Summative Assessment. Time To Pitch. Project Done.

Overall I think that our pitch went well with Nick and Joe leading the way. The panel seemed to like our idea but they thought that we started off very strong and then just fizzled out. There was no bang or spark at the end of the pitch, and the panel felt that we really didn't wrap up or finish with our point boldly stated. I understood their feedback and I agree with what they were saying. They also thought that we were attacking Brainient a little which was not our intention we were just trying to put across how it may be improved. I think that the idea Nick generated was a strong one and worked well. I think that it works well because of the fact that the animation industry is very competitive and people are always trying to find new ways to sell themselves, I think Nick's idea is a way of doing that. Which makes it the main reason its a successful idea. I think that we worked well as a group, I am very grateful to Nick for taking order, sorting everything out and for generating the initial idea. I would have liked to have been included a bit more as I feel like I did not contribute enough. But I think that I did what I was asked to so I fulfilled my role. In the end everything came together perfectly.       

Presentation Slides

Below are images of our presentation that was put together by Joe and Nick.

I think that Joe and Nick did a really nice job with the design of the presentation. Looks like we are now all set to present!

Video Completed

Nick and Joe had completed the video that we will showcase in our pitch in order to sell Brainient's software. Below is a link to the video.

Idea Video

I think that Nick and Joe have done a really good job with the video as it clearly puts into perspective our idea, it also justifies what the brief asks us to do. We were now all set to Pitch!  

Target Audience

So it was my time to shine I had to narrow down and clarify our target audience from our target audience just being 'young professionals'. So I thought to myself that young professional is often a common term for a student. Seeing as the aim of students is to find a job once they have finished their education it became even clearer that I could narrow down our target audience to students that have graduated. I then did some research into the average age of students that graduate and found that it was around 21 - 30.

I thought that I would narrow down the location of these students, I decided upon London as that is a place where the animation industry is booming so their is lots of potential. Brainient is also based there and there are lots of education institutions based in and around London, so it is a location were our idea will work. I also thought that our idea can be applied to a group of people that collaborate together like a small company. Of course if they are graduates then they will be qualified with either a Degree or a Foundation Degree.

I then thought it was wise to state why our target audience would use Brainient. Now that I had all of my  I put it onto a presentation slide and e-mailed it to Joe. Below is an image of the slide that I created.

Now I just had to ensure that our target audience was bullet proof and I would be able to answer any questions asked from the panel after we completed our pitch. Joe then put my slide into the overall presentation for our pitch. 

Research

I decided that before I narrow down and clarify our target audience that I would do some research into Brainient.

I found the Brainient website gave a lot of interesting information. The link to the website is below.

Brainient Website About Us Section

I found out the exact of objective of Brainient. Below is what Brainient states:

'At Brainient, we focus on helping advertisers increase the ROI of their advertising campaigns. BrainStudio, our flagship product, is an interactive advertising platform created with three things in mind: speed, simplicity and compatibility. In just a few minutes, you can create a beautiful, fully interactive video ad and run it through your current infrastructure.'

I personally think that our idea sells Brainients objective. When researching Brainient I also found a very interesting article in the Guardian. Below is a link.

Brainient Guardian Article

The reason that I found this article so interesting is because there is some important company information revealed and the aim is clearly explained. I believe that if we understand the aim of the company and its software then we can mold our idea to fit it, which will hopefully in return ensure that our pitch is successful.

Group Roles

Nick created a E & E group on facebook so that he could keep in contact with us. I thought that this group worked very well. He then posted the message below giving us specific job roles:

'Right, job roles... I'm gonna go ahead and assign people to certain tasks but feel free to switch between yourselves, I don't mind as long as it all gets done.

Realistically I'd like all this done for the most part by Monday, seeing as we're already late to upload anything for the formative assessment. I still haven't had a solution from the guys at Brainient so as of right now the product can't be completed.

JOE - Create the click-through website for a fake company that could have been behind the film. Just on a blog website or something but so it looks kind of professional, with a banner and a consistent theme etc.

ED - Narrow down our target audience. It's not going to be enough to say "young industry professionals" in our presentation so it needs to be much more specific: average age, location, what qualifications they may have, if they are working as a freelance artist or as part of an aspiring team, where they would hope to get to within the industry, why they would find brainient useful and what they would hope to get out of using the software, etc. Just go nuts on it, the more detailed the better.

MYSELF - I'm gonna keep in contact with the guys from Brianient and get the actual product finished. When it's done there will be an animated SWF file placed over the films credits which will act as a click through link to another website that Joe will be creating.

TOM - Market research. See if you can find out who Brainients main competitors are, what advantages and disadvantages they have again Brainient. How other clients have used Brainient to their benefit, etc. Don't worry if Brainient turns out to have almost no advantages.

BOGDAN - Do some research into potential candidates that we could market the software at. I know that Ed is going to be covering our target audience but maybe look towards figures to back up the target audience. So for example: how many animation/media graduates a year walk in to jobs after degrees compared to those who will go free lance or start a company themselves? Maybe look at how many small production companies there are in the London and get a rough number of how many freelance artists based in London too so that we really know the size of our market. Might be a bit tricky but it would be really useful.

MOSES - Research viral videos. Find out why companies would choose to put animation/production work on the internet and get some examples of some popular animation youtube shorts. Get some examples of really successful viral videos too, and decipher what makes some flop and others excel. Our audience will utilise the fact that youtube is a gateway to a world audience so it's really important, and we can back up our entire approach to selling brainient with this information.

If anyone has any problems with any of this then please let me know and we'll sort things out the best we can! On Monday I'll need people to post in the group just saying how far you've got and then we can start sharing research and forming it into some kind of power point for formative/summative. Cheers guys.'

I am very grateful that Nick stepped forward created the group, assigned us job roles and got us all in line. Otherwise it would have been left and everything would have been done very last minute. I know exactly what needs to be done, its time to get cracking!

The Idea

Nick came up with a winning Idea which was to use Brainient software to sell animation graduates to the animation industry. Nick came up with this idea because all established animation professionals in the animation industry are required to have a showreel of their work that they can show to potential clients or companies which will hopefully lead them to getting a job. Most professionals in the animation industry upload their showreels onto the Internet via youtube, so their is already a major competitor.

This idea relates to Brainient because Brainient software allows you to upload videos and put links, images , smaller videos etc over the top. So we would create a video of an animation graduates/ companies showreel or work. We will then use Brainients software to put an animation over the top of that video that once clicked you will get taken to that graduates or companies website or blog, basically a page on the Internet that provides more information or work from that graduate or company. So potential clients or companies that are looking to hire would watch the video and then click the link to see more. So we will be showcasing how Brainient can be used as a tool to market yourself. 

Nick and Joe have a compositing project that they worked on last term, so this video showcases their work. This is the video that we will be using in the pitch. Nick and Joe are then going to use the Brainient software to put an animation over the top of the video with some text and once clicked it will take you to Joe's blog. This video is just a template to sell the idea of how Brainients software can be used productively.