This was the first official month of the DPS program and the first opportunity I took part in was the global campus studio. In this internationally-focused course, you partner up with a diverse international team on original creative projects. The weekly work I completed ranged from “ local and global campaigns ”,” knowing your audience ” and various generative AI-related projects.
Week 1
This week focused on creating content for diverse global markets, emphasising the importance of localisation and cultural nuance. The guest lecture by Umar Ghumman highlighted ht value of “local is better” international campaigns because global campaigns can make a brand bland and can lose their authenticity. Each one of these lectures had some questions for students to answer. They were simple open-ended questions relating to the lecture that needed to be answered before the session.
There were examples from global brands like Coca-Cola, Dove, and Nike illustrating strategies that have universal themes but localised adaptations. In addition to this, there were also some global campaign examples included like the “Fancy a McDonald’s?” one that was designed to transcend language barriers.
This week introduced the framework for a lot of international campaigns, covering objectives, audience, key market, brand positioning, and campaign assets. For the first weekly workshop group task, we had to create a media kit for the brand “Tacshen” that required a global strategy that could be localised.
The first week served as a good introduction to the global campus studio and it wrapped up with a “Virtual Getting to Know You” assignment to meet and create a cross-cultural connection between peers.
Week 2
This week focused on understanding audiences through demographics and psychographics. This week’s guest lecture by Jen Ger, founder of Fozy Originals explored how fashion is able to transcend cultures through various trends at the time. It was interesting to understand that trends are able to transcend cultures and language barriers. A good example is how many young people internationally wear Adidas Sambas shoes. Through just a pair of shoes, people can relate to others globally, going beyond culture.
Building from Umar Ghumman’s insights from the previous week, the lesson highlighted the need to connect with audiences emotionally and functionally. To do this we were taught to use personas ( a fictional character that represents a target audience segment based on real data and insight) where we had the same “Jane” persona across Korea, Canada, and Chill, each reflecting cultural differences, lifestyle, and priorities. After learning about these elements, the group workshop task for the week was to create our own personas based on the same brand from the previous week. We made a persona called Daniel and gave him traits that aligned with the Taschen brand.
The week concluded with a reminder about the “Virtual Getting to Know you” assignment.