My time to enter the workforce is nearing. I want to be ultimately find satisfaction in my career path, and because of my previous work with Digital Artefacts and external jobs, I have been able to realise my passion in brand management.
I love developing the identity of a brand. I’ve had the opportunity to exercise this to some degree through social media management and especially in my current role at Colossal Culture. Because the brand is small, I was able to work in areas of marketing that would be covered by an entire team in a larger, more ideal setting. My experience in coordinating the launch campaign for the brand was a stand out highlight in my career thus far. I love exercising attention to detail, and that really came out in my preparation for the shoot set as I designed custom water bottle labels for the crew to drink. My goal for the past year has been to walk into a job interview with a loaded arsenal of experience and passion so I can begin a career I love. The digital artefacts have helped me with this journey.
Based on this background, I have realised that the brand persona of Colossal Culture needs to be further developed. We started exercising the brand’s personality through influencer endorsement, I found using these outlets was a great way to build brand attitude and image. This barely scratched the surface of the brand’s identity development. I will develop Colossal Culture by experimenting with different forms of brand communication using Instagram.
I will begin by generating a 3 month social plan and have that approved by my boss. In succession to this I would like to aggregate bespoke content that will experimentally find what interests the Colossal Culture audience and builds the brand’s identity. I am currently liaising with a AR designer who has agreed to produce an instagram filter Colossal Culture hat that consumers can try on for free.
My work for Colossal Culture is in hopes to facilitate customers looking to purchase activewear and identify with an upcoming brand. My hopes is to make the instagram page a community space for customer support and lifestyle content. While it’s a difficult task, I want to make the brand a place of belonging over just an online store. In a more practical sense, the instagram page works as a place to communicate with the brand’s audience and is able to showcase the current and upcoming products and apparel. This will help my future desired career in fashion marketing by expanding my portfolio and providing me with experience that may be valuable in a job interview.
JUST CHARLEA 
Hey Charlea!
Firstly, I love that you’ve taken an approach to your DA that will advance your career and enhance your employability in the near future. I completely relate to your interest in brand management and creating something meaningful through your work as I’m trying to get into a really similar field myself (though I personally love the social media aspect), and so I’m really excited to follow your progress throughout the semester!
You’ve also done an awesome job with your pitch video. While it was clearly well over the two minute time limit, it didn’t feel as long as you’ve included some great information as well as many visuals in line with Colossal Culture’s branding to support your project concept. Your identified problem of the misalignment between your current and desired/ideal audience was made really clear and supported with great evidence, and I think the separation of each element of your pitch (Concept, Methodology, Utility) through the use of headings made your discussion really easy to follow and evaluate. It’s really cool to see that you’ve reached out to other freelances through Fiverr, too, which is an excellent way of demonstrating #FIST while supporting smaller businesses and artists.
You mentioned that you plan to experiment with Instagram to better align your current and desired audiences, but I think you could have expanded on the ‘how’ in more detail. For example, will you continue to use just photos and videos, or do you intend to experiment with Reels, IGTV and Guides as well? How exactly will you reach your desired audience and encourage engagement?
I can see you’re not currently incorporating hashtags in your post captions or comments, but this is a great way to reach a targeted audience, especially across such a saturated platform. Introducing CTAs in your captions and interactive elements in your Instagram Stories (such as polls and questions) also help generate further engagement which will, in turn, result in the Instagram algorithm favouring your content and showing it to more users than you would otherwise be able to reach organically. While the brand has a considerable Instagram following and well established aesthetic, engagement is extremely low at just 0.57% with an average of 31 likes per post, and so I highly recommend implementing some of these tactics throughout the course of the semester.
Furthermore, I think it would have been beneficial to include some of this information not discussed in your pitch video in your blog post. By not including a timeline or schedule in your pitch presentation, it will be difficult to assess your progress and understand exactly what you plan to complete during the subject. For example, this could highlight your intention to create a Reel every second week, or the number of post engagements you hope to achieve by a certain date. This would have also given an indication of how frequently you intend to post content on your Instagram page. Currently, this is sitting at, on average, once per week, however, brands such as Hootsuite and Social Buddy recommend 2-3 feed posts weekly, in addition to multiple Stories. Often, this recommendation is even higher for fashion brands on the platform as more frequent content will boost your visibility in followers’ feeds and lead to higher engagement and brand awareness.
Overall, you’ve done a really good job with your pitch, but there are a few areas I think would be beneficial exploring throughout the semester and, most importantly, addressing within your Βeta. I’m really keen to see your project’s development over the next few months so don’t hesitate to reach out for any other suggestions or even just a chat! I’m always on Instagram @taylor.sumelj and Twitter @taylorsumelj ✨
https://blog.hootsuite.com/how-often-to-post-on-social-media/
https://www.falcon.io/insights-hub/topics/social-media-strategy/21-tips-increase-instagram-engagement/
https://blog.hootsuite.com/instagram-hashtags/
https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-use-instagram-hashtags-business-guide-marketers/
https://later.com/blog/ultimate-guide-to-using-instagram-hashtags/
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