This course focuses on the development and execution of creative and motivating communication. The emphasis is on providing students with an understanding of creative and strategic message development and applying these underlying principles to the media. Students will learn how to use marketing information to develop practical creative strategies. Both visual and written creativity will be emphasised. Students will also learn the requirements for developing advertising messages in different media. Course work includes lectures, discussions, creative assignments, critiques and a final project.
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Prof: Gautam Vijay Kiyawat
Course taken in: AY21/22 Sem 1
Textbook: NA
Assessments: Class participation + 2 individual assignments + 1 group projectThe good:
• Prof Gautam is super chill and approachable; he always tries to make sure that everyone understands the lecture’s content before moving on
• Not a lot of notes to take during lectures, important stuff is already on the presentation slides
• Course content is easy to understand, and workload is very manageable
• The first 2/3 lectures seem to be more abstract but are actually rather fluff since it becomes irrelevant in later lectures and assignments
• Little to no after-class work to do
• Free goodies towards the end of the semester due to Prof’s partnerships with companies
• The 2 graded assignments are not demanding (recommended to use PPT to submit) and Prof might delay the deadlines as he did for my semester
• Prof is very encouraging when grading the assignments (on the flip side, it means that you can’t really tell what is good/bad)The bad:
• The graded assignments are not so straightforward
o For example, our 1st assignment was to come up with a target audience and creative direction for a new bubble tea brand. And of course, there are many questions that follow such as, “Do we have to create a new brand ourselves?”, “Do we use generic bubble tea products or create our own?”, “How much do we have to elaborate on our creative direction?” etc. Naturally, many people asked him such questions and tbh, the more people asked, the more confused I got over this assignment as well.
o I would say, just f it and just do what you think is right because this course is about being creative right?? How do we be creative if we just follow what others are doing?
• The group project sucked
o Well, personally for me, it was because we were allowed to choose our own groups. This is the very first course that I have taken in WKWSCI and I knew no one. As a result, I ended up in a group where most of them already knew one another.
o Basically, what sucked was not that I felt left out, but I am just very disappointed that my group mates refused to accept any of my ideas for the group project. I had to plead with them to let me at least put a few of my ideas into the final presentation. Since most of them already knew one another, I was fighting a losing battle.
o I took this course because I thought it was about being creative, thinking out of the box, and not staying within the lines. But the group mates I worked with were totally the opposite of that and tbh it felt kinda oppressing because they were so uncompromising. Because of this incident, I’m actually kind of scared to take more courses offered by WKWSCI.
o So, to those who don’t have the necessary connections yet and wish to take this course in future semesters, I really hope that things have changed for the better.The in-between:
• Lectures were mostly held in-person even during the heightened safe-distancing measures
o In my opinion, I felt that the lectures could definitely be held online because
(1) There were too few people to fill up the lecture theatre
(2) It is inconvenient to ask and answer questions in the lecture theatre since most of us are not that adept at vocalizing ourselves in such a big space (Prof would randomly call names to answer his questions)
o Furthermore, it would have really saved me a lot of travel time since I was travelling to school only for that lesson.
• For tutorials, we mostly worked on the same topic
o From around Week 3, Prof Gautam gave us the topic of promoting rice for The Rice Association. From then until Week 9/10, we worked on different techniques to promote rice. For example, we discussed the target audience for rice-eaters, the Creative Brief, creative stories, Instagram Ads, out-of-home ads etc.
o The good thing is that since we were working on the same topic for the entire course, we would be able to grasp the next technique decently well. Furthermore, the same foundation would prevent us from getting confused by a new topic that we learnt in the course. However, after some time, I definitely felt saturated from re-using the same topic.
• I have no idea how Prof Gautam marks class participation
o He doesn’t use a list or anything and doesn’t take note during tutorials as well, so I’m really clueless about this.December 8, 2021
