For my thesis project, I’ve been creating my own propmaking business. With this business, I’ve created a accounts on Imgur, Tumblr, and a dedicated blog to document my process. Aside from actually creating the props, the biggest challenges I’ve encountered are creating a visual theme and establishing the tone I’d use.
When doing my initial research for the project, I started following Bill “PunishedProps” Doran on YouTube and Facebook. In one of his videos, he made a passing comment about how he portrays himself online. He said that he portrays himself like he would if he was in person. I decided to imitate this style when I started creating my content.
My first image album on Imgur was completely different than what I eventually developed. I created my captions exactly as if I were narrating them to a friend. My writing style frequently switched between the present and past tense, gave commands to the reader, and added jokes into the writing. Unfortunately, writing like this made my narrated segments choppy and hard to read. After consulting with several friends, it was recommended that I rewrite these sections. Eventually, I re-wrote the entire post, using only using the past tense. I am still not satisfied with the current tone of my blog. I feel that it reads as something too formal and boring.
My formatting and visual themes changed between my Tumblr and my blog. When I interviewed people about my collection of online networks, they commented on the visual differences between the sites. Most people replied that if the two sites had some visual consistency, they could recognize that both sites were part of one business. This presented two problems. First, I had to use the same voice when writing content, despite the different audiences of Tumblr and Blogger. Second, I had to design two visual themes that look similar, but have slight differences, and that are good for displaying both images and text.
Authenticity is very important, whether it is coming from a large corporation or when building a business from scratch. A business representative has to clearly communicate the message they send out. They also have to be forward thinking and completely honest when dealing with customers. For large businesses, this can be reacting to a scandal or product recall. For small businesses, this could be contacting a customer that their order will not be ready by a deadline. In either case, honesty and a little tact will help the company save face.
The other half of being authentic to the brand is creating content that is authentic to the brand. Recently, Charmin posted an image that coincided with the release of Disney / Marvel’s Thor 2. Upon seeing it, I chuckled to myself and then immediately wondered if this was appropriate for Charmin to post online. After doing some research online, I found that was authentic to Charmin’s social media presence. Charmin uses their social media to primarily talk with parents, so the cleverly worded pun wasn’t completely out of character. But like the Gay Pride Oreo post, it left Charmin open to criticism. Unfortunately, Charmin has pulled the (somewhat) controversial ad after some mommy-bloggers and social media goers complained about it. As Gabe said in class, sometimes brands will comment on things where they have no reason to do so. This may be one such example of a brand making an ill-advised post.
