Category: Mentorship Journal

I am now on round three of edits for the brochure that I’m putting together for the product. An e-mail was sent over with suggestions a few days ago but this is the first chance I have had to look at it. Overall, it is a good start. The main thing is changes to the copy in the brochure so it is more effective. A line-by-line review of cosmetic changes follows (J. Henson, personal communication, June 23, 2020). The list is very thorough, which is good because it leaves no room for doubt about what they want out of this. How to accomplish some of these is a different story. Having a typeface that is similar to the Space Force TV show was brought up again, but there is only so much I can do with the software that I have.

Over the years, I have created many different documents for public consumption and never received feedback as explicit as this. In past responses, I have been told what is wrong with the document and to figure it out myself. Not so with the ICC. It is a collaborative effort and while it is still up to me to make the adjustments, a member of the group says it would be better to do it a particular way, and here’s why. Again, no guesswork on my part, no having to clarify a request. It is very straightforward. And it demonstrates just how committed they are to putting out a quality product in every possible aspect.

In gathering data on different resources that exist for the security component we want to include in our product, there really are not a whole lot of firms offering that type of training. Certification is provided through higher learning institutions as part of a larger program, but the credit hours can run rather pricey. One school I found has a cost of approximately $495 per credit hour, but you need 12 hours to get the certificate. Once you figure the math, you’d be looking at almost $6,000 overall. Other programs have a single cost of about $495, but the content is remarkably different from what has been proposed to us. I will drop another breadcrumb for fun: a course in one of the programs deals with Israeli security, definitely a part of safety but we want to base our product on emerging trends that affect us all in some way, shape, or form.

I am sorry that I can’t provide more than cryptic clues at this point, but the project is still in the development stage so I have to keep things confidential. Everyone likes the direction where we are heading though, so it shouldn’t be too long before we can tell you more. In the meantime, I will keep plugging away at it and doing whatever the ICC needs me to. Being part of something still out of the mainstream is quite the adventure. There are challenges to it, but it’s a lot of fun too, so if I haven’t said it before, let me say now how much I appreciate getting to do this.

No such thing as a lazy Saturday for me, this is the longest time I have spent in one day doing work for the ICC thus far. I am in the process of continuing research on the safety component we’d like to add to our product. Also got an e-mail from Dr. Tiell this morning asking for modifications to the video I edited and sent over earlier this week. It is amazing to me how simple it is to share video clips nowadays. During my undergrad and into my broadcasting career, I would have to transfer content from Beta or a digital video recorder to VHS then send it through regular mail. Now it can all be stored in files on the cloud and sent electronically with the click of a button.

But I digress on that point. Dr. Tiell requested a shorter video than the four-minute, 34-second epic I presented. As a result, we went with a straight commercial. Two of them, actually. One was a sixty-second promo, the other thirty. I did have to do some recutting and additional voice tracking to extend it to the minute-long length that is standard in broadcasting. I was so invested in this project that I didn’t realize how much time had passed once I finished. And that is honestly what you want, to be engaged to where the world just stops and you lose track of all time. Again, once we get everything in place, I hope to be able to share the final product with you.

I am back on the market research beat this evening, doing a comparison of programs that might be similar to something else we want to offer. There is a gentleman who is interested in partnering with us on the expertise that he has in his field, so I’m looking at other organizations doing the same thing. It’s very early in the process so who knows what I’ll find, but my process will be to perform a Google search and visit the links for each result until there is no more relevance. As I have said previously, the Internet is chock full of information, a lot of it not what I want. Thus it will take a lot of patience and thoroughness on my part to get the appropriate results.

What I can tell you about the angle we want to take with this particular partnership is that it involves safety. Abraham Maslow famously came up with a structure that has five levels displaying the importance of a certain item to an individual. Safety is at the second level, right above food, water, air, and so on (Hopper, 2020). That right there tells you how important it is for people to feel safe, especially in this odd year of COVID and civil unrest. So I am hopeful, as is the ICC, that this is going to work out and we can offer another avenue for success to the market we want to reach.

We are in a pretty good place but keep chugging along so we can get our audience–and ourselves–to the higher levels of the Maslow hierarchy, which Hopper (2020) says deal with prestige and fulfillment.

Reference

Hopper, E. (2020, February 24). Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs explained. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/maslows-hierarchy-of-needs-4582571

Thursday means another conference call with Dr. Tiell, Liston, and Josh. The brochure that I spent a couple of days creating earlier this week was among the topics of discussion. It was a good start, but they want a different look from what I had come up with. My first draft alternated between black and yellow to make it stand out. It stood out a bit too much, so they have requested different colors. A different font style was brought up also, one that is similar to the ICC’s logo.

So I will be going back through the recommendations that have been made in this meeting and redesigning the brochure accordingly. As I said in my previous post, I have no delusions about my product. Nailing it on the first try wasn’t likely and after I make the changes, there will be something else. It will take some fine-tuning to get it as close to perfect as it can be. And make no mistake, there isn’t such a thing as perfect when it’s open to interpretation. That’s just how it is.

All that said, it is good to have constructive feedback so that you have guidelines with which to improve upon your work. I stress the constructive part because there have been situations where warranted criticisms were taken a little too far. That serves neither the sender nor the recipient well, in my opinion. Of course, that is not the case with the ICC. They made sure to explain why they felt the changes were necessary without coming off as condescending, a group of consummate professionals, to be certain.

Once upon a time, there was a man who decided to write a book. He came up with an idea and started putting words to paper. After some professional editing, he had the book published. And everyone lived happily ever after.

Only that is not the way the story ended. It is actually my own experience with the only book I have written and had published, Leather Compass (shameless Amazon link here). In a perfect world, it would be a bestseller with minimal effort on my part. Unfortunately, the book never gained traction outside of family and friends, which is just as well.

There is a myriad of reasons why the book didn’t perform as I hoped it would, the biggest being that I simply rushed through the process. After four years in development, I just wanted to be done with the thing and have it sold. In other words, I didn’t really take the time to cultivate it into a marketable product.

What I did learn from Leather Compass is that producing any kind of communication–printed, broadcast, spoken–involves a lot more than just slapping words and pictures onto a document and calling it good. There has to be a purpose to the message, one that is impactful, emotional, and compels the intended audience to take action. That is the approach I take to the brochure I am designing for the ICC.

I try not to rely too much on cliches, but when it comes to a project like this, it really is a marathon and not a sprint. I do not expect to get it right the first, second, or even third time. I do, however, expect that the more attempts I make, the better it will get.

During my conversations with the partners of the ICC, it was established that some kind of document is necessary to promote the forthcoming product. Given my experience in that arena, they asked that I create a brochure they may present to interested parties. I have been given some guidelines with which to work in designing this marketing piece.

Today was the first chance I had to start the process. I took the weekend to focus on my projects for the Communication & Fundraising in Sport class, which I am halfway through. The course runs seven weeks and I am always amazed at just how fast time flies in that. The same goes for the mentorship, I am now at just over two weeks on this project. My work with the ICC goes through December. That will be here before anyone knows it.

One thing I forgot to do at the end of last week was to make my pick for the highlight of that time period. Really though, the only thing that I did was the market research and web host pricing. Since both were essentially a comparison of different options, they get to share the award. Even though I go into detail about the projects I am given throughout the week and my thoughts about them, I still want to make it a point to summarize what I remember and like the most about what I’m doing. This gives me a reference point as I continue to explore what interests me professionally. That I chose the comparisons this week and the news release the week before suggests a pattern. We shall see how this week plays out.

Today was my weekly conference call with Liston, Josh, and Dr. Tiell to go over the project. A guest joined us on the call, somebody who is interested in partnering with ICC to deliver the program that he is working on. After the meeting was finished, Dr. Tiell sent an e-mail to all parties about the timeline for nailing down any joint efforts.

This was just a regular phone call today, meaning we dialed a central number that happens to be here in Iowa and discussed our plans with each other that way. Most of the time, meetings are conducted via Zoom. It is as close to face-to-face communication as we are going to get, being in different parts of the country. Other methods of reaching out include e-mail, text messaging, and WhatsApp. The last method is essentially text messaging, except that it is performed through downloaded software, so SMS rates do not apply if you are using WiFi (Svetlik, 2018).

There is a downside to a lack of physical contact, as I have learned through the whole working from home during the pandemic. You often feel disconnected from what is happening. Not everyone checks e-mails as regularly as I do, so it can take a while to get a response if you reach out to someone that way. Even picking up the phone can be hit or miss because you hope the other person will answer, otherwise you have to leave a message and wait for them to get back to you just like with e-mail.

Overall, however, the ICC’s communication methods work pretty well. They keep me in the loop on the status of the project, and I happily return the favor.

Reference

Svetlik, J. (2018, July 10). What’s the difference between WhatsApp and texting? Retrieved from https://home.bt.com/tech-gadgets/internet/social-media/whats-the-difference-between-whatsapp-and-texting-11364277942163