football;D just kidding football is the greatest sport ever! But Superpark is another solution for people who needs something else there.

Yeah we had our football jerseys on in Superpark for a reason

On Friday I missed the bus and i missed the first 15 minutes of presentation that Lynn-Marie Sederlöf gave us. I catched up pretty fast and we actually got our fourth assignment. When I heard what was it I was little bit disappointed to be honest. Task is to make marketing campaign for subscribe webpage Lacybox. It includes land page designing, Facebook posting, Instagram posting, okay at this point it doesn't sound so bad, wait when you hear what the product is...:D WOMEN'S UNDERWEAR and our group should target the campaign to hen parties. Okay i'm not afraid of women's underwear I've seen them before but I really don't know how to advertise them or how to advertise hen parties. But when I taught this through it actually doesn't sound so bad because i'm willing to improve myself all the time and I really hate if I suck at something, so i'm gonna take this as self development and we will nail this campaign.

This is how i would describe this task: Even though it seems to be hard, it's still possible

Yeah thank you for reading, see you on next week!

Week number three is almost over so what's new?

On Tuesday we had two interesting guest speakers telling about companies they work for. First was representative from Superpark. It's indoor activity park where you can do lots of fun stuff for example skate, cycle, try baseball, shoot football in radar etc. So basically fun park for duracell bunnies like me. Superpark is actually first client for our team and our task is to make an advertising video for them and choose the ankle to whom we are going to advertise it. YEEES finally we get down to real business! In my opininon Superpark has very cool idea because they are trying to combine activity and digitalisation which is very important in nowday's world. Kids, youngsters and also adults should move much more to keep healthy lifestyle in today's digital world. Actually I've never heard about the company before and have lived in Vantaa for quite some time. Something is clearly wrong in their marketing because in my head they should've reached Vantaa already and this kind of activity park should be on everybody's lips. Hope our video will help them reach more audience. Their main target group according to presentation is young people aged 9 to 16. I think that there is a gap in markets for older people, I mean like ages 20 to 50 for example Christmas party's and for the sport clubs. They have mentioned those in their websites but when I asked my football team mates have they heard of Superpark, they hadn't'. I also asked from my working mates and neither had they. Oh did I mention that my football team is from Vantaa and I'm working in Jumbo which is walking distance from Superpark. Something to think about.

Even though you have reached one target group it doesn't mean that your job is finished

Our second speaker was from SSM (Suomen suoramainonta) and we got our second task from them. They distribute advertisements and their distribution channel reaches 85 % of households in Finland which is quite impressive. So 15 more percent to go;D. Question why stayed in my mind because according to presentation it's the key word of understanding things. After you understand why, you can move to the next questions how and what. Representative also talked about purpose of doing work. That is actually what I have taught of a lot. Companies main target is to make money but my purpose for working is not make money for the company. That's one of the main reasons why I got back in school, I want make something that matters to me, something I can be proud of, something I really like to do. Those are the motivators I need, if  I'm not interested in something, I do it with half a lights (puolivaloilla). Money should come to my pocket and company's pocket side of those things. We also talked about passion and how it's one of the key things which leads to actions. Got to agree with that because when I'm passionate about something I'm usually very good at it. In today's world money is not good motivator enough. Our task was to think some other things that their distributors can do than distribute and how to improve their communication and marketing styles. They got mounting to climb on that, got to say. Their only social media channel was Facebook and last post was two months ago. I also think that companies should understand how good actually message application Whatsapp is, we actually use it in our work everyday. In my first blog I told my rebellious attitude towards social media, I meant it in personal life BUT for companies it's crucial if they want to keep themselves in competition. There is no digital strategy anymore just strategy in a digital world. They have many young distributors in SSM working for them and to young people social media is everyday life. In my opinion that is huge possibility to think wider. There's a lots of other things that distributors can do side of distributing and we are presenting our ideas of it to SSM on Monday. On next week's post I will tell our ideas, did they like them and feedback.

Think of your purposes

Thursday Anna gave us a lecture about cultures and how different they can be. It is vital to everybody understand differences between cultures. Also companies should be aware of that going global doesn't mean that you are international, companies should know the differences between cultures where they are expanding to. Cultures can be categorized so many different ways that it is impossible me to open all of them to you. There's a coffee culture, food culture, time culture, cultures in different continentals and of course in different countries, Laurea has different culture than Haaga Helia etc. Everybody knows that Finnish people are for example more undemonstrative than Thai people but there can be similar behavior in Thailand also than in Finland. In my opinion culture is a behavior model that you learn when you are a kid and when you grow you add there continuously something. What I mean that everybody has their own culture inside of them because we are individuals. It is also important to think of your own behavior for example in discussion situations with somebody who's from the different culture. They might understand your tone wrong, your gestures wrong, your jokes differently. It is iceberg because you only see 1% of a person and other 99% hidden. BUT remember trying to understand the cultural differences is gesture itself and I think that it is one of the things that everybody appreciates.

Okay that was my blasting, see you on next week!

Whats up week number two!

Waduuuup everybody?!? Here is summary of second week and much more. Enjoy!

Tuesday 26.1.2016 we had a lecture held by Anna Ikonen and it was about branding yourself and what should take into consideration. At the beginning Anna told us how my generation are digital natives and how we were born in digital era. She also explained why it is hard to older people to get along with digitalisation. Reason is because we were born with it, older people have to learn it from the very beginning. It was very interesting and made me think a lot. Anna also made us think and write how we use digitalisation in our everyday life. Below is what I came up with, I actually drew because as you can see I'm pretty awesome drawer.

The first picture is my mobile phone

If you didn't know, your personal brand is YOU. ''Your name is your brand and face is your logo'', that was a line from one slide in lecture and it was pretty nice phrase got to say. Anna also told us about making first impression and basically how it takes only seven seconds to make it and it is very hard to change afterwards. ''You don't get a second chance to make an first impression''. That's a line everyone should take in closer view because if you have only seven seconds, you should do it right. It was also quite interesting when we talked about what you give yourself to others. My public self is what I show to others for example in Facebook. My hidden self is what I choose to hide from others. Third was blind spots which are the things of me that I don't see but others do. That was pretty funny because Anna gave us example of it and I can share pretty similar with you. In high school one of my friends kept this presentation and kept saying ''totanoinni'' and we started counting them. After the presentation we told that he said over hundred times that, so maybe you should stop it:D...And I never heard him saying ''totanoinni'' again. Fourth is my unconscious self and it means parts I don't see and neither do others. For example who would you save from the sinking ship if there were your family and you have a chance to save only one. That's a impossible question!

On Thursday 28.1.2016 we had this awesome guest speaker Heini Karppinen from Mehackit. She told us what she do and she have done. She made me realize very good points for example that I have more working connections that i knew because every company I've worked for is attached to other companies. That made me think what I have done and what I can do. Heini also told that is good to have skills first and dreams after because your skills are propably the key thing achieving your dreams. She also told basics how group sales actually works, so if something works here in Finland in some place, it'll propably work in similar places somewhere else. And other good point was for me because i'm salesman myself that those who buy the first product typically also buys the second one.
I watched recently the movie Theory of everything which is based on Stephen Hawkins life. After the movie I made quick searches about him and in one of his interviews he had told that he are afraid that digitalisation develops faster than we learn to use it. That's exactly what Heini Karppinen told us. SCARY!

Movie was okay but it should have had more information about Stephen Hawkings thesis

Then we had two Kevins who told us project they made for air purifier company. They had a pretty good point that we are privileged to have so much technological skills. The project they made for the company was making the websites better, marketing in social media etc. Decision makers in that company was middle aged bosses who didn't know how to do that. So pretty basic sounding stuff, of course it's not that simple and they have to be very good at those things. They actually got paid for that, well done! So I learned that I really have to start thinking what I really can do because some of the basic stuff I know might not be basic to somebody else.

Third Kevin of the day

Our main task of the week was make a pitching video. Nooooo videos again... If you remember from the first post, that is not my number one thing. I had many ideas right away but executing them is different thing :D So with basic cut and glue style editing I came up with this. Enjoy!

Very exciting course of digital Business started

On tuesday 19.1.2016 first week of digital business was kicked off. Actually  I didn't know what to expect and actually still don't know. At the moment because i know so less about this course, I really hope that it will at least improve my English skills to the top. Tuesdays lecture was my first of this year and my focusing wasn't the best. I knew that we would have the same team that we had last years project. It's great because with this team we had so much fun doing the project last year. First things first, we were told that we are going to write a blog in this course. At first i was like ''You got to be kidding me?!''. Okay i'll take you little bit back in time. I have always been little bit rebellious when it comes to social media or something related to it. I actually signed up on Facebook in last October because we had this Bspirit course which kind a made me to. I don't know why and it's strange because i'm always very aware what is happening in digital world and i actually work in a electronic store. So writing a blog... Hmm okay i'll write you a blog!

On Tuesdays first lecture we had these two awesome guest speakers Laura Laukka from last years course, who was selected to write a blog to MMA because her blog has achieved great success. The other one was Ronja Salmi, very talented young woman who has achieved so much in her life even though she is only 22 years old, very inspiring got to say. She had lots of very good points and one which stayed in my mind was saying YES to everything and how it might open up the doors you couldn't even imagine.

Maybe this movie inspires me to say more YES

Our first task as a group was think and make a presentation how the digital world is going to look in 2020. That was really fun and our group POJAT (former KONONEN, thank God we changed the name) came up pretty awesome and yet little unrealistic ideas from time travelling to cars opening with fingerprints. Our ideas might have been kind of things that we maybe want to happen;D

And on Thursday 21.1.2016 we got to hear what other teams had came up with. Very crazy and yet interesting ideas was shown and it opened up little bit my own thinking too. One group (FantasticFour) really impressed me because they had pretty similar ideas with my own about that digitalisation shouldn't affect so much in kids and ourselves and how we should enjoy the things around us for example the beautiful nature. And the point that we should actually take a step back was awesome. Props for that!!! I think that first step is to realize the problem and then do something about it.

  This kind of nature we have #VisitedOneTimeInSummerCottageLastSummer

On Thursday we had little bit guidance how to make a video. Well that was new. We got this task before lunch that we should make one minutes video clip and edit it. I was like basic me ''Yeah yeah easy piece of cake'' style, the ones who knows me, knows what i'm talking about. So below is what i came up with. Oh and the topic was Friday...


                                     

Do I need more practice? Nooo I'm finnish man I will learn myself. To be honest I'm pretty sure i need little bit more guidance with that. Glad we have Tommi in our group, maybe he will help me. All in all week was great and I can't wait what's coming up next! Hope you enjoyed reading (like it's possible:D),

See you on next week!