COMM2386 - Interdisciplinary Communication Project

Lecturer: Landon Carnie

Due date: 2 July 2011

Romit.vn - Online magazine

Campaign proposal

Cao Thi Kim Thanh - s3259090 Huynh Hong Hai - s3255262 Tran Cam Anh - s3255253 Nguyen Doan Doan Uyen- s3246070 Nguyen Thi thao ly - s3210355 Mai Tran Tien Dat- s3245920 Nguyen Thi Uyen Chi - s3259128 Dinh Nguyen Thuy An- s3258109

CONTENTS

Executive summary ....................................................................................................................................................... 5

Situation analysis ........................................................................................................................................................... 6

SWOT analysis ............................................................................................................................................................... 7

Opportunity statement ................................................................................................................................................. 7

Target publics ................................................................................................................................................................ 8

Primary target publics: RMIT students and lecturers. ............................................................................................... 8

Secondary publics: RMIT alumni and potential students .......................................................................................... 8

Communication goals .................................................................................................................................................... 8

Objectives ...................................................................................................................................................................... 9

Key message .................................................................................................................................................................. 9

Action plan .................................................................................................................................................................... 9

Events ........................................................................................................................................................................ 9

Lecturer of the week ............................................................................................................................................... 10

About my course ..................................................................................................................................................... 10

Student Style ........................................................................................................................................................... 11

Fun facts .................................................................................................................................................................. 11

Newsflash ................................................................................................................................................................ 11

Promotion using social media ................................................................................................................................. 11

Promote the website by social network: Facebook & Twitter. ........................................................................... 11

Launch event ........................................................................................................................................................... 12

Freebies ............................................................................................................................................................... 12

Event .................................................................................................................................................................... 12

Member roles .............................................................................................................................................................. 13

Content group ......................................................................................................................................................... 13

Design group ............................................................................................................................................................ 13

Finance group .......................................................................................................................................................... 13

Risk management and Social Media Policy ................................................................................................................. 14

1.1 Lack of contribution from readers .................................................................................................................... 14

Description .......................................................................................................................................................... 14

Solution ............................................................................................................................................................... 14

1.2 Profanity ............................................................................................................................................................ 14

Description .......................................................................................................................................................... 14

Solution ............................................................................................................................................................... 15

1.3 Lack of human resources ................................................................................................................................... 15

Description .......................................................................................................................................................... 15

Solution ............................................................................................................................................................... 15

1.4 Decline to contribute from clubs, lecturers ....................................................................................................... 15

Description .......................................................................................................................................................... 15

Solution ............................................................................................................................................................... 16

1.5 Credibility .......................................................................................................................................................... 16

Description .......................................................................................................................................................... 16

Solution ............................................................................................................................................................... 16

Social Media Policy ...................................................................................................................................................... 17

For Editors (Romit.vn team) .................................................................................................................................... 17

Be responsive ...................................................................................................................................................... 17

Be nice ................................................................................................................................................................. 17

Be grateful ........................................................................................................................................................... 17

Be helpful............................................................................................................................................................. 17

Be reliable ............................................................................................................................................................ 18

Be romit.vn .......................................................................................................................................................... 18

For Readers/Contributors ........................................................................................................................................ 18

Budget ......................................................................................................................................................................... 19

Milestones ................................................................................................................................................................... 19

Timeline ....................................................................................................................................................................... 20

Evaluation methods ..................................................................................................................................................... 21

Survey: online and paper ......................................................................................................................................... 21

Website hits. ............................................................................................................................................................ 21

Collaborative Contract ................................................................................................................................................. 22

Keep in touch ........................................................................................................................................................... 22

Do your job .............................................................................................................................................................. 22

Back up your work ................................................................................................................................................... 22

Show respect to your teammates ........................................................................................................................... 23

Help each other ....................................................................................................................................................... 23

Ask for help & Speak up! ......................................................................................................................................... 23

Work hard! Learn hard! ........................................................................................................................................... 23

Reference: ................................................................................................................................................................... 24

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The purpose of this campaign is to provide information to students in RMIT University in an

informal way. It is due to the fact that RMIT students are lacking of awareness about university

news and most of them find the intranet is not informative and not interesting. Students

usually have to spend much time and efforts to ask their friends about study experiences to

decide which courses are suitable for them since the course information on the intranet only

provide general description, not the full insights, which makes it hard for the students to pick a

course. It is shown from our research that many students want to get closer to their lecturers,

but they do not know how to.

The romit.vn - Online magazine campaign will be run from 12nd July 2011 to 26th August 2011.

With a huge budget – 6million VND for the online social media marketing campaign, Smelly

Jackfruit team will have a chance to reach the wide target publics in RMIT easily. The main goal

of the online magazine campaign is to build up two- way communication among RMIT students

and lecturers. We need to achieve 60 percent of Professional Communications students, 30

percent of students in other programs and 10 percent of lecturers to make them be aware of

our website in the last 2 weeks. In order to achieve these objectives, other tactics such as

wearing costumes, giving freebies, creating online contest, and so on will focus on promoting

the website. Last but not least, we will use other prominent social networks such as Facebook

and Twitter to launch information widely and connect more people about it.

SITUATION ANALYSIS

When we were brainstorming a topic for our campaign, we reflected on our 5 semesters

studying at RMIT Vietnam (RMIT) to see what we should and could do to benefit RMIT students.

The first thing ocurred to us was that we had to take elective courses in our program and we all

struggled asking our friends’ study experiences to decide which course to take. The second

thing was that we did not know much about our lecturers even though we had been studying at

RMIT for 5 semesters. Those information are not clearly posted on RMIT Intranet

(online.rmit.edu.vn) which makes us feel that it is not very informative. As a result, we decided

to carry out a quick survey research on 100 RMIT students in Saigon South campus to see

whether other students also think the same. The survey covers different

aspects of the Intranet, what RMIT students want to read about RMIT, what kind of social

media networking sites they use and whether they want to get to know more about their

lecturers.

The statistics indicates that 70% of the respondents want to have better relationships with their

lecturers and know more about them besides academic aspect, such as their hobbies, interests,

etc. Only 23% of the respondents read news on the Intranet. Most of them think that RMIT’s

Intranet is not very informative and interesting. 79% is very much interested in reading news

about RMIT from students’ perspectives and they think that it is interesting to have an

online news website created by RMIT students.

From the research results, we think that there should be an online platform where students can

read news about RMIT from other students’ perspectives. Furthermore, this platform will also

provide the students information about their lecturers as well as all the courses

in our university. This website will not be like RMIT’s Intranet. The content will be created

mainly by contribution from RMIT students. They will share their experiences, what they know,

what they hear to other students. From those concerns, we decided to create a website to

share RMIT updates.

However, the website will be useless if nobody knows about it. As a results, a communication

campaign using social networking sites is needed in order to promote and make RMIT students

know about the website.

SWOT ANALYSIS

Strengths Weaknesses

All team members are active on various

social networking sites.

Team members experience the

shortcomings of RMIT Intranet like other

students, therefore they know what to

offer to to RMIT students

The website is written in informal tone,

hence students might find it interesting.

The campaign’s workload requires large

group of people, while the team has only 8

people → it might be overloaded.

All 8 team members are inexperienced in

running campaigns.

Opportunities Threats

Many RMIT students use social

networking, such as Facebook, Youtube,

Twitter, Zing.Me, etc. This is an advantage

because this campaign will only use social

media to promote the website.

RMIT students find RMIT’s Intranet not

informative and interesting.

A lot of RMIT students are interested in a

website made by students to read news

about RMIT.

Negative comments from students

Website server might be down and none

of team members has good knowledge

about IT.

Facebook is the most popular social

networking site among RMIT students.

However, Facebook is being loosely

blocked which might prevent us from

reaching RMIT students.

OPPORTUNITY STATEMENT

The opportunity that we have is that a large group of RMIT students are interested in having an

online website where they can share their learning experiences and read news written by RMIT

students, while RMIT intranet is not very informative and interesting.

TARGET PUBLICS

PRIMARY TARGET PUBLICS: RMIT STUDENTS AND LECTURERS.

As mentioned above, the website’s content will be created by RMIT students. This website will

contain information that are useful to RMIT students, such as full insight of courses’

information, lecturers' information, events happening on campus, etc. Therefore, RMIT

students are obviously this campaign’s main target public.

Furthermore, this website will play a role as a bridge between RMIT students and lecturers. We

will have some activities that will need contributions from lecturers. That is why RMIT lecturers

are also in this campaign’s main target public groups because if they are not aware of this

campaign and the purpose of the website, they will not contribute.

SECONDARY PUBLICS: RMIT ALUMNI AND POTENTIAL STUDENTS

RMIT alumni can use this website as a platform to reconnect with their lecturers as well as give

advice and experiences to current RMIT students. Additionally, they can use this website to stay

updated with what is happening to their old university, create a network with current talented

RMIT students which will be useful for their company.

This website will also give high school students - who are considering which university to go to,

a sneak peek of what RMIT students' life is like. Visiting the website, they will see an active

RMIT students community, which will be the plus point in their eyes. They can also join in to ask

current RMIT students’ advice and experiences when studying at RMIT so that they can

mentally prepare.

COMMUNICATION GOALS

To generate 2-way communication among RMIT students

To enhance the relationship between RMIT Vietnam lecturers and RMIT Vietnam

students

To provide useful information about the courses, events, and lecturers for students

OBJECTIVES

To achieve 60% awareness of Professional Communication students about the website

by week 10 (the end of the campaign).

To achieve 30% awareness of students in other programs about the website by week 11.

To achieve 10% awareness of lecturers about the website by week 11.

To obtain 20% RMIT students and lecturers’ positive attitudes towards the website by

week 11.

To obtain at least 700 unique visitors to the website by week 11.

To have at least 300 fans on Facebook page by week 11.

KEY MESSAGE

Romit.vn - RMIT's first online magazine created by students for students; get to know the news,

the courses, the lecturers, the hottest looks and more on our site.

ACTION PLAN

EVENTS

Although RMIT Intranet is attempting to provide information about the activities of the current

clubs in RMIT University, students still want to know more and experience those activities from

perspectives of students or clubs’ members. As a result, the project team decided to create the

“Event” column in Romit.vn in order to satisfy students’ demands. Generally, “Event” Column

will update full information about activities of different clubs as well as recent events of RMIT

for students on our website written in a friendly and informal style. We will also post some

‘Behind The Scene’ pictures and videos of those events and activities to entertain them.

LECTURER OF THE WEEK

In order to develop better relationships between lecturers and students, the project team will

provide more information about lecturers besides their academic aspect, such as their hobbies,

interests. Every week, one lecturer will be chosen by RMIT students to answer questions sent

from students via email addresses or on Facebook/Twitter. The questions can be about any

topics that students want to know. The chosen lecturers can send answers via email, or we will

interview and record a video which will be posted on the website.

Landon Carnie - Professional Communication lecturer will be the first one in this column. After

that, we will create a poll for RMIT students to vote which lecturer they want to interview next.

ABOUT MY COURSE

It can be seen that RMIT Intranet has provided sufficient details about programs as well as

courses for RMIT students. However, RMIT students are still having difficulties in choosing

elective courses from other programs to study due to lack of real experience. That’s why ‘About

My Course’ column is created to help them solve this problem.

Initially, ‘About My Course’ column will only provide information about undergraduate

programs of RMIT University; each program will include ‘course tab’ showing essential courses

that students have to study to graduate and they will be designed like the Wikipedia entry

platform. Basically, these tabs will provide information such as: which lecturers teach that

course, what that course is about, or how to do the assessments well. Besides, it also has a

unique box where RMIT potential students can raise questions or concerns, and former

students will be able to share their opinions and experience. In order to avoid repetitive

questions or hateful answers about lecturers, we will moderate all the information sent by

students. RMIT students can share their concerns or experience via e-mail; we will consider,

modify and upload them.

STUDENT STYLE

One thing that we observe about RMIT students is that they concern a lot about their looks

when they come to school. They are interested in fashion and styles. Therefore, we will take

photos of stylish students, interview them, ask them to give fashion tips and upload on our

website.

In addition, the website will have a ‘Like’ button like Facebook for visitors to vote for their

favourite outfits. Who gets the highest votes per week will have a small gift. On Facebook, we

will also upload photos and tag these students to attract not only those people but also their

friends.

FUN FACTS

This tab will provide some ‘underground’ fun facts that RMIT students might not know yet on

campus. This is expected to help students discover more about their university as well as give

information in a fun way to prospective students.

For example: With the same Pepsi can, Global sells at 10.000VND and Bistro sells at 12.000VND.

NEWSFLASH

This content will be created in flash format and will be placed at the top of website. It is about

hot news written in only one sentence, which will help students to keep updated more easily

PROMOTION USING SOCIAL MEDIA

PROMOTE THE WEBSITE BY SOCIAL NETWORK: FACEBOOK & TWITTER.

In order to attract traffic towards Romit.vn, social networking is the most important tactic in

this campaign. According to the survey, Facebook, Zing.me and Twitter are three social

networking sites which are used mostly by RMIT students (88% of students uses Facebook, 28%

uses Zing.me and 22% uses Twitter); however, because of the lack of human resource in team,

we will only focus on Facebook and Twitter.

We will create a fan page on Facebook and an account on Twitter, and then we will add or

invite friends who are current students of RMIT University Vietnam to ”like" our page. After

that, we will update daily news on these pages with the attached link of our website. By this

way, we will quickly get the attention from the target public to Romit.vn.

LAUNCH EVENT

FREEBIES

Dried jackfruit is used as the main freebie in launching event. According to Bruneel (2009), food

is the most effective thing to get people’s involvement because they love food so much.

Moreover, Bruneel (2009) also indicates that people tend to bring and eat little foods with good

taste whenever they want. That’s why we choose dried jackfruit in order to reach popular habit

of most people. Dried jackfruit will be divided into small bags, which include a colorful piece of

paper with our website name on it.

EVENT

The event will be launched in the first day of week 4. We will create some interesting activities

by wearing social network costumes such as Facebook, Twitter, our websites columns, and a

jackfruit costume which represents for our group’s symbol. Each member will wear these

costumes and then go around the canteen at noon. It is due to the fact that most of students

and lecturers will have lunch at that time, thus we are going to attract their attention easily.

Besides, in order to raise people’s awareness about the campaign and raise page views, we can

create best moments by taking funny pictures, recording videos and posting them on the social

networks and our official website later on.

MEMBER ROLES

Our team is divided into 3 small groups:

CONTENT GROUP

Editor

Secretary

Reporter

· Lecturer of the week

· Fashion

Social media controller

DESIGN GROUP

Web contributor

Web designer

FINANCE GROUP

Accountancy

RISK MANAGEMENT AND SOCIAL MEDIA POLICY

1.1 LACK OF CONTRIBUTION FROM READERS

DESCRIPTION

It is concerned that there are many contents on romit.vn that are wholly or partly user-

generated (About my course, Lecturer of the week…). This means the engagement of the

readers of romit.vn is crucial to the success of the website. If the readers not only view but

comment on the articles, submit questions and course information to romit.vn, the website will

have a rich content and editors can generate helpful conversations. Otherwise, it can face a

great lack of information, which lead to either one-way communication situation or shortage of

human resources (see 1.3) when only editors provide the information.

SOLUTION

To encourage RMIT students to contribute to our website, we will give incentives such as

featuring their photos on Romit.vn’s lookbook, giving gifts for the best contributors on the

website... The website will also be designed to be as much user-friendly as possible with

comment box and “Submit” buttons so the readers can easily submit their opinions. Showing

certain phrases such as “Find this helpful? We think your ideas are helpful too. Help us now!” or

“You don’t think so? Then tell us what you think” on the website may also increase submissions

from the readers.

1.2 PROFANITY

DESCRIPTION

Profane language is the use of hateful, offensive, insulting words and foul or adult language.

Although the website content does not touch on any sensitive topic, it is still necessary to

consider the risk of profane language when we are open for submissions from the readers.

SOLUTION

Editors are in charge of moderating the content to put on romit.vn, thus this kind of language

will be removed beforehand by our team. The sender will get a notification via email by the

team to notice that the message has violated our policy. However, it is necessary to ensure that

neither the identity of the sender nor the message will not be disclosed publicly since this may

cause defamation. If the situation gets severe over time, we might consult our lecturer for

further actions.

1.3 LACK OF HUMAN RESOURCES

DESCRIPTION

As romit.vn aims to give detailed insights about different aspects of the campus, the workload

might get too heavy at some points. Although the team has allocated tasks for different editors,

it is still necessary to think of some alternatives to ensure romit.vn is operated efficiently.

SOLUTION

The team may recruit some volunteers as junior members to help us with collecting the

information or writing stories. As romit.vn aims to be a long-term project for RMIT students, it

is necessary to have these voluntary students so we can suggest them to take over the project

after we finish this course. Another solution is to adjust the website content accordingly to

what we can do at best, i.e. minimize the scale of the website into fewer sections to provide

richer content. This solution might be discussed during the campaign within our team.

1.4 DECLINE TO CONTRIBUTE FROM CLUBS, LECTURERS

DESCRIPTION

It is very likely that at the beginning of this campaign, the team might find denial to participate

from certain lecturers and students when we approach for interviews and information. This is

due to the fact that romit.vn has just opened and it does not belong officially to the university.

SOLUTION

Reporters of romit.vn need to expand their network inside the campus at any time as possible

in order to contact with the right and available people when we need the information. The

team also needs to prepare alternatives under any situation in order to have the content ready

by the deadline.

1.5 CREDIBILITY

DESCRIPTION

Due to the nature of the user-generated content on romit.vn, credibility may become a matter

to question about the website, especially under “About my course” section. False information

may lead to defamation of the website, the team and even the university.

SOLUTION

It is crucial for us to state clearly on the website under certain sections that the information

might not be accurate due to users’ contribution of which we are not able to verify. However,

other users may correct the information by submitting corrections to us. We will also give

credits whenever we can to increase the credibility of the content. It will be also stated that

romit.vn does not represent RMIT Vietnam university in order to ensure the readers not to

relate false information about RMIT Vietnam and lead us into troublesome situation.

SOCIAL MEDIA POLICY

FOR EDITORS (ROMIT.VN TEAM)

BE RESPONSIVE

Respond quickly - within 24 hours - if we are mentioned on social networks (i.e. Facebook,

Twitter) or messaged via email. If the issue cannot be solved within 24 hours, it is still necessary

to inform the sender(s) that we have received their message(s) and are being in the process of

finding the answers. In case users’ submission are not approved or user’s posts (i.e. on social

networks) are deleted due to irrelevancy or violation of content policies, we need to inform

them via email that the content will not be published and also state clearly our reasons.

BE NICE

Any form of profane language would be prohibited on romit.vn as well as its social networks;

editors are also asked to follow this policy. Comments given by romit.vn team should use

friendly language except for announcement to create a daily conversation with its readers.

BE GRATEFUL

Send “Thank you” email for the contributors who send their opinions and experience to our

website. This act will show our respect to the contributors and encourage them to keep sending

us the information.

BE HELPFUL

If you can answer the questions from the readers about the campus, or if you can help find that

information for them, do not hesitate. It is our job to be informative and also helpful for RMIT

students.

BE RELIABLE

Do not disclose any identity if the senders wish to keep it anonymous. If some sensitive

contents sent from the contributors are moderated and unapproved to be posted by the team,

do not talk in public about them.

BE ROMIT.VN

As a member of romit.vn, you are speaking on behalf of the team when posting on the website

and its social networks. However, under any circumstances, romit.vn does not represent or

speak for RMIT Vietnam University.

FOR READERS/CONTRIBUTORS

No profanity

All forms of swearing are forbidden.

No disruptive, discriminatory or offensive comments:

Derogatory contents, bashing and trolling.

Sexually or violently explicit materials.

Content endorsing illegal activities.

No political & religious related comments

No disinformation

No Spamming

Comments violating those rules will be deleted (on Facebook fan page and Twitter) or will

not be published (on website).

BUDGET

MILESTONES

Task Start End Who’s in charge

Web Design Build, design & maintain the

website

2/7/2011 28/8/2011 Dat

Editor-in-chief 9/7/2011 28/8/2011 Thanh

Events/News Flash 4/7/2011 28/8/2011 Uyen, Hai, Ly, Dat

About my Course 4/7/2011 28/8/2011 Uyen Chi, An

Web Content Lecturer of the Week 4/7/2011 28/8/2011 Ly, Cam Anh

Style (Look Book) 4/7/2011 28/8/2011 Chi, Hai

Funfacts 4/7/2011 28/8/2011 Uyen (main) & all

Social networks Facebook 7/7/2011 28/8/2011 Cam Anh, An

Twitter 7/7/2011 28/8/2011 Cam Anh

Finance Manage the budget 28/6/2011 28/8/2011 Ly

Launch Event

Materials for costumes 3/7/2011 4/7/2011 Ly, Cam Anh

Sewing the costumes 5/7/2011 11/7/2011 All

Preparing the freebies 11/7/2011 11/7/2011 Ly, Cam Anh

Launch day 12/7/2011 12/7/2011 All

TIMELINE

Campaign: begins on 12th July 2011(launch day), Tuesday of week 4 and ends on Friday of week

10.

Specific activities will be carry out according to its nature:

- News Updating on website, Facebook, Twitter: daily

- Lecturer of the Week: Weekly

- About My Course: Daily

- Look Book: Weekly

- Funfacts: daily

Evaluation: week 11

Report submission: beginning of week 12.

EVALUATION METHODS

The campain will be evaluated according to the objectives in three levels: awareness, attitude

and behaviour. We will evaluate the campaign basing on below categories:

SURVEY: ONLINE AND PAPER

Surveys will be conducted in the middle of the campaign (week 7) and at the end of the

campaign (beginning of week 11). The survey on week 7 is to check whether the campaign is

running according to plan or there is a need for changes to help acquire desired outcomes. The

survey on week 11 will help us determine the success of the whole campaign and reflect on

what we have done.

WEBSITE HITS.

The number of unique members on website - those who are truly interested in the

website so they regularly participate in the website’s activities.

The number of fans on Facebook fan page, the number of followers on Twitter account.

The nummber of comments sent to us via email, replies on Facebook and Twitter.

The nummber of participants in each activities.

The number of links to our website, Facebook fan page and Twitter account shared on

Facebook, Y!M and Twitter.

Website hits and the number of fans on Facebook fan page and Twitter followers are less

important because they don’t imply real engagement of the target public to the campaign.

Meanwhile, the amount of comments, participants and shared links reflects the activeness and

involvement of the public.

COLLABORATIVE CONTRACT

KEEP IN TOUCH

We agree to use Gmail and cell phones to contact with each other so please check your inbox

and cell phone regularly to get updates from the team. Please pick up the phone (unless you're

having class or at work) when we call and reply SMS texts within 1-2 hours. Please call us back if

you have missed calls from us. It is very likely that it is an urgent situation when we have to call

you, i.e. we really need your help!

If you are busy at certain times with reasonable reasons, please inform in advance with our

leader.

DO YOUR JOB

Please finish your tasks on time following the deadlines and priorities that have been agreed by

the whole team. Please also update your progress within your sub-team as well as leader so

they can keep track of your work.

If you are busy at certain times and cannot finish your tasks due to reasonable reasons, please

inform in advance with our leader.

BACK UP YOUR WORK

Although we decided to use Google Docs in order to save our work automatically, it is still

necessary for everyone of us to have at least one copy of it so we can access if technical

problems happen.

SHOW RESPECT TO YOUR TEAMMATES

Please be on time at both face-to-face and Skype meetings. If you are busy at certain times with

reasonable reasons, please inform in advance with our leader.

During meetings, please be patient to listen to each other. The leader will make sure that

everyone has their chance to raise their opinions and questions. The ideas, however, will be

decided by the whole group with voting method if necessary.

We will try to reduce gossip and time-consuming chats as well as harsh comments about each

other. Meetings and comments should be constructive, not negative.

HELP EACH OTHER

We will depend on the abiility of each memebr to assign the tasks fairly. However, it is

necessary for us as teammates to support each other if we have any problem.

ASK FOR HELP & SPEAK UP!

Don't hesitate to ask if you have any problem. And don't even be afraid to tell us your opinions.

We believe each member is equally important and we would love to hear what you might come

up with.

WORK HARD! LEARN HARD!

Although we understand the intense of which this campaign can bring up, please try your best

and take this chance to learn new things about online marketing, social media, teamwork and

leadership. Less whining and more complimenting your teammates will help!

REFERENCE:

Bruneel, J 2009, ‘People like food’, The Onion, Finest new sources, 7 January, viewed 30 June

2011, < http://www.theonion.com/articles/people-like-food,11439/>.