Three months is not a long period, but this journey is long enough for each of us to gain so many experiences and memories.
Four of us first met each other one year ago, but not until Advertising Industry Practice course was The Twist formed.
Many of our meetings, from the very first ones, happened at a table with blue sofas on level 4 of the campus. We were there, watching the sun came up then down together, and step by step exploring the topics, scrabbling our very first ideas on paper and also learning about our teammates. After all, despite of the differences in personalities and clashed schedules between members, we shared the same passion and responsibility for the campaign. As a result, our teamwork was beyond expectation.
This is how it all started...
The role of each member started to get clearer by the time of assignment two.
In week 5, our progress slowed down because there were so many things that needed to be done, such as preparation for filming the teaser and plan for the four media platforms, but we were stuck with the ideas and could not decide a concept for our campaign. Those were the most gloomy days as we felt like standing in the middle of a crossroad and did not know where to go next. This made all of us feel so stressed, and that was when we had to clearly divide the tasks to share the workload with each other. While Minh was preparing for filming, and Phuong Anh was doing the risk assessment, Hang and Ngoc took care of the four media.
It was still leading nowhere till a night that we can all tell the date exactly: November 23rd, 2016. After late night brainstorming, the first drafts which enlightened our way had been produced.
These drafts may look funny but they are very important since all of the campaign elements were then produced based on them. One more thing, we love these abstract drawings that only us can fully understand, because behind them are our little secrets and memories while working together.
After overcoming that biggest obstacle, we moved to the next stage - turning the ideas into reality.
The most remarkable days were when we were filming the teaser.
Our filming process began with very old-fashioned and unprofessional equipments. On the one hand, this resulted in low-quality media outputs so we had to change our method right after one session and spent another day to refilm the first child actor. On the other hand, we gained some experiences from that failed take and knew exactly how to film what we wanted the next time.
After getting more professional with some experiences in hand and high-quality equipments, we had our teaser filmed smoothly.
It took us a lot of time and effort to carry the heavy equipments to five different locations to setup and film, but also gave us so much fun on set. Above all, the result turned out beautifully and paid off all the hard work.
During the campaign, one wonderful thing to us was the chance to know the kids. They were all so nice and smart.
Our teaser’s content was quite offensive so the biggest concern was about its impact on our little casts. Before each filming session, we had to make sure that they had been well-explained about the concept and their roles in our campaign.
“These are bad sayings, they can hurt other people and you are helping us to prevent them.”
We could not have succeeded without these lovely kids.
We choose to show the photos with them in full colors because meeting them was the most memorable time, the highlight of our working process.
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Receiving good recognition for two-third of our project, we all determined to fight for the last one.
The showcase preparation process involved many stages so we had a long and detailed progress report to kept us on track. Without any discussion, we all agreed to produce our medium for real, especially the elevator ad and guerilla ad.
The guerilla ad, however, was not as easy to make as we thought. We could not do it by ourselves, and unfortunately, the mechanists in Hanoi refused to help us. We went the extra mile to get the spinning system made in Phu Tho, and everyone had to prepared for the worst case.
To us, this course is not just about completing the assignments, but actually gaining real experiences for running a social marketing campaign. Along the way, we continually received valuable responses and feedback from our beloved lecturers, especially Ms. Linda Nguyen, our peers, both online and offline, and about 70 visitors at the showcase, including RMIT students, staffs, and industry people. Most of the feedbacks indicate the strong impression and complementation on our creativity. Meanwhile, there are some constructive comments, suggesting us thinking more about the impact on other groups of audience to make our campaign more comprehensive. We are so grateful of the attention and support that people have given us.
Finally, we just want to say that this course was an amazing experience to be noted down in the memoir of our student lives. We are truly proud and thankful to have learned, worked, experienced and overcame the hardships together under the name “The Twist”.
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