Blog Assignment 3

Five years from now

In five years time I'm hopefully graduated indeed. I would want to live in a foreign country for a few years. I don't want to deal with the struggle of learning a complete new language though. So I will probably pick an english speaking country with a lot of sun ofcourse. Living in a foreign appeals to me alot. Past summer I've worked in France and Spain for 2 and a half months. I enjoyed it a lot! When I graduate I also want to buy my first car. At the moment I'm enjoying my driver's license by driving around in my mother's car.

I'd probably also want to live together with my girlfriend. Of course I don't know if we still got something going on by then.I do want to come back to the Netherlands eventually though. I might uy a house in a foreign country if I can afford one. So that I could visit it once in a while. It would be nice to have one at the seaside of spain or something like Australia. As mentioned above I predict a good futur. Greetings from the Netherlands for now!

Blog Assignment 2

Living at home

I still live at home while I´m at uni, it has some advantages and also some disadvantages. The first advantage is that I don´t have to wash my own clothes. A disadvantage is that I have to travel longer than I would have when I would be living in a room in Utrecht. It´s not a big disadvantage though because it takes me around forty minutes to get to school. I don´t find it that much of a deal to travel for forty minutes. Also when I want to go to a party in Utrecht, I need to make sure I can sleep at someone else. Otherwise I would have to go home in the middle of the night, using the bus to Zeist and then go on by bike to Driebergen. This really is one of the big disadvantages of living at home in Driebergen. I guess I´m lucky, most of the time I don´t struggle to find a place to sleep in Utrecht. An advantage of living at home is my parents paying for most of my food. It would have been a disadvantage if I didn´t like my mother´s cooking skills, but fortunately that´s not the case. I personally don´t find it a disadvantage that you have to deal with your parents, but I can imagine someone else does. My parents are very easy and I´m not restricted to any rules at all. Also a huge advantage is that I can use my mother´s car. The only condition is that I ask for it and of course that I drive save. Since I´ve got my driver’s license I really am enjoying driving. These are some of the advantages and disadvantages I came across living at home, I hope you enjoyed them!

Blog Assignment 1

My First half year at the HU was great. I´ve got to know a lot of new people at this school. Getting to school every day takes about twenty minutes. Last year it took me about an hour to get to school.

As mentioned I met a lot of new people this year and made new friends. At the same it is a pity that I am less able to spend time with friends of my previous school. This year I also got my driver’s license. I enjoy driving a lot. I cannot imagine myself without it anymore already.

This year I decided to stop playing soccer. I came to the conclusion that it took too much time. I simply do not have the time at the moment to play three times a week. Instead of playing soccer I have been going to the gym. I prefer going to the gym because I can go whenever I have the time.

Until now I really enjoyed the courses. I am very curious about the rest of the year. Last year I tried a different course but it was not what I expected it to be. That is why I am a little excited about the rest of the year.

Top tip

I would recommend everyone to stay in touch with your friends and at the same time do not hesitate to meet new people. Do not be afraid of meeting new people and making new friends. You do not want to miss out. 

Assignment 3 Listening

Hello and welcome to “In the Spotlight”. Our special guest today is marketing

manager for Verbalised Solutions: Howard Downer.

Howard, thanks for joining us.

Thanks. Have you seen our new ad? It’s great !It cost us millions!

Howard, can we start on your company’s

Views on internal marketing and communications?

What? Emails?

No.

Chat in the kitchen over a coffee? Drinks at the pub

after work?

No! How your company presents to its staff or to its

trade and

distributers. Ohhh .. Power Point stuff ! Hmmm..

Amongst other things.

What other things?

Do you hold events?

What? The Christmas party?

That’s your only communication to these people?

No, no, we’ve got a Staff training room. Oh and the

trade presenter and yeah,they’ve all got tvs at home so they can watch our new ad

there. Cost us millions, mate, millions !

How do, you, for example get your company to

Embrace a new brand or a

new company direction?

Ah, well, well,the leadership team they get

Briefed at weekend like at, like at the Blue Mountains.

That sounds nice.

Oh yeah !

And?

And.. eh management management they get briefed over dinner at a very

Fancy 5 star restaurant in the city if you don’t mind!

Hm.. and what about the staff?

The what?

The staff! How do you fire them up?

Ah that’s where the Power Point comes in.

Yes ...the key words there were “fire up”.

Well the Power Point slides are pretty colourful and we use loads

of clip up and any emails we send out they’ve got those little ehm

animated smilies on them you know the ieeee oooooieee

Do you think your staff are motivated?

HOWARD!

Sorry! Ehm what was the question?

Do you think your staff are motivated?

Well they come into work every day!

How can you tell?

Well we see them coming in through the front door !

No, how can you tell they’re motivated ?

Hm.. noone says they’re not!

What about the people that sell your products?

Ahhh now they’re cool They’re all on commission.

Last of all Howard... how important is it to you that your people

 Fully embrace the

Company vison culture and attitude.

and that the company commited to ensuring their

enthusiasm is maintained?

Well, that’s an ..? , isn’t it?

Howard Downer thanks for your time, back to you in the studio.

No, no, no, wait ,wait, wait, wait, wait !

Tell them about our new ad! It’s cost us millions, mate, millions!

Assignment 15 Reading

1. Why does Subway care about childhood obesity?

They believe that they hold a position where they can actually change how people think about being and eating healthy.

2. What communication techniques does Subway use to work on the

problem?

Subway uses TV spots, a TV morning-show, a three segment story package on the topic and they struck a deal with Nickelodeon.

3. Describe the various parts of Subway’s campaign.

Subway uses TV spots in their campaign. They mainly show the people instead of their food. They want to show that their food can be helping hand with people having difficulty at having a healthy lifestyle. It is mainly pointed at younger Americans, that is why they chose to use TV and Nickelodeon.

4. What could have happened to the company if Subway had not

embarked on this campaign?

Young American people would experience a lot of heart problems at younger age.

Assignment 13 Video articles

Video 1

The video is about new social media. There is a lot of discussion about what role it is playing in our society and what role it is going to play in the future. Some people say that spending time on social networks is replacing time spent on talking to people in person. Young people are often spending a lot of time speaking to people from foreign countries they will probably never meet. Some people even claim that social media is affecting the brain in a negative way. Social media are also blamed for people having an unhealthy lifestyle. However if you look a bit further you would conclude that there are a lot of other reason to be thought of which would be much more appropriate  to be a reason for people having an unhealthy lifestyle. Studies show that watching TV at a very young age definitely affects the performance of children at school. Social media are seen as the latest form of screen-media.

Video 2

Social media are a way of supporting internal communications. At June the 24^th Abi is having a workshop about social media. One of the subjects will be how twitter can be a good medium for internal communications within a company. She is going to share her experiences with using social media as an internal communication medium, but also the people attending are free to share their opinions and thoughts about this subject. They are even testing vlogging which is making a blog using video. She has experienced huge benefits by using social media for internal communications. Information reaches the people very quickly and by using the social media they are sharing a lot of knowledge with their people. Having this kind of internal communication is going to be a major return for her and her company.

Video 3

Toyota was looking for a right way to engage more with their costumers and their audience. They found social media the right way to accomplish that. Twitter came to their attention very quickly. Their colleagues in North-America already had a positive experience with the use of this social media. Twitter is mainly used by Toyota Europe to reach journalists and NGO’s. They could also approach these journalists and NGO’s by for example e-mail, still they chose to use twitter. Because of new channels coming up all the time they found it important to use a new approach. At twitter they still use a very strong corporate voice. The blogs are more about personal experiences by employees of Toyota. The blogs are not meant as pure marketing, they are meant to engage more with their audience.

Assignment 8

1. What is remarkable about the comments and the bloggers of the Federal Reserve

Bank?

They remain anonymous.

2. The Federal Reserve Bank opened a blog to create “buzz”. What is meant by this,

in other words, what was the purpose of opening a blog?

To make it more interesting and to make people check it more regularly  for news.

3. What was the female recruiting manager’s blog mainly about?

About being a full-time mom and having a full-time job at the same time.

4. What was the purpose of her blog?

To create a discussion on this matter.

5. Which words show that the FED does exercise a form of control on the blogs?

Regulated, moderated.

6. By what kind of people were the very first FED blogs written?

By the senior management.

7. Have the blogs changed the way that people who work for the FED think about

internal communications ?

They definitely changed the way people think about internal communications.

8. What is the latest development in the company as far as media are concerned?

The latest development in the company are flatscreen TV’s in elevator banks.

9. Catherine Cummings says that this medium to communicate with staff is better

than an older medium. Which more old-fashioned way of communicating with staff

does she mention?

-

10. What is the next big thing in social media at the FED?

A new intranet specially designed for the FED.