What do we expect from school? And why do go to school?

After staying in Berlin for three weeks, I have already had my first impression regarding the whole working system of IMK. And I really have a few questions to ask. Is it real that, in the real world, people may not present after being told to prepare? And is it “wise” to keep guessing who is going to present and who is not?

I do not have the working experience in advertising agencies. All I did is working in a TV station as a journalist. So I have never had the experience to present in front of my clients. I have to admit that I was truly shocked by IMK’s working system when they introduced it to us. Not all the teams who prepared for the presentation are going to present at the Friday presentation. Does that make sense? If I am not going to present, why do I need to prepare for that? If I am told to present, what is the reason for not presenting? During my study here, I tried my best to prepare for the Friday presentations. But it was such a disappointment when you heard someone announced that I was not included in the presenting list. Suddenly, all I did worth nothing. Then, I began to doubt myself. Why did I stay up all night? Why did I waste my time and energy on nothing? Why did I put myself in such a stress? Questions like those never ended. I know that I need to prepare for all the incidents, but definitely not the incidents like this.

The second question is the main point I want to discuss here in this blog. What’s the purpose for keeping guessing whether to present or not? The weird IMK presenting system was supposed to randomly pick six teams out of 16 every week. But in order to be fair enough, which is every team presents at least once during our study here, the word “randomly” no longer existed. So IMK students were so used to such “random” system and started to guess who was going to present this time and who was not. Once they believed that they were not going to present, they would barely do anything for the project, we became the only ones cared about presentation. Everything we said, everything we recommended didn’t mean anything to them. Even though we wanted to bring out a perfect presentation, no one is going to help us except ourselves. Obviously, such system does not help at all. Why do we study? To be honest, it is actually our own decision to get educated. What we want is to get well prepared before we step into the real competitive world. With all the money we paid, all the time and energy we devoted, why do we keep guessing and trying to escaping from doing our own works? Aren’t we supposed to learn? Such valuable experience should not be perceived as a burden, instead, we should treat each work we do is actually an opportunity to absorb new knowledge and to train our practical skills.

To some extent, these two questions have some sort of internal connections between each other. Because not every team needed to present on Friday, so they didn’t think it to be necessary to prepare for every single Friday. And because this system was actually not random, which gave them the opportunity to take a guess. So in my opinion, what they need to do is to give up this stupid presenting system either by turning it into real random system, or let every team present on Friday.

Herzinfarkt – Jede Minute Zählt!

The Impression of Berlin’s Social Marketing Campaign

The first time I was attracted by a social marketing campaign was when I passed by the Berlin East Side Gallery. This campaign was launched by Deusche Herztftung, the German Heart Foundation, which was created in 1979 as a nonprofit organization. Presently, it has over 65,000 members. One of the main tasks of the German Heart Foundation is to fight against cardiovascular disease, to educate patients about the contemporary possibilities of treatment of heart disease.

So what is “Herzinfarkt – Jede Minute Zählt”? The campaign wanted to portray the concept that “Heart Attack – every minute counts”, which means if you have a heart attack or happen to run into a person who has a heart attack, you should immediately call 112. In my point of view, it’s a good way to build brand awareness, because it’s easy to understand, does not have too much things need memorizing. Even I, as a Chinese, who knows nothing about German, still can understand that it is something about heart attack.

Moreover, what’s interesting was the usage of graffiti in the visual design closely matched the environment around it. East Side Gallery, as one of the most famous places in Berlin, is well known for its graffiti. It’s such a wise choice to place the campaign here. Because on one hand, placing the campaign here will attract more audiences, while on the other hand, sharing the same concept won’t make people feel like it pops out from nowhere. And the white background emphasized the core icons of the campaign, which are the red heart and the black eye. This enables people to catch the content in distance.

To some extent, I believe it to be an effective campaign. However, the only weakness it has is the low exposure frequency. East Side Gallery is the only place I saw the campaign, as far as my staying in Berlin, I haven’t seen any other places hanging the same one. According to the theory I learned in my research class, the campaign or the advertisement will only be effective after at least three exposures. So, this heart attack campaign should be placed in more than three places where has the most people passing by, such as points of interests, main train stations and bus stops.

However, compare to China, Berlin did a really good job. First of all, you can barely see any heart attack campaign in public trying to increase people awareness regarding how to self-protect and how to save other people’s life. Secondly, you will never see a non-profit campaign with such inspiring and creative ideas and visual designs.

I think all I need to do, according to an old Chinese saying, is to select the essence and discard the dross.

Reflections of working in groups with IMK students

In order to protect people's right, I won't post any pictures of my teamate onto the blog. Sorry about that!

Do German people smile? That’s really hard to find the answer. A lot of people believe that German is serious and stubborn. These are perceived to be the typical German stereotypes. To be honest, I used to hold the same opinion until I came here and staying here for almost two weeks. For my first Friday presentation, I was actually pretty pleased with my two teammates. We were well organized and highly efficient. The whole process of our cooperation was easy and relaxed. But things don’t always go right. This week, I got a really terrible group. I still remember the time when we had our first meeting. After a very short and brief self-introduction, we went straight to the point. I actually like it, because there is no blahblahblahs, which means we will get everything’s done in a minute. However, in our second meeting, when we were discussing what else should be put in the PPT, she rejected everything I suggested, including what was commented in today’s presentation, the consistency, the background information of the two companies and couple more recommendations. On Wednesday night, she sent me her part, asked me to check the grammar, and wanted me to send them back by the end of the night. Before I read the whole thing, I said okay, but you can never imagine how horrible her part is. First of all, which I am 100% for sure, she did her part in German, and put everything in Google Translator, because none of the sentences made any sense. I had to read all through those nonsenses and to make them work, which would never be done in a few hours. But I made it. I took my whole night checking the stupid handout. However, on the next day, since I spent the whole morning in the Meta Design, I couldn’t find a chance to send her the checked handout, so I ran back to the hostel directly to get my laptop and got everything’s done. But it was still too late, because she already put everything in PDF and didn’t want to make any change. I said to her, “There is no way to go with those bunches of stupid mistakes. If you don’t have time to do that, just send me the original PPT and handout, I will do it.” Guess what? She refused my suggestion again. She told me that she couldn’t send me the original ones, because they are too big. I was freaking out. That’s great! And now, I really wanted to ask one question, “If you really want my opinions, why not leaving me the ones that I can make changes, instead of sending them all back to you and waiting for you to correct them?” I just sent her an email, in a very nice way. And here it is

“Hi, i think we all care about the presentation and want to make it perfect. I have everything here in the email, and they are in the right order. All you need is to copy and paste them. It’s very clear and easy to read.”

During my whole education period, this is definitely the first time I have to beg someone to do something so that we won’t act like idiots in public.

The good news is, she finally made the changes on the day of our presentation. However, the bad news is, the teachers and clients critiqued on all the things that I had suggested before, and obviously, she was not happy with it at all. The whole story ended up in tragedy.

I have to say, in the future, if I work for an agency or a company, I definitely need to pay attention to how to deal with the relationship with my teammates. Being a leader is not about concurring, or controlling people; it’s about encouraging people to work for him/her, stimulating brain storms and making everything’s done perfectly. Apparently, the girl from my group doesn’t understand the inner truth. However, I don’t hate her, because, someday, I will have to experience all this stuff. Actually, I want to thank her for telling me what the real life like. Hopefully one day in the future she can get what’s important.

Reflections on language barriers

During the first several days after I arrived at Berlin, I wasn’t able to notice any language barriers, because all the people I met here spoke English, at least a little. And I started to imagine there would be someone speaking Chinese, until Cleo and I accomplished our first adventure in a so called Chinese restaurant. This restaurant was located in Wollankstraße, 10 minutes away from our hostel, which is named Yong Kang. We were so happy because finally we found something we felt related to our own eating habits. We went in, and as we expected, everything was in German, including the menu. The first thing we found out was that there was no English menu. We firstly thought about trying to communicate with the chef, who was also the boss, in English. And he just looked at us shockingly with brain stopped running for a few seconds, waved his head, and said “No”. OK, so the first trial was failed. What about Chinese, were there any possibilities that the chef would speak Chinese? So we started to talk to him in Chinese. However, the chef finally broke our sweat dream. He did what he did just know, waving his head and saying “No”. We were so frustrated at that time, looking around see if there were people who can help us. But we ended with tragedy.

On our way back, we started to think about why people who worked for the Chinese restaurant didn’t speak Chinese. However, if you are the owner of this tiny restaurant, will you do it differently? Actually, if I were him, the answer will probably be “No” as well. Let us just take a look at the location. Think about its target group when it is opened in a Turkish town. Cleo and I would have never been here if we were travelling all by ourselves. Agreed?

The second barrier I found was when I was doing my observations about Berlin Welcome Card. I was at the Potsdamer Platz station, and the sales point was in the corner of the second floor. I pretended to be a tourist, asking the salesperson if there were any recommendations about the tourist card. And he immediately took out the booklet for the Berlin Welcome Card. When I was asking for the price, he just typed it in the cash register and showed it to me via the screen. I tried to get more information from him orally, but he just waved his head and said “No”. But when I was asking him for the brochure of the Berlin Welcome Card, can you imagine what he gave me? He gave me the introduction for the S-Bahn train ticket, not even the City Tour Card. I have no idea whether he did it by mistake or he just didn’t get what I just asked. The whole talking, the sales person didn’t say even a word.

Is it rude? Considering the German tradition, maybe it’s not. And as a tourist, we can’t perceive smiling faces and polite behaviors from other people as are our birth rights. However, while keeping the traditions, people should also be globalized and welcoming, especially from the places that are open to the world.