A $4,000 shopping spree?

Finishing Up the Video and Reflections; #5

COMD 4900

Final Video Edits and Reflections

For this week I sent the first version of the video to my supervisors for review. The version I had sent them was met with some adjustments they wanted to be made.

First, they wanted me to include the following information on the video:

Win $4000 prize and $1000 donation

The $4,000 prize and the $1,000 donation was to be added to the video, not just at the end of it but also along with the other elements of the video. One suggestion they had was to add it like so:


Modifications requested

The information they wanted on there was to be added at my discretion and I had to revise my work in order to include it in the video and to go along with the theme of what someone could spend the $4,000 prize money on.

So I decided to have the video continue with that question by adding the information like this:

Extra Information added

I re-worded the information to better fit the question that is being posed in the graphic elements in the video. I already had the initial question of “How would you spend $4,000?” so I felt like having “Win $4,000” right after that would be redundant. My supervisors wanted the $4,000 prize to be seen as much as possible to incentivize people to sign up for the sweepstakes and also having the additional $1,000 for charity could also help with attracting people. Another objective of this video was to have it be a part of the outreach message to influencers and could help give a quick explanation of how the sweepstakes works. It would be an additional item that could be sent out to multiple influencers at once.

After working with the organization for a few weeks its become apparent to me that they are very committed to reaching out to many different people with large followings in order to maximize the reach of their platforms. Their online platform has multiple avenues that they provide people with as part of joining with them, and the efforts that are made by the teams is quite incredible. They are constantly looking for more people to be a part of the organization and the contact lists that they have number in the thousands.

But of course there are some things that have also stuck out to me in a way that has made me think carefully about what my role has been. The work that I was given was all about creating content that can be sent to influencers to have them help with spreading the sweepstakes around to their followers. It felt as though most of my work has been done solely towards this goal of increasing the number of people who are signing up, which I believe is a part of graphic design. I have to create something eye-catching and interesting enough for people to stop and to look at and hopefully increase the interest in the sweepstakes, something which is at the core of graphic design. We have to be able to have people remember the work and to have them perceive the meaning and intentions behind the art.

This project was different from what I had previously done in school mostly because it feels as though I may have been creating something that I myself would later have to promote and send out to other people as opposed to just submitting it to my supervisor and leaving it at that. I had to be able to use my work in conjunction with my writing skills to increase the effectiveness of the outreach for the sweepstakes, and that alone made it challenging for me. I had to step out of my comfort zone and essentially cold-call people with large followings across the internet, which is something I never thought I’d have to do. But it has been a great learning experience and I can’t wait to see what the results might be from this.

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