The Most Important Thing: Make Friends

Hey everyone

With this final blog, the topic of the day is making friends. I think we all understand that we cannot function without having a good circle of friends and this very well applies within the industry that we are going into. The professors in this program will always stress to you on the importance of building relationships with others and to learning to cope with people’s strengths and weaknesses. There will be a lot of times where you will be working with people you like and people you don’t like, but at the end of the day, you are all trying to reach one particular goal. That goal is to succeed and get your feet into the industry

In regards to this program, your peers are the most important people in helping you understand certain assignments better and to help encourage you to work harder as well. One person’s strength is another person’s weakness so you got to help one another in ensuring that weakness becomes a strength. For myself, I walked into this program with the inability to understand certain parameters of the assignments and to understanding some of the concepts that is being taught in the program. The only way I was able to improve on this is to talk to my peers and ask them for help. In return, I provided some of my expertise to helping them finish their assignments as well. Confrontations and frustrations will happen between friends, but these friendships are healthy because they help you understand one another better and to seeing the areas that you should improve on.

This industry we are going into is all about making friends. When you’re in the workplace, you need to build friendships because your going to be working on campaigns with these people and your going to be asking one another for help. Independence is valuable to achieving some tasks, but not all therefore you will need the person beside you to give you some aid at times. Adapting to different people also teaches you to become more flexible as this industry is ever changing therefore you need to learn to adapt to change as well. Your clients are the most important people to your agency therefore building friendships with them is also important as well. Most importantly, these friends will help provide you with the connections to connect with professionals in developing your skills or to even help finding you a job.

As I sign off on this final blog, I wish everyone the best and hope that my blogs have helped you understand Sheridan’s Advertising Account Management program and the advertising industry better.

Setting Up Your Timetable

 Hey Everyone

With this semester ending and with my eventual move into the industry, I would like to share to you a tip that will help you succeed in Sheridan’s advertising postgraduate program and the advertising industry overall. The tip is to develop a timetable for yourself. Throughout this year, I have been bombarded with assignments and tests from all directions and had to plan out my daily schedule to get everything done. I believe you need good time management skills to keep up-to-date with all your tasks as there are a lot of deadlines in this industry that needs to be met and that you have to ensure that you will be pacing yourself at the right speed.

When planning my schedule, I first have to write down all the due dates of the assignments and tests to understand which tasks I have to prioritize over others. Other set dates will also include your part-time or extra-curricular activities that you also need to add into your calendar. Once all these dates are applied, you then start allocating studying and homeworking dates to getting all these tasks accomplished.

Will your timetable change after making it, of course, like what I made there, I can surely say that I did not completely follow through with all my goals for the day. Some of my studying and work times get pushed or sometimes, therefore I had to reschedule and re plan my timetable. Life will never go your way therefore you got to compromise whenever possible.

Back to Advertising Talks: Some Problems with Digital

In today’s post, I would like to discuss some problems with moving to digital. When you guys into this program, your going to understand how this society is gradually moving into the digital age and that traditional mediums will probably become obsolete. As much as I acknowledge this transformation and the opportunities that come with the use of digital mediums, I also notice that some issues may arise for both the viewers and users, especially within the topic of advertising.

I think everyone has stumbled onto this at least once while surfing YouTube. Online videos do open great opportunities to engage viewers by providing them with animated visuals which they can rewind and rematch as many times as they want. The replay option for videos allows advertisers to ensure their viewers can re-watch a video to better grasp the message, product, or service that is being shown to them. But sometimes, there is the option of the "Skip Ad", where we see people being annoyed with the advertisement therefore wanting to skip to watch the v-log, music video, television show, or even movie that they intend on watching. For that reason, I believe sometimes the move to digital may cause problems as many viewers are not interested in the online advertisements rather want to go straight into their intended content. When thinking back to this, I realized how my family and I have always paid much more attention to advertisements on television, newspaper, and occasionally magazines. Even to this day, we pay more attention to this than that of online. For my family, I can definitely say that traditional mediums are still alive. This doesn't mean that "the move to digital" isn't significant as I have gained a lot of insights on this society and have learned a lot about cultures to help me develop a greater understanding of our industry today. 

As you come into this program, you will learn strengths and weaknesses of all mediums and will have your own perceptions on what mediums are growing and which ones are dying.

If possible, I would love to see your comments on today's advertisements and what moving to digital means to you.

Professional Attitude

Salutations Everyone

Sorry for the wait, Part 2 of “Making You Look Professional” is Here. Two weeks ago, I talked about your professional attire, this week I will be talking about professional attitudes.

With today’s topic being Professional Attitude, apart from me explaining this to you guys, I would also like to ask you guys to post here what you think having a “professional attitude” means, or rather how about posting a format of your elevator speech here.

 This whole second semester is about building a sense of professionalism which is what the advertising industry would want from their future advertisers. This includes your dress attire, your judgement free attitude to your colleagues, and to arrive early to class/ work. Tardiness is not appropriate for anyone coming into this program as we are postgrads, which means we have been through our undergraduate phase already and now, we have to leave the parties behind and start showing our postgraduate maturity.

A professional attitude means you are to present to the audience a respectful, mannered, and an overall positive attitude. Some of the components of having a professional attitude includes dressing appropriately, showing respect to your audience by greeting them and to shaking their hand, and sometimes, to even compliment them on their greatest achievements. This week in digital class, I had a small lecture on treating class and any other meet ups like an actual corporate or job meeting. This means that I am to show up on time and prior to the meeting, I am to tell the other parties of my unfortunate absence prior to the meetings. When you are at these meetings, dress appropriately, sit straight, talk with a clear and mature voice (no slangs), and most importantly, be an active listener. This may seem tedious and often times exaggerated for your part, but it is necessary because this shows your maturity and your seriousness to receivers.

In the long run, you will not regret doing this because this will get you the job.

here is also a video on the "Do's and Don'ts in a Professional Workplace". Just like to know what you guys think about this. If possible, lets transform our retail attitudes.