Diversity Within My Graduate Project

First and foremost, my project is centered on art museums and the increasing need for a larger audience base. Authors and researchers have accepted the notion of a current generational gap formed in the people that choose to attend art museums. Currently, white affluent men and women over the age of 50 contribute a major portion of attendance and donations to art museums around the country. This in itself is nothing to be alarmed about. The part that is scary for the art museum industry is that there isn’t another demographic that is picking up the remaining portion. This is where my master’s project will come into play.

My project is a portfolio-based project that will be grounded in research involving a specific group (14-21 year old males and females). I will be researching the methods of creativity and social dynamics by holding six focus groups with 6-8 members of this demographic in attendance. The information provided by these as well as other research means will provide me the necessary information and insight to complete a creative brief for an advertising platform. Once this creative platform is completed, I will devise two separate advertising campaigns containing between 10 and 15 advertising print executions. I will then use my research to justify my creative executions, thus allowing for an effective method of advertisement to a previously uninterested group of individuals. 

When looking through the Internet for a viable example of diversity integrating with my project topic, I came across an excerpt from Susan Donley’s book, Cultural Diversity; The Museum as Resource. I found this excerpt at http://www.learningdesign.com/Portfolio/museum/museumschool.html. Within this chapter excerpt, Donley outlines the nature of art museums. She goes into detail about their historical significance as well as their ability to teach diversity. She believes the artifacts themselves, being made by different cultures, is in itself a valid form of diversity. Pieces shown within the walls of a museum are not racially specific in nature. Each and every piece has a different beginning, middle and end. The artifacts themselves are evidence of diversity in action. Within one museum, there are thousands of artifacts, each expressing a different meaning or idea. It is this melting pot of significance that diversity is found. With each piece, a new story is told; it can be one of a middle class Caucasian woman or that of a high class African American man. The point is that art has the luxury of not being racially distinguishable. It is because of this very fact that my project integrates diversity within itself naturally. Conversation about diversity within my project is therefore unnecessary.

My Project and Diversity

The overarching concept of art museum advertising messages is extremely relevant to contemporary media. The notion of talent construction comes into play when regarding advertising different creative outlets to a younger generation (in this case, art museums). In order for contemporary media outlets to continue to strive in the future, it is imperative that younger generations foster a passion for creativity. This is where the issue of art museum advertising comes into play. Squidoo.com defines creativity as “the ability to make something original, to imagine things that don't exist, and to come up with new ideas.” With that being said, the importance of continued creativity generation should be understood. Without creativity in our younger generations, the business fields associated with this wonderful ability will disappear. 

With a topic centered on the renewal of creativity in minors, the ethical constrains of such a task should be considered. According to Ethical Conduct of Clinical Research Involving Children, even though children have benefited greatly from clinical research, their rights must be thought about in an excessive amount. Since children are younger and thus more prone to physical and emotional damage, their care must be ensured at all times when participating in a study. Psychologist Allen D. Kanner, PhD, says “advertising is a massive, multi-million dollar project that's having an enormous impact on child development. 

The sheer volume of advertising is growing rapidly and invading new areas of childhood, like our schools.” This notion outlines the importance of the ethical treatment of children in this study. With the increasing amount of messages being targeted toward children, we as media vehicles must choose the way in which we reach our children targets. It is an important issue that is currently being addressed by different venues across academia. 

The country of Iceland has taken an extreme position on advertising directed toward children. They have several laws that both limit and deny advertising messages during children specific programming. These actions show how important this topic is. When a government makes laws against a topic, it implies importance. 

The way in which American advertisers treat the issue of advertising for children can be described as a self-policing action. There is a lack of laws preventing the advertisement of products to children, however, advertisers answer to the people within their publics. Chris Moore of Ogilvy & Mather wrote a speech in which he stated “Society imposes context on advertising ethics all the time - especially in advertising that involves children.” If a member of the advertising community can recognize a trend within that community, it must be an apparent issue. 

The ethics involved around the notion of creativity prosperity are important to consider when executing research. These children must be thought of before being spoken to. Hopefully, the industry will continue their self-policing in the future, for our children’s sake that is.

The following is a list of sources used in the creation of this blog.

http://www.squidoo.com/fosteringcreativity

http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10958&page=R1

http://www.apa.org/monitor/sep00/advertising.html

http://ec.europa.eu/avpolicy/docs/library/studies/finalised/studpdf/minadv_ic.pdf

http://www.aef.com/on_campus/classroom/speaker_pres/data/3001

Life After Project!

Is there life after the completion of a thesis or project? YES! A much less stressful life awaits! :)
With the completion of my project will also come the end of my school years, so yes for me there is life after completing my project!
As is the nature of any professional project, I hope to successfully disseminate my ideas and the core concepts from my project to a particular client. I am still uncertain of who exactly that client will be, but this will be determined when I get a little closer to time for me to begin my final project. If I go with the project proposal that I have come up with for this class, the client would be Grand River Dam Authority as well as a chosen nonprofit agency.
The audience I really hope to influence would be nonprofit agencies as well as large corporations that wish to be socially responsible and help to financially support a worthy cause. My project proposal proposes that a joint advertising campaign be created, that would involve both a for-profit corporation and a non-profit organization. Not only would the nonprofit benefit because of the financial support, but the corporation would benefit as well, because of the goodwill and positive brand image the partnership would accrue.
The interesting spin that this project has as opposed to other social cause-related marketing campaigns is that it involves the non-profit one hundred percent. Input, approval, and suggestions for the ads of both entities would be needed from the nonprofit as well as the corporation. Also, though this would be an advertising campaign, several public relations techniques and practices would be implemented therefore making it an integrated marketing campaign. In today’s world of advertising, many traditional methods are very near death. That is why it is so important for new and integrated forms of advertising and marketing to be created and put into practice.
Brand image building has emerged as an important way to promote and stabilize your brand. For example, try to think of an advertisement you have recently seen for Starbucks coffee . Except for billboards Starbucks doesn’t really advertise heavily, but they have an amazing brand image that brings in new customers and keeps previous customers returning day after day. Or, take Apple computers for example, while yes they may use traditional advertising to advertise their newest product, their brand image is so strong that they have a consistently growing loyal following. Their brand is so salient that people use it to define themselves. That is what my project sets out to do, maybe at a smaller scale that is not so cult like. J In essence, this project is simply increasing brand awareness while also increase favorable brand image for both the nonprofit agency and the large corporation. So, all of this being said, the best way to share my ideas with a broader audience is to pitch the idea to a client and begin implementing it one client (or client pair) at a time.