Portfolio Marlon Maria Elisabeth Charlotte Verhoeven
VIA design + Business - 4th semester Branding & Marketing Management fashion and furniture Dlbm2b814
Table of contents:
About me 1-2 About Via design 3-4 About Branding & Marketing management 5-6 Course overview 7 Project 1st semester – ideation project 9-10 Elective 2nd semester – Writing for a fashion website 11-12 Business economics 1 13 Macroeconomics 1 14 Brand strategy & analysis 15-16 Marketing management 17-18 Concept development 19-20 Study skills 21-22 3th semester Erasmus Exchange 23-24 Project 3th semester - sustainability 25-26 Campaings 27-28 Management and Leadership 29 E-strategy 30
About me
My name is Marlon Verhoeven, I am 23 years old and I am studying International Branding & Marketing Management in fashion and furniture at VIA Design University College in Herning, Denmark. After graduating high school I started my studies in Fashion & Design at Koning Willem 1 College in ’s-Hertogenbosch, wherefore I graduated with cum laude. With this knowledge I got even more interested in the fashion business, and felt that I want to get more knowledge by studying another degree. At Via Design and Business I have combined the skills that I already got and the knowledge I have gained during my studies. My passionate and creative personality and my genuine interest for this business makes me a good student. Because of my experience I have been rewarded with good grades and positive feedback. Fashion has always inspired me. I get easily inspired by a lot of different things in my everyday life: daily street view, school, social media, magazines, blogs, festivals etc. In my free time I like to read magazines & blogs, spend time with my family &friends, doing active sports and travel. I also enjoy shopping, baking, drawing, designing & sewing - and hugging my dog!
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About VIA Design
Campus Herning accommodates VIA Design, the largest design and business academy in Scandinavia within the furniture, fashion and lifestyle sectors. If you dream of a future in the fashion and lifestyle industry, VIA Design & Business offers a variety of study programmes to help that dream come true. More than 1,300 students with a passion for clothing, furniture, and home furnishings fill our classrooms and workshops every day. Here, they soak up new knowledge and work intensively on realising their dreams The school has a very close co-operation with the lifestyle industry. For decades, VIA Design & Business has educated the people – the manpower – that international companies need. The school covers all aspects of fashion and lifestyle companies, whether design, purchasing or sales. And we always think in terms of both design AND business; we consider the two to be inextricably intertwined. That’s one reason why our students are extremely well-equipped to think commercially and creatively in their future jobs. The school has a distinctly international environment, bringing together students of many nationalities. VIA Design & Business is part of VIA University College, which is a group of educational institutions offering undergraduate level programmes. With more than 40 years of experience as a supplier of competent employees to the lifestyle industry, VIA Teko Design & Business is hard to ignore if you want your dreams to come true.
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About Branding and Marketing Management Branding and Marketing Management is located in Herning. The programme provides you with a basic understanding of branding and marketing and how things work in the fashion and lifestyle sector. Through the programme you achieve basic skills which will come in handy in your future career, or if you choose to continue your studies on our BA top-up programme. You learn to communicate, plan and carry through visual and strategic marketing that aims for a specific target group. As a starting point for this programme, you will analyse a brand’s values as well as trends and te dencies in the global consumer market. You learn how to use various marketing channels, e.g. digital, electronic and print media, and you will get insights as to choosing the right channels for your concept. With an AP degree in Branding and Marketing Management you get to work in teams with marketing professionals as well as designers, web managers etc. from the fashion and lifestyle sector. As a result, we aim to provide you with a broad knowledge of the variety of professions you may encounter once you finish your education. Hence, you will experience a broad collaboration with the other international programmes at VIA Teko Design & Business
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Course overview AP Degree in Design - Technology and Business Branding & Marketing Management
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VIA design project 1st semester – Ideation
Purpose: The project aims to provide students with an understanding of innovation through the connection between brand values and design development and dissemination of new product (s) through an exhibition stand. To give the student an insight into design from an aesthetic, functional and commercial perspective. To enable students to create compelling prototypes and communicate ideas in both 2D and 3D. Personal reflection: From all the projects I have had so far, is this my favourite one. We needed to come up with a total new product for an already existing well-known brand and analyse this deeply, trough looking at the brand identity, history and their target group. In this project there was a good balance between theoretical and practical tasks, and did I learn a lot about the different specialities as: branding, retail, design and pattern design and how to adapt those into the project with making a stand on a fair for ‘Joe & the Juice’ with 3 backpacks. But also because of the workshops you could sign up for as calculating. In our process of designing a product we first came up with making a lunchbox for ‘Joe & the Juice’, but we received feedback that the idea did not really identify the brand, this did us decided to restart and design 3 backpacks. Afterwards we all saw that this works better than our first idea, and learned to analyse the brand identity more and dig deeper into their brand values. I played an active role in the whole project with designing the backpacks, making the patterns, sewing the backpacks that needed to be functionally, aesthetically, commercially and fit the Joe & the Juice style. GRADE: 12
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Elective 2nd semester – Writing for a fashion website
Purpose: To get more knowledge and tips about writing for a fashion website. To know is important when you start writing Looking at the audience: - what do they know? - What do they need to know? How to write a pick up line How to use visuals and illustrations in an article How to use metaphors Personal reflection: When we could apply for the electives I was already sure to choose ‘ Writing for fashion websites’ because I could learn a lot about it, let’s say everything because I did not have any experience on this field. But something I have always been really interested in, I read a lot of blogs, fashion articles, and have a great admiration for good writers. I learned that when you start writing it is important to look at your audience, what is the message that you want to give them? And what do they already know? The articles we needed to write were around 150 characters, and reading it out loud in front of the class. I got feedback from other students and the teacher to keep the subject as simple as possible – what really worked because you can explain much more about the subject. This way of teaching gave also a good atmosphere overall, you could give your opinion, and learned from other articles. In only 5 classes I gained a lot of new knowledge and writing skills, I even won the end assignment. And I can say for sure that I feel much more comfortable about my writing skills after this elective. PASSED
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Business economics 1
Purpose: To understand the insight in a company and industry-related economic issues of importance to companies survival and strategic development. Personal reflection: I see business economics as a very important class if you want to work in branding and marketing world and especially with setting up your own business. Business economics was totally new for me and it will always be an intricate subject to me, so sometimes I struggled with new terms and subject where I had never heard of before as e.g. the steeple analysis and the supply and demand in different market segments. I can confidently say that calculating decimals, fractions, percentages and ratios has improved a lot, as well as working in Excel. The way of teaching was very useful to remember more of the information you learned during the explanation from the teacher – so did we do a workshop every class that you needed to do yourself or in pairs, one was e.g. answering a questionnaire with all the topics we had learned so far. Topics: Mathematical tools percent’s, decimals, fractions, percentage, ratios. Supply and demand in different market segments. Elasticity, Financial reports, Ratio analysis, Excel Budgets.
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Macroeconomics 1 Purpose: To acquire a deeper insight into and understanding of macroeconomic theory and political systems and their impact on the development of companies and society globally as well as nationally Personal reflection: Well I am not really skilled in macroeconomics, but this does not mean that I do not like the lectures. I see the importance in macroeconomics for in my future career. Everybody in class without economical experience had difficulties with understanding some of the subjects as how to move the aggregate supply and aggregate demand curve. While the teaching was actually teaching in a good way because of repeating the information from last class and asking if everybody understand. Now I know what aggregate demand is, how the business cycle works and what the government all can do to slow this down. I made a lot of notes during those classes and read them through before the next lecture, and I found out that it really helped me to understand macroeconomic better and how to remove that AD/AS curve!
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Brand strategy and analysis Purpose: The purpose of these lectures is to provide you with the insights, models, & approaches required in order to create profitable & sustainable brand strategies by building, measuring & managing brand equity. We will be addressing three important questions: 1. How can we create brand equity? 2. How can brand equity be measured? 3. How can we sustain brand equity to expand business opportunities? Personal reflection: This is my favourite class of the 2nd semester. In the Branding strategy and analysis classes I really learned new thing all the time. I also want to compliment my teacher for his innovative way of teaching. He does come up with new teaching methods all the time as: PowerPoint presentations, videos, real life stories and examples from his own career, branding games he made himself, exercises, discussions and showing new interesting sites e.g. Ted. In classes I made a lot of notes in classed but for the next time I should also make more notes out of the book: Keller strategic brand management - what we used for this course. I properly did not do this because of the clear explaining from the teacher in the lectures, but I would benefit from doing it to get a summery from what I have learned so far. So did I learn what brand equity is how important this is for a brand, how to create it and how different it is for every single brand. I also gained knowledge about brand leverage with all the different ways of advertising as: guerrilla, shock, emotional etc.
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Marketing management Purpose: • Thorough knowledge and understanding of the connection and interaction between a marketing department and a company’s other departments, the value chain, and especially the company’s connection and interaction with its macro and micro environments. • Thorough knowledge of practices in the interaction between the company’s strategic processes, i.e. analysis – objectives and strategies - implementation – follow-up Personal reflection: Marketing management classes have realized me how important this part of the total study is. I gained a lot of knowledge in the lectures as: researching the consumer, target group and developing a marketing strategy to get contact with your customers e.g. social media. But also the 5P’s of marketing will be something that I will use more often in school projects and future career, because it is an easy model to fill in and gives immediately a clear view where to work on. For the marketing management classes we used the book from: Kothler ‘Marketing principles’ we were supposed to read the chapters before the classes, and in the classes we could dig deeper into the subjects, models and strategies. This way of teaching helped me understanding new subjects. Another useful method we did was that everybody in class gave a presentation about 1 chapter what we uploaded to study net, therefore we needed to understand the chapter to explain the knowledge to your classmates. The only thing that was missing for me were more examples from good or bad marketing, I personally think that this is a good way to remember new information. Topics: Research • Segmentation • Product • Price • Place • Promotion
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Concept development Purpose: To understand the components of a successful concept, to initiate and participate in the development of a company’s concept, and develop a visual identity for it. And make a presentation of the concept and meet company expectations as well as ensure the product’s sustainability Personal reflection: I feel more confident about my creative skills, and it felt good that I could adapt them in the concept development classes and assignments. Concept development is one of my favourite classes of the 2nd semester, because there is a good balance between theoretical and practical lectures about graphical design - where I have always been interested in. The assignments consisted of creating an image board, a logo, a poster and the main assignment to create a brand book. The lectures were well structured - so did we have a InDesign lecture before the brand book assignment, and digging deeper into graphic design options instead of picking the first thing that pops up in your mind. Also the many examples our teacher gave from good graphic design logos gave a clear overview from where to focus in all different companies concept as for example using of colours.
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Study skills Purpose: •To provide students with the knowledge & skills to enable them to write course & exam assignments, re-ports, dissertations & plans in a clear & concise manner. •To develop student’s ability to carry out credible re-search using a range of quantitative & qualitative techniques, analyse data and present the results. •To develop students’ presentation skills using appropriate media. •To provide students with the skills & techniques they need to pass the 2/3/4 (5/6/7) semester assessments & exams. Personal reflection: Before the classes of study skills started and knowing what the purpose of this course was, I was really excited about getting more knowledge and tips about how to study, learn and present. What is really useful for me, and my classmates as well. After reading the purpose of this course I found out that my first thought was right. But with only 2 classes of study skills I must unfortunately say that I did not learn a lot. Within the 2 classes we only saw PowerPoints slights, who wear actually clear to me. I learned that making a planning before presenting / assignment is helpful, and also to always be aware of your target group and to use this in your presentation. For next time I will make more notes in the lectures. But I personally think that giving exercises, good examples of how to study or present would give us more knowledge.
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3th semester Erasmus Exchange - ISTC University in Lille, France Personal reflection: After the interview with Solveig, I received the email that I got chosen to go to Lille for my Erasmus Exchange. YES! I was so looking forward for this. When it was September I went to Lille and started my Erasmus at the ISTC communication and Strategies University. This University has only French students but for Erasmus exchanges they have some English courses for the international students as well. For this autumn semester I was together with 10 other girls and 1 guy. I followed mainly courses about communication and cultures as: Focus on Oceania, Far East, North America, Latin America but also Visual communication and a French course. The subject were really interesting and I learned a lot of new thing about how people communicate in different cultures, something you should really be aware of before you start doing businesses in one of those countries. The teachers were very friendly but also proffesional and well prepared in the lectures as well as the other Erasmus students. The other French students in the school were less interested, but the fact that their level of English is really low must also be a reason. That was actually the only downside of my Erasmus experience, something I actually already knew. Most French people do not want to speak English! Besides that I have had the most wonderful 4 months I could imagine, I made really good friends with the other international Erasmus girls, living in the big city Lille was an amazing experience. And learning many new interesting things about the different ways of communicating in different cultures was great!
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Sustainability project Purpose: Students should become qualified: • To acquire insight into issues relating to sustainability and environmental impact. Students should acquire knowledge of: • Ethics • Sustainable materials, manufacturing processes, and trade • Labelling schemes • Analysis for documenting sustainability Students should acquire skills in: • Understanding and applying different theories • Analysing the environmental impact of processes applied • Documenting results obtained Students should master competences in: • Relating relevant theory to company requirements • Preparing a strategy and drawing up an action plan for a company’s implementation of sustainable design Personal reflection: I must admit that my first thoughts about this project was boring. But while I followed the first lectures that were given and started developing the idea together with my group made me realize that this is everything except boring! This has been one of my favourite projects at Via Design, because we were absolutely free to come up with a new brand or develop a sustainable strategy for an existing brand. Our group took the challenge the come up with a total new brand. After every lecture we got some new inspiration that we wrote down, and in the end our idea was born. A sustainable shop located in Copenhagen, that offers their own T-shirt collection as well as other sustainable clothing from other brands. Besides offering clothes was the shop also a bike rental of sustainable bike made from wood. In this project I focused on the brand design and creating an identity for the brand (see logo on the left). In the end I gathered all this information together in a brand book. This branding part totally fits me, and I felt confident about the results. Since the feedback was really positive I decided that I want to use designing or improving a brand identity in my final exam as well. Another thing that I learned and realized during this project, that you always needed to consider is this actually sustainable? or can we make it more sustainable. But only sustainable was not enough, it also needed to be interesting for customers as well. This task was more difficult as we thought it would be, but the challenge was good and it gave us a lot of new knowledge about sustainability that I hopefully can use in the future, Since I got really interested in this topic.
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Campaigns Purpose: Successful campaigns are prepared on good preparation and good creative briefing. In the course campaigns, we are working to create the foundation for appropriate and creative distinct communication. This means that you will get insight into how a campaign is created, from strategic background analysis to the final idea and creative execution Personal reflection: The campaign class is one of my favourite courses of the 4th semester, because there is a good balance between theoretical and practical information as well as exercises. In this class I have the feeling that everybody is participating actively and feels free to share their opinion. In this class I learned a lot about storytelling, so have I for example presented the 4 elements of storytelling. Looking into these 4 elements made me think about other brand who make use of storytelling, and how this can be an advantage for the brand. I enjoyed this class so much that even in my free time I looked up the other campaigns on the internet. The final assignment for this course is to come up with a new campaign for the Danish band called: XOLO Island. Since you could choose yourself if you want to work in a group or alone, I have chosen to work in a group with classmates where I work often with, and like their workstyle. When we met to discuss about this assignment we easily came up with many different ideas, and got even more excited than we already were in class. I started immediately to visualize our ideas with a mood board (see right page). My opinion is that the teacher did a good task by letting you choose between 2 bands and develop the whole idea yourself. This is of course a little bit more work, but you are more free to design your own creative campaign idea, and that is motivating for me.
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Management and Leadership Purpose: Students should get a holistic approach to management, company structure, culture and working processes. This should also include developing a holistic approach to planning, implementation, control and development with the purpose of motivating employees Learning goals (skills): Students should develop their ability to analyse whether the company structure, culture, and allocation of working responsibilities as well as the management style create a platform that supports realization of company objectives. Students should equally develop their ability to suggest improvements to management structure. Learning goals (competences): - Students should acquire competences in suggesting improvements that will facilitate the handling of management challenges faces by companies in the industry. - Students should acquire competences in working with management challenges relating to different functions of the company. - Based on their own learning needs and abilities, students should develop competences in planning and realizing relevant learning within the subject area of management. Personal reflection: The management and Leadership course was an interesting subject for me, because my knowledge on this field was very little. The lectures were well prepared and had a good planning and structure. With knowing what would be the topic of today in class, makes it more easy to understand. Reading the chapters before the classes helped me to gain more knowledge that I could use in the little assignments/tasks that were given in the class. One of those assignments was to present a case out of the book, and the presentation needed to be like an act or something special, this did not really make sense for me, I understand that giving an example works good so that’s also what I did with my group. The book that we used for this course is called ‘organizational behaviour’ from Stephen P. Robbins and Timothy A. Judge, this book is easy to read and understand and has a good structure. The final assignment for the Management and Leadership course was an written assignment; with the explanation of management as well as leadership, and one case of the book where we had the presentation about. This assignment has been very useful for me to have a clear overview of the whole course in my own words.
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E-strategy Purpose: Students should be qualified: Based on the global network economy and digitalisation of markets with belonging strategic focus areas, the student must be able to analyse and phrase the company’s digital marketing strategy (e-strategy) in an integrative relation to the overall marketing strategy (Integrated Marketing Communication). Personal reflection: The E-strategy course has been really helpful to realize some easy things in marketing you see every day but never really thought about it. As for example how useful email marketing still is. Even though this course had a very friendly teacher, it was often a bit boring, I noticed that during the lecture almost everybody was doing something else than listening to the teacher. I really tried to stay focused because the subject is really interesting and I might work with this in my future career, but I must also admit that the way of teaching was not really motivating. There was never an example, little video to keep the lecture interesting. I believe that with giving examples student remember more information that is given. Besides that I still learned new things as for example the TCEO model were I had never heard of, but what can be very useful when you are creating a new digital marketing idea. The book we used is called E-marketing from Rob Stokes this was very helpful, I read the chapters before classes what the teacher also asked us to do. The book is well structured and is easy to understand. Since I downloaded the book I think I will use it more often later on, since this subject really interested me.
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Marlon Maria Elisabeth Charlotte Verhoeven