CROWDSOURCING NEW STRATEGIES EMERGING FUTURE TRENDS
and
Case Study: TONGAL
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who we are prof. Rhea Alexander Aizawa, Shota Aujla, Jasmin Figueira, Sofia Kang, Joonsoo Karageuzian, Roupen Morozowich, Nicholas Mecattaf, Maria Pedraza, Natalia Pinto, Paula Trongkamolthum, Issaree Wang, Jianan Zhang, Jing
students
Zok, Limassol
PGDM 5200 Integrative Studio Date 5/13/2015 Special thanks to Tongal
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Table of Contents About Us The Challenge Crowdsourcing and Future Trends Main Goal Parsons Design Strategy Studio Operations
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Tongal, Video Crowdsourcing Company
INTROduction
Case Study for Innovation Strategy
Community Digital Platforms Integrated Marketing
49 81 105 155
Business Development/Operations
Research
Analysis, Synthesis & Ideation
Testing, Prototyping & Methodology
People Development
New Business Internal Process Brand Identity
User Experience New Business Internal Process Brand Identity Appendix
conclusion
Bibliography Biographies
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introduction
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about us Context and Overview In a complex global economy characterized by rapidly evolving standards for the production and management of information, services, and experiences, leaders must exhibit flexibility and a capacity for innovation. The New School’s Strategic Design and Management master’s program (MS SDM) responds to this major restructuring of developed and emerging economies worldwide. The program aims to create leaders that will leverage the new economy, take strategic design to the next level, and lead the future companies that will shape our world.
The Students The students behind this project are first and foremost design thinkers. Coming from diverse cultural backgrounds and industry professions, they are early to mid-career professionals who aim to complement their academic and professional accomplishments with the latest design and business skills that are proving successful in the current new economy, under the framework of global knowledge backed by the diverse perspectives on innovation that the SDM program offers.
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about us Unlike traditional MBA programs, the MS SDM program focuses primarily on the design thinking, strategy, service design, and sustainability frameworks. Academically rigorous and industry focused, the program prepares its students to be managers that launch and lead organizations driven by design process. The students get exposed to new industry contexts and practices both within and outside of design-intensive industries, and obtain cutting-edge analyses of the digital information-based economy, which gears them towards new business models and creative organizational designs for all industries. The students then graduate with an understanding of the sophisticated realworld perspectives on business, operations, sustainability, management, leadership, entrepreneurship, design innovation, and design research.
Strategy Innovation in Academia The SDM program is primarily about embracing the overlap between business and design, always prioritizing the user and the user’s experience. It is a remodeled MBA taught through the designer’s lens where students learn to break from the barriers of traditional models and design better business practices for a sustainable future using design thinking as an approach for strategy innovation. The user centered methodology taught in the program highlights empathy as the best way to achieve excellence when developing new and improved solutions for existing problems.
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“
When patterns are broken new worlds emerge American poet Tuli Kupferberg
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Masters in Strategic Design at Parsons SDM
Exploratory Approach in An Integrative Studio Setting Through the program, each student is an idea generator, constantly identifying ways to innovate and help stakeholders understand and implement the design process in its different layers and sublayers. Thorough research leads to generative insights, which is communicated to the stakeholders in co-creative strategic initiatives. There are no boundaries to the impact of such collaborations and the PGDM 5200 Integrative Studio course is a part of this mission, with which students complete their first year curriculum. The course is taught in a laboratory approach of exploration, where students are encouraged to collaborate and bring together their business and design backgrounds towards similar goals, while partnering with companies on real cases, while developing research skills, exploring the field, and synthesizing strategic responses to different scenarios.
The New School in New York Beyond the SDM program, the students are part of The New School’s creative environment, exposed to the different disciplines and talents, who practice to design innovative solutions for the future, along with peers from other programs. As members of The New School in New York, we are citizens of the world’s most culturally diverse community, at the center of the quintessential Metropolis. We are working towards building a lifetime global network of thought leaders and innovators, and interacting with a pool of talented colleagues and mentors. These are the experiences that are igniting every artistic, academic and professional sense within us, enabling us to speak the business language of global brand leaders and successfully communicating our ideas to lead the innovation process and co-create solutions for our partners.
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the challenge Crowdsourcing The business challenge and the focus of this paper is crowdsourcing as a business model that has emerged as a trend for digital businesses whose revenue streams depend on their capability to tap into large pools of talent, services, and data at lower costs than those of traditional financial models. The task at hand during the course of the Spring 2015 semester was to study and understand this business model in its various forms, with a highlight on a case study: Tongal, a video content crowdsourcing company based in NYC. The business challenge focused on understanding the industry ecosystem that crowdsourcing occupies and anticipating the future of this trend in a changing economy where users are taking on the roles of producers and benefitting from its economy.
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the challenge Sustainable Value and Profit
Adapting and Tinkering
With that in mind and with a strong understanding of the crowdsourcing model at its current status, companies in this field will need to adapt to emerging systems in order to remain relevant moving forward. The team of students of the Integrative Studio aimed throughout the course of the semester aimed to design innovative scenarios that would enable crowdsourcing companies to continue to create value and remain profitable in the future with highlight on the case study Tongal. The students divided themselves up into sub-groups each focussing on a vital business component of the crowdsourcing company, an approach that allowed them to formulate a well-rounded understanding of all aspects of this system and provide innovative solutions to where crowdsourcing companies could aim in order to sustainably progress into the future.
In an age highlighted by an entrepreneurial renaissance movement1 and with an abundance of disruptive and innovative business models, human behavior is changing and technologies continue to adapt to untapped consumer needs. For businesses to sustain themselves, they need to not only listen to the users and reply to their needs, but also to continue to tinker with possible innovations with emerging technologies that provide new realm for innovative conversations and allow the maximization of capabilities and the creation of new unthought of opportunities.
1July 13, 2013, http://www.fastcompany.com/1766679/entrepreneurialrenaissance-and-rise-independent-workforce
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Crowdsourcing and Future Trends The Crowdsourcing Ecosystem The term crowdsourcing was first coined in 2005 by Jeff Howe and Mark Robinson from Wired magazine as a way to explain how businesses were using the internet to outsource work to individuals. Companies such as Wikipedia, Kickstarter and Tongal are part of this new economy of knowledge brokering2 where companies depend on the contribution of users who are located anywhere in the world and who are willing to spend their knowledge, time, and effort to perform certain tasks. Today, the crowdsourcing ecosystem holds a huge variety of crowdsourcing platforms of diverse specialties that differ according to the specific problems they aim to tackle, ranging from solving scientific challenges, funding profit and non-profit projects, ideating for creative solutions, to processing data.
2 “A Knowledge broker is an intermediary (an organization or a person), that aims to develop relationships and networks with, among, and between producers and users of knowledge by providing linkages, knowledge resources, and in some cases knowledge itself, (e.g. technical know-how, market insights, research evidence) to organizations in its network�. Wikipedia, http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_broker
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Crowdsourcing anD Future Trends The Crowdsourcing Business Model Crowdsourcing changed the way problems are found and solved by tapping into the talent and underused capacity of human intelligence and creativity. The Internet has reduced the economic and social barriers of peer production and has provided a networked world which determines the way businesses and people look for opportunities, contribute their labor and create value. Advances in technology such as the increased access to cheap computing power and the open source movement have enabled the creation of bazaar models of peer production to create goods and services.
Democratizing Work As Jeff Howe mentioned in the Wired article “The Rise of Crowdsourcing,” amateurs and professionals used to be separated by high technological costs, while today technological advances are breaking those costs down and allowing a market for all people professionals, amateurs, and dabblers to express their talents and efforts in various industries that range from pharmaceuticals to television.3 The Internet changed significantly the reach and scope of the economy. Before the networked era, companies would move overseas to find cheap labor or outsource certain tasks. Now they can access a large and informal online community of volunteers who are willing to uncover and
3 Howe, Jeff, “The rise of crowdsourcing”, Wired, June, 2006, http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/14.06/crowds.html
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solve problems in a faster and more diverse way than ever before. As a result both businesses and people have been gaining from this explosive market and finding great opportunities for innovation.
An Explosive Freelance Economy In parallel to and in conjunction with these changes in technology, social changes have also modified the way people work and exercise their talents. According to the Freelancers Union, one in three members of the American workforce (and a higher proportion of younger people)4 do some freelance work, and this phenomenon has a great impact on the crowdsourcing labor market. With more than 15% growth in the number of freelancers expected for 2020 (50% of the US workforce is expected to freelance)5, crowdsourcing is becoming a flexible and attractive solution for this explosive generation of freelancers or potential laborers who respond to open call briefs while competing within an online community to create solutions that best fit the tackled problems and the clients needs.
4 “There Is An App For That”, The Economist, January 3, 2015. http:// www.economist.com/news/briefing/21637355-freelance-workers-availablemoments-notice-will-reshape-nature-companies-and. 5 Kaufman, Micha, “Five Reasons Half of You Will Be Freelancers in 2020”, Forbes, February 28, 2014. http://www.forbes.com/sites/ michakaufman/2014/02/28/five-reasons-half-of-you-will-be-freelancersin-2020/.
Cognitive Surplus for Providing Solutions Crowdsourcing is beneficial for companies and people alike. Contributors are either volunteering to participate by working in their spare time or are considering the service as a job, from which they get compensated monetarily or with recognition. On the other side, businesses use crowdsourcing to increase their exposure to innovation by tapping to an immense amount of talent from anywhere to solve internal problems, which in turn increases access to cheap and specialized labor and information and externalizes the human resource management process of training, managing and motivating workers at the office. This on-demand business model allows the ability to access the cognitive surplus of the world which was spent by watching TV after the industrial revolution. Today this cognitive capacity is finding an economic path through flexible contracts without full-time employment through the clever matching of people’s needs to other people’s tasks through the computer.6
6 “There Is An App For That”, The Economist, January, 2015. http://www. economist.com/news/briefing/21637355-freelance-workers-availablemoments-notice-will-reshape-nature-companies-and.
Prospective Future Trends Crowdsourcing is expected to become even more relevant in the future as trend watchers anticipate that 2025 will witness a higher focus on mobile, further customization of tech services to the different needs of people, and more presence of the digital currency.7 People might be navigating up to seven jobs in one day and multitasking will become even more seamless. While the relation between humans and robots becomes stronger for higher satisfaction of complex human needs, virtual reality will be a path for further exploration. Existence in several places at the same time will be even more evident, which would create easier communication and collaboration between creatives and businesses of the crowdsourcing realm. What this communication could potentially offer is more collaboration between creatives to offer high quality products, and ease for companies to reach out to the talented, minimizing cost and time while maximizing the quality of the offered services.
7 Wells, David, “10 Online Marketing Trends and Predictions for 2015,” Inbound Now, http://www.inboundnow.com/10-online-marketing-trends-predictions-2015/.
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Crowdsourcing anD Future Trends Virtual Reality Shares Place and Presence While the future may only be speculated, Cory Ondrejka, vice president of engineering at Facebook, told The Verge, an online journal on science, technology, art, and culture, that Facebook is interested in the Oculus because as a digital platform for communication and creativity, it aims to make the world even more open and connected, giving people the capability of sharing experiences through place and presence.8 The oculus is expected to soon be in every American home and would potentially require a surveillance economy in the online world to protect people’s capabilities of using this technology for doing wrong.
Video Advertising: A Fertile Marketplace According to a report by Brightcove Inc. and TubeMogul Inc. on Online Video and the Media Industry, there were 760 million video player loads by web media properties across web pages in the first quarter of 2010, which represents a 500 percent increase when compared to the first quarter of the previous year.”9
‘The Data-Driven Future of Video Advertising’ report sheds further light on the technologydriven evolution which has led the US to experience a massive growth in its video advertising market. Amit Seth, executive vice president of Global Media Products at Nielsen, and Dave Morgan, CEO and founder of Simulmedia, both talk about the seamlessness of video today as compared to just ten years, where streaming and on-demand wirelessly delivered video seemed impossible. Today it is the norm and it is backed by a fully scaled industry. The consumer’s experience with video is changing, and so are the business strategies of media and advertising companies as a response. ”10
Video Advertising Future Trends According to The Guardian, video is expected to comprise 69% of consumer internet traffic in 2017.11 People will be watching more videos than reading content and targeted advertising is anticipated to develop on even smarter algorithms that will detect people’s geolocations and feed them with relevant video ads that follow sophisticated customization profiling. Where big data and online video meet is a market that is expected to grow and therefore provides opportunities for profit in the video crowdsourcing business world.
8 Hamburger, Ellis, “An Oculus Rift In Every Home”, The Verge, accessed on 7
10 Seth, Amit and Morgan, Dave, “The Data Driven Future of Video
May 2015, http://www.theverge.com/a/virtual-reality/qa_fb. 9 “Online Video and The Media Industry: Quarterly Report Q1 2010”,
Advertising,” Nielsen, accessed 7 May 2015, http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/ insights/reports/2014/the-data-driven-future-of-video-advertising.html. 11 Trimble, Chris, “Why Online Video is the Future of Content Marketing,”
Brightcove and TubeMogul, accessed 7 May 2015, http://files.brightcove. com/brightcove-whitepaper-online-video-and-media-industry.pdf.
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The Guardian, July 2, 2014,, http://www.theguardian.com/small-businessnetwork/2014/jan/14/video-content-marketing-media-online.
online video streams| quarter 400,000,000 350,000,000
online video streams
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2008, 2009, q1 2010 * Graph extracted from Brightcrove.com White paper on Online Video and Media Industry
Broadcast network Magazine publishers Music labels Newspaper publishers Radio broadcast PARSONS THE NEW SCHOOL OF DESIGN
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the case study Tongal, An Online Video and Crowdsourcing Platform 12
Tongal is a rich digital platform that facilitates video content by crowdsourcing creative work through collaborative contests. Tongal was cofounded in 2007 by James De Julio, who once worked for movie producer Robert Evans but became frustrated by Hollywood’s inefficiency. De Julio saw Tongal as a way to help innovative people get to work faster and to upend the traditional Madison Avenue game, while envisioning the potential future of the innovative crowdsourcing business model. Tongal’s platform was then built using TopCode and officially launched with its first project on May 20, 2009.
12
Tongal, accessed 7 May 2015, www.tongal.com
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the case study the name
The Community and Tongies
The name of the company was inspired by James Surowiecki’s 2004 book The Wisdom of Crowds, which highlighted the benefits of group collaboration. Tongal is an anagram for Francis Galton, a British statistician who, while attending a fair in 1906, found that during a contest to guess the weight of an ox, the average of the crowd’s wagers was more accurate than any one individual’s guess.
The most successful Tongal contributors have earned more than $150,000 from their work on dozens of Tongal projects and high-quality content is not the only requirement for successful lean advertising, Tongal provides effective distribution through their clients, which exposes their creative talent to the world. In 2014 Tongal held its first ever Tongies, an annual award ceremony to celebrate the brilliant talents and outstanding work of their community and in July of 2014 Tongal celebrated $10M in total revenue since inception.
Mission and Aim One of Tongal’s missions is to bring the world’s creative work to the world’s creative talent, drawing on the skill sets of professionals and competent amateurs by giving them the opportunity to work with big brand companies such as Procter & Gamble, Lego, PepsiCo, General Mills, and others. Tongal’s main competitors are Poptent, Mofilm and Zooppa, as well as advertising agencies that follow the traditional business model. Tongal’s clients turn to Tongal, a seven-year-old firm, for several reasons; to access their biggest asset which comprises around 70 thousand active community members of talented ideators and filmmakers; and because with low cost and high quality videos, the clients can still curate the brief closely with Tongal’s producers and be the main part of the selection and voting process.
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Operations Tongal’s headquarters is located in Los Angeles and supported by offices in New York and Chicago. It also has employees working remotely from other parts of the world, therefore through building a strong network that is focused on offering big brand companies the opportunity to access a community that produces high-quality videos through a democratized creative process, it widens the options for selection to the clients and makes it very affordable for small and big brands to get creative videos in as quick as one month’s time, depending on the project.
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the case study internal
external ideators
producers
creative strategy
community
website
channels digital platform
product development
filmmakers
social media
integrated marketing mobile app
operations and business
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brands
newsletter
tongal’s swot analysis developed by the students strengths It is cost effective to get a service done The service is executed quickly (within a few weeks) The quality of work is outstanding 80% of customers come back for future projects The mobile application is popular among the crowd
weaknesses Lack of prioritization in key areas of focus Difficulty in navigating and interacting with the website Absence of HR affects the FTE in Integrated Marketing and different functions to be carried out Missing feedback system Scarcity of advertising that actually affect brand recognition
opportunities
threats
Growing through connections made with customers
Competition with advertising companies that successfully use established the traditional marketing methods
Re-working the website Incorporating the feedback loop and lessons learned Developing a strategy to attract inbound clients Retaining current customers and building loyalty Taking advantage of video archives by reusing
Rising competition from new start-ups in the field and cluttering of the competitive landscape Credibility | Trust is not always there because the company is relatively new on the market Size of company compared to established advertising agencies and conglomerates
Investing in software to track marketing effectiveness
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main goal Design Thinking for Strategy In PGDM 5200 Integrative Studio class, the students aimed to study the current business model trend of crowdsourcing while applying design thinking methodologies to research the ecosystem, conduct interviews, generate insights, and propose innovative solutions that keep up with trends and envision profitable scenarios in a future dominated by big data, online video, and seamless communication through technology.
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main goal Horizontal and Vertical Deep Dive The study implied diving deep into the users of the service, the company offerings, the current business model, the digital platform as a medium of communication and doing business, and the larger scheme of things in the national and global market. Referring to other technologies on the rise in new economies and emerging creative business models that have succeeded to disrupt economies and rechannel revenues was important to reconsider the company’s status quo and study potential development within the current and future tech sphere.
Posed Questions Several questions emerged throughout the study, which highlighted numerous ideation sessions that followed qualitative and quantitative research methodologies and preceded rapid prototyping. Several workshops were facilitated by professor Rhea Alexander and welcomed professionals in the design thinking field, which aligned the students with the latest methodologies in the current marketplace. Some of the questions tackled were the following.
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How might Tongal evolve to keep up with future trends? What currently works and what requires enhancement? Why does Tongal exist and what is their differentiating factor? What might Tongal do to maintain its differentiation in the market in the future with a possible rise of competition in the digital video content sphere? What challenges await the business and its stakeholders? When do strategies need to be adopted and what are methodologies of adhering to them? Who could be involved in the evolution process and what potential roles would they take?
Academic Goals In adherence to this real scenario case study, the students aimed to follow an immersive and holistic syllabus and develop their sense of design strategy, ending the semester with major takeaways from the Integrative Studio for further future explorations in innovation during the following and final program year. The studio in its essence was a preparatory exploration that prepared them to entrepreneurial pursuits that couple with theoretical ventures. This study therefore applied the following academic goals, which the students were capable of successfully achieving.
Understand and apply key concepts related to design knowledge and open innovation. Apply rigorously the practice of knowledge brokering. Experiment with collective ideation techniques. Develop complex and rigorous design based innovation models. Engage as researchers in thorough and diverse fieldwork techniques. Clearly show results of research in a useful and effective manner through reports and presentation styles that are approachable. Develop and deploy multiple quick prototypes for validated learning.
For that, the students took the company Tongal as a case study, the partnership with whom was mainly facilitated through Professor Rhea Alexander who opened doors of collaboration between the thirteen students in the class and the employees of the company. With utmost passion and open arms, the Tongal team members made themselves accessible to the exploratory project, providing relevant information and allowing numerous interviews to take place during the research phase at the start of the semester, and attending numerous workshops and presentations at the studio, which supported the adherence of the students to their goals and core values, holding meaningful conversations in co-creative settings.
Merge collaborative abilities, management skills, and leadership qualities with consistent maintenance of team spirit, time commitment, and dedication to quality. Give and receive critically constructive feedback. Demonstrate a practical understanding of the interface between the built environment and organizational culture as the team moves from the context of analysis to generation of constructive solutions on the ground.
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main goal We applied design thinking methodologies to current crowdsourcing business models to propose innovative solutions for business growth.
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Parsons Design Strategy design thinking Design Thinking is a discipline which helps firms determine what to make and do, why do it and how to innovate contextually, both immediately and over the long term. This process involves the interplay between design and business strategy, forming a systematic approach integrating holistic-thinking and user-centric research methods, which provide design context for the merge of business strategy with innovation. While not always required, design strategy often uses social research methods to help ground the results and mitigate the risk of any course of action, and this approach has proved useful in a variety of strategic scenarios at main design consultancy firms such as IDEO, Frog Design, Smart Design, and Fahrenheit 212, to name only a few.
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parsons design strategy design strategy
Effective Design Thinking Tools
Design strategy plays an integral role in helping address major pain points experienced by firms and achieving important milestones for effective influential and sustainable growth. The primary challenges that design strategy aims to tackle are the following.
Using a variety of Design Thinking tools as the main technical learning curve of the studio, the material was investigated with deep curiosity, empathy, and openness to co-creative innovation. The agile iterative design process used at Parsons was the main anchor of the semester, which got phased into Research, Ideation, and Prototyping, hence sequencing the layout of this paper. Some of the techniques that the students used were Fly On The Wall research methods, interviews with open ended questions, shadowing, What? How? Why?, Yes And, 5 Whys, blue sky ideation workshops, and rapid prototyping for validated learning.
Promoting the adoption of a technology Identifying the most important questions that a company’s products and services should address in order to stay relevant for users in the marketplace Translating insights into actionable solutions Prioritizing the order in which a portfolio of products and services should be launched Connecting design efforts to an organization’s business strategy Integrating design as a fundamental aspect of strategic brand intent
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explore
open
research
tools
To understand the context of the problem, from the point of view of the client and the end user.
analysis|synthesis After understanding the context the team has to analyse and synthesize the content from the previous research. The insights are clusterd in order to find patterns and create challenges that will help the next phase.
close
ideation Develop ideas based on the challenges | questions created on the analysis phase.
prototype It is important to test the ideas and improve them before defining a final solution.
In Depth Interviews
Personas
Brainstormings
Paper prototypes
Desk Research
Affinity Maps
Workshops
Web tests
Exploratory Research
Swot Analysis
Position Matrix
Empathy Maps User journey How might we’s
The process is not linear, for example, there may be a need to prototype during immersion. The lack of linearity allows the team to create a series of interaction that will eventually achieve a unique result. PARSONS THE NEW SCHOOL OF DESIGN
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studio operations Class Organization and Best Practices Visualizing information was a best practice for all students and a shared Google folder soon got immensely populated with user journeys, personas, affinity maps, and SWOT analyses. Each student created a calendar of project milestones which got layered in with team deliverables and workshops. The first four preparatory class sessions were mainly workshops given by the professor incorporating members from companies like IDEO, Fahrenheit 212, The Design Gym, and Zuzanna Skalska. All students got aligned to processes for generative research, ideation, and trend watching. The work commenced with field work of interviews and shadowing, in addition to market research and competitive analysis.
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studio operations Foundations for Studio Culture and Scrum Sessions
From Research to Midway Presentations
The students divided up into complementary teams and every class session was treated with an agenda that started with scrum sessions, an agile methodology that worked well with the fast changing industry of crowdsourcing. The teams were Community, Digital Strategy, Integrated Marketing, Business Development, and Internal Operations. Everyone shared their findings and worked with openness to feedback and contribution from the rest of the classmates. This created a sense of fluidity in progressing through the phases and enhanced the quality of innovation. Failure was treated as feedback to reiterate and reconvene to continuously and quickly improve the quality of the product. Teams laid out their core values at the start of the semester and committed to espousing their design practice along the way, in a real and difficult journey that required guts.
An internal class workshop highlighted areas of potential further investigation. An infographic poster per team followed with informative stories on the findings of the research phase, and the posters were shared in a second workshop, this time with several client stakeholders who were fascinated with the amount and precision of work done and who felt comfortable taking the initiative to interact and post emerging ideas and comments on the spot.
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Crucial Insights at Midway Presentations The midway presentation had serious weight and all students were getting sharp and ready to hopefully get buy in from the client and with much openness to new ideas and contribution with an honest voice from the client’s side, the research phase culminated with crucial insights for ideation in the different aspects. This sense of collective project growth using design thinking methodologies was vital to the success of the innovation process that smoothly allowed in project proposals in the second half of the semester.
Reconvening and Restructuring Empathy, market analysis, and long hours of interviewing and shadowing paid off and after the midway presentations, the teams decided to restructure as felt needed by the vision and tasks at hand with a list of main ‘How Might We’ takeaways to ideate and prototype on in the following weeks. The new teams aimed to generate four main proposals: a mobile app, a business strategy, a people development system, and a coherent brand identity of core values.
Co-creative Ideation An internal class workshop resulted in ‘Blue Sky’ ideas for Tongal and aimed to generate ideas on potential imaginary scenarios for the future of crowdsourcing, and posters with early stages of the new business prototypes were posted at Tongal offices for free interaction from other employees. A brand identity workshop followed, this time with even more client employees who by then had received long presentations and posters from the Parsons SDM students, which they had distributed amongst their departments. With co-founders participating, the mission was quite serious and the room had to express honest thoughts of the vision of the company. The need for a unified and coherent identity with values, visions, and mission statements was spotted early on in the semester.
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studio operations Co-Creative Rapid Prototyping Prototyping is an integral part of the Parsons Design Thinking process. Just like the earlier stages previously discussed, iterations help refine the quality of the final deliverables. The SDM students along with the client Tongal cocreated several prototypes using diverse tools and methods. One application was the testing of the Tongal Mobile app in its early stage and another was a comprehensive workshop around the company’s mission, vision and core values. The generated ideas and concepts through several exercises were prototyped during the workshop when participants were asked to use the Franken Ideation methodology to come up with strong and coherent messages that describe Tongal’s main value proposition. The processes revolved around selecting words and messages, combining them and experimenting with the results. The workshops highlighted some of the main areas to explore when drafting the manifesto and led to proposals that were then further synthesized and tested. The SDM team also developed posters around some blue sky opportunities that were identified in several brainstorming sessions. These posters were exhibited at Tongal where different members provided their inputs and reactions to the visuals and the message communicated.
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Furthermore, the people development team created a safe environment where thoughts and feelings were shared by the Tongal team around the levels of comfort and fun within its office. This was done using interactive sheets that circulated around different teams with the aim of bridging hidden culture gaps. The client had previously expressed certain pain points around prioritizing their ideas and initiatives. As such, the SDM team shared a prioritization framework methodology and prototyped the process by taking the example and results of the Mission, Vision and Core Values workshop; the aim was to prioritize the strategic initiatives required to communicate the Tongal manifesto both internally and externally. The teams then co-created and synthesized the information, which resulted in matrices that indicated the order of prioritization based on the pre-determined dimensions of ease of implementation and criticality. This led to a roadmap highlighting which initiatives, in the particular context of the manifesto, are to be executed in the short, medium and long term. The client expressed early on in the process the benefits and application of the methodology and framework to several other operations and strategic contexts.
Theory Supports Practice Getting feedback from the various project stakeholders was an important methodology of Design Thinking that is highly practiced at Parsons and with supportive theories, readings, and TED talks throughout the semester, the methodology took shape and organically formed around emerging explorations. The proposals by the end of the semester were early stages of prototypes that may be developed further given more co-consultancy time. This theory triggered interesting class discussions on the readings topics especially on the reading Introducing Qualitative Research in Psychology by Carla Willig13 who identifies the role of the researcher while conducting research, questioning the validity of the research when the researcher has aligned with a goal and predetermined a mono-path thus alienating possibility. Adopting the right mindset was therefore crucial to the success of the early stages of this study on Tongal. To Willig’s point, the Parsons design thinking methodology encourages the application of participatory design and open innovation as a way to prevent bias from affecting the work scope as well as leaving out early acceptances and buy-ins from the involved parties in the process. Later in the semester, during a discussion on Idris Mootee’s Design Thinking for Strategic Innovation, the team found it particularly easy to make correlations to the crowdsourcing industry. Any company in this industry would have to rely on service processes and apply experience design to their online platform in order to satisfy their community, creating a knowledge bridge for the study of Tongal’s digital platforms. Discussions also highlighted how brand teams
are often so immersed in their daily challenges and brand culture that they might fail to see the forest, but only focus on the trees. It is often necessary to clarify how customers perceive and define the value of their brand in order to successfully maintain customer value.14 This bridged the study of Tongal’s vision, mission, and values, and when applied to individual teams, it became important to conduct decisions that aligned with the teams’ defined core values. As Mootee explains, experience design is a holistic approach to creating meaningful interaction when conveying a brand story via products, services and spaces, whether it is tangible customer value or emotional value.15 The process includes defining the job-tobe-done as well as various pain points from consumer’s perspective, i.e. how to iterate after testing assumptions with the client while keeping inline with market research and trends. Big or small, many companies fall into the trap of trying to innovate the “right way” and fail to apply experience design correctly. As outlined by Mootee, according to Sternberg and Lubart, these companies are rarely able to draw on six resources critical to cultivating creativity: intelligence, knowledge, thinking styles, personality, motivation and the environment. Building an innovative and creative culture is accomplished by encouraging employees to experience trial, error, experimentation and creative play. But this is often a function of management and great leaders are capable of creating other leaders, instead of followers.
13 Willig, Carla, Qualitative Research in Psychology, (New York: McGraw Hill,
2008) 14 Mootee, Idris, Design Thinking for Strategic Innovation, (New Jersey: John
Wiley & Sons Inc, 2013) 15 Ibid
PARSONS THE NEW SCHOOL OF DESIGN
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TONGAL VIDEO CROWDSOURCING COMPANY
Case Study for Innovation Strategy PARSONS THE NEW SCHOOL OF DESIGN
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research
PARSONS THE NEW SCHOOL OF DESIGN
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community Aujla, Jasmin | Figueira, Sofia | Pedraza, Natalia | Pinto, Paula project The community team took on the project from an exploratory lens on how communities behave in crowdsourcing companies and the reasons underlying that behavior.
aim The aim was to understand the future of crowdsourcing by identifying who is joining online communities, how they behave, what motivates them and where the opportunities lie for companies to capitalize on their biggest asset: their community.
PARSONS THE NEW SCHOOL OF DESIGN
51
community
Community Engagement
no single motivator that seems to apply to all COMMUNITY CROWDSOURCING PLATFORMSin crowdsoursing A study ofINcommunity behaviour websites. crowdsourcing applications. Each motivation
There is no crowdsourcing without a crowd. was specific to the individual and was unique Thelandscape crowd can | bethere anyone from anywhere: would be no crowdsourcing without a community platform. Community to each crowdsourcing multi-talented millennials with creative interests members are mainly driven by the opportunity in order to understand the who highly value flexibility and multitasking. to make money but there are other extrinsic and future of crowdsourcing a Those are mainly people who want to exercise intrinsic motivations that encourage community company needs to know: their untapped talents, find a job, earn money, engagement, and managing an online and network with other creatives in order to Who is theand community? community is a customer service public enrich their portfolios for future employment How do they behave? relations activity on its own. and challenge themselves to solve tough will sustain a productive What motivates them? So companies aware of the platform need to be Where problems. They usually contribute to a large crowdsourcing are the opportunities? community dynamic and respond to the project for the common good, as a way of motivations of the crowd in order to keep passing their free time or simply to have fun. who | personas them aligned with what is expected from them. Crowdsourcing companies depend on this 10 interviews translated into 4 personalities that exist in crowdsourcing COMMUNITIES. Extrinsic and intrinsic motivations differ in the community to generate services, ideas and sense that while the former relate to external content. Therefore companies that aim to sustain SAM Alex kelly aspirations such as moneyben or social validation, a productive crowdsourcing platform need to 29 new york, usa 19 boston, usa are driven by internal 35 chicago,passions 31 mexico city, mexico usa the latter such fully understand what motivates theirfilmmaker crowd and college sophomore experienced filmmaker freelance consultant engaged ideator completely engaged ocasional ideator beginner non-adopter The as entertainment and self-fulfillment. gear towards enriching the overall experience. corresponding interplay and alignment between Throughout the research phase, one of the these motivations and the company’s values and first findings that this team had is that there is operations determine the creativity, productivity and sustainability of the crowd.
An organization that
understands what
FEEDBACK - Receiving constructive feedback from other filmmakers would be useful to improve his work. PERSONALIZED PROFILE - A portfolio represents a filmmaker, the Tongal profile isn’t personal to each community member.
QUALITY - Without financial and technological support, her work won’t be at it’s usual quality.
CLIENT INTERACTION - She likes to meet with her clients to discuss the video plan.
from
from
USING PERSONAL FUNDS - Using her own money to participate with no guarantee that she will make a profit.
IDEAS ARE CHEAPER - Film makers make more money than ideators
LOSING STREAK - A streak of not winning anything puts a strain on further engagement. TRANSPARENCY - Seeing other people’s ideas would encourage her to think of more ideas.
LACK OF SUPPORT - If Tongal gave more support, like discounted studio time or equipment rental, she would be more inclined to produce something.
Painpoints
PEER 2 PEER ENGAGEMENT - He would like to see other film makers submissions.
Painpoints
from
CONTACT A PERSON - It’s hard to contact someone to get more information about a project.
Painpoints
Painpoints
from
motivates its crowd
CONFUSING - The site was confusing to navigate. WHO WINS WHAT? - Unclear how prize money is divided, and the number of winners at each stage. COMMUNICATION - No communication with ideators whose submissions didn’t win.
DISCOURAGEMENT - To find out you didn’t win from looking at the project page on the site.
how and what | journey maps, motivations and insights
user journey map of each persona to understand their behaviors and motivations at each moment in the process. we mapped the journey
nsights
motivations
highlights moments
feelings
engaged
occasional
non-adopter
Happy satisfied surprised intrigued unaffected confused unsatisfied
Notification of project opportunity
Understand project scope
Brainstorm ideas
DEvelop content
Upload content
Wait for result
EVERYBODY STARTS INTRIGUED
PROJECT BRIEFS MUST BE CLEAR AND CONCISE
information increases satisfaction
the opportunity to express creativity is a high point for all users
THERE’S A SENSE OF PRIDE IN SUBMITTING YOUR OWN CONTENT
for the less engaged waiting is a low point
information about results is important to build a relationship
MONEY COMPETITION
TRANSPARENCY SUPPORT
colLABORATION
exposure portfolio
EXCLUSIVE community CHANNELS
VOTING
FEEDBACK EVENTS
people begin projects
demanding too
users want to
the community could prevent
connectionS THROUGH SHARING AND
SEEING OTHER PEOPLE’S IDEAS SPARKS CREATIVITY TO DEVELOP OTHER IDEAS
voting creates buy-in from users
they will spend the prize money
there are low barriers to enter the video industry
constructive feedback is important for an idea to evolve
make meaningful with a plan how much from| SPRING 2015 STRATEGIC DESIGN + ofMANAGEMENT | 5200H
freelancers reach
Result
PARSONS THE NEW SCHOOL OF DESIGN
53
community THE PROCESS
PERSONAS
In order to research crowdsourcing communities, used design methods were used to identify each moment of the community engagement process. This entailed conducting interviews, creating personas and journey maps to identify the key moments in the crowdsourcing process for any community member. In obtaining this information, it was possible to highlight what motivates participation in communities and, most importantly, generate insights that lead to ideas that were later tested, pivoted and prototyped.
The key points and insights taken from the interviews were translated to create four extreme and diverse personas, representing those who are and those who are not engaged in crowdsourcing communities. The journey of these personas was then mapped through the crowdsourcing experience, allowing the identification of key touchpoints and moments in the process, and determine whether they were positive or negative attributes.
INTERVIEWS A multitude of interviews were conducted with an array of people who did and did not engage in crowdsourcing communities. This research highlighted the diversity of the existing community members, but also indicated that people who are similar in age, profession and environment had different views on the merits of engaging in a crowdsourcing platform. Interviews with community management professionals in crowdsourcing companies were also conducted to understand how communities are currently structured and supported with consistent motivation.
JOURNEY MAPS In synthesizing the research, the group was able to affiliate a motivation with each identified moment in the journey map. Each motivation was an explanation for a community member’s action at that specific point in the experience. By pinpointing these motivations, generative questions emerged like “so, what does this mean?” and helped develop the process to further generate key insights for the following phases of the project.
THE RESULT In order to consolidate all of the findings gathered through the use of design methods, storytelling as a medium of communication was used in order to showcase this information in the format of a poster. To read the complete interviews and personas, you may refer to the Appendix section.
STRATEGIC DESIGN + MANAGEMENT | SPRING 2015 | 5200H
Community Engagement
A study of community behaviour in crowdsoursing websites. landscape | there would be no crowdsourcing without a community in order to understand the future of crowdsourcing a company needs to know:
An organization that
understands what
motivates its crowd
Who is the community? How do they behave?
will sustain a productive crowdsourcing platform
What motivates them? Where are the opportunities?
who | personas 10 interviews translated into 4 personalities that exist in crowdsourcing COMMUNITIES.
USING PERSONAL FUNDS - Using her own money to participate with no guarantee that she will make a profit. QUALITY - Without financial and technological support, her work won’t be at it’s usual quality. CLIENT INTERACTION - She likes to meet with her clients to discuss the video plan.
Painpoints
Painpoints
FEEDBACK - Receiving constructive feedback from other filmmakers would be useful to improve his work.
from
from
from
PEER 2 PEER ENGAGEMENT - He would like to see other film makers submissions.
35 chicago, usa
college sophomore engaged ideator
freelance filmmaker ocasional ideator
CONTACT A PERSON - It’s hard to contact someone to get more information about a project.
ben
19 boston, usa from
29 new york, usa
experienced filmmaker completely engaged
Painpoints
SAM
kelly
31 mexico city, mexico
consultant beginner non-adopter
IDEAS ARE CHEAPER - Film makers make more money than ideators LOSING STREAK - A streak of not winning anything puts a strain on further engagement. TRANSPARENCY - Seeing other people’s ideas would encourage her to think of more ideas.
LACK OF SUPPORT - If Tongal gave more support, like discounted studio time or equipment rental, she would be more inclined to produce something.
PERSONALIZED PROFILE - A portfolio represents a filmmaker, the Tongal profile isn’t personal to each community member.
Painpoints
Alex
CONFUSING - The site was confusing to navigate. WHO WINS WHAT? - Unclear how prize money is divided, and the number of winners at each stage. COMMUNICATION - No communication with ideators whose submissions didn’t win. DISCOURAGEMENT - To find out you didn’t win from looking at the project page on the site.
how and what | journey maps, motivations and insights we mapped the journey of each persona to understand their behaviors and motivations at each moment in the process. occasional
non-adopter
Notification of project opportunity
Understand project scope
Brainstorm ideas
DEvelop content
Upload content
Wait for result
EVERYBODY STARTS INTRIGUED
PROJECT BRIEFS MUST BE CLEAR AND CONCISE
information increases satisfaction
the opportunity to express creativity is a high point for all users
THERE’S A SENSE OF PRIDE IN SUBMITTING YOUR OWN CONTENT
for the less engaged waiting is a low point
information about results is important to build a relationship
motivations
MONEY COMPETITION
TRANSPARENCY SUPPORT
colLABORATION
exposure portfolio
EXCLUSIVE community CHANNELS
VOTING
FEEDBACK EVENTS
insights
highlights moments
feelings
engaged
Happy satisfied surprised intrigued unaffected confused unsatisfied
people begin projects with a plan of how they will spend the prize money
demanding too much from the community could prevent them from joining
users want to make meaningful connectionS THROUGH SHARING AND EXCHANGING CONTENT
there are low barriers to enter the video industry
SEEING OTHER PEOPLE’S IDEAS SPARKS CREATIVITY TO DEVELOP OTHER IDEAS
voting creates buy-in from users
constructive feedback is important for an idea to evolve
freelancers reach out to their own network for support
Result
EVENTS motivate engagement AND PROMOTE WINNERS
ideas can be expressed in different formats
next steps | how might we How might we create a positive competitive environment?
how might we facilitate a feedback system?
Jasmin Aujla, Natalia Pedraza, Paula Pinto, Sofia Figueira Integrative Studio, Rhea Alexander, 2015
how might we enhance community connections, online and locally?
how might we capitalize on our biggest asset, the community?
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digital platforms Trongkamolthum, Issaree | Zok, Limassol Qualitative and quantitative research methodologies were used to study the digital platforms of Tongal: the website, mobile app, and the social media platforms.
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digital platforms The Interviewees
Website and Mobile App
The research was conducted on users who varied from filmmakers, to random millennials surfing the web and coming across this crowdsourcing platform from Google or Facebook, and employees of Tongal who provided insight on the pain points experienced in their daily life while working with clients and creatives through the digital sphere as a medium for conversation and correspondences. The filmmakers expressed genuine interest in using the platform as a source of revenue and a user whose perspective of the website was a business one, expressed the desire to understand in a brief amount of time the caliber of the company in the market in comparison to its competition, and get a clear glimpse of its services.
Nature of the Interview Process In order to study the digital platforms of Tongal, interviews were conducted with a variety of users. Following a 5-10 min shadowing process through which the interviewees were allowed space for natural navigation of the platforms with minimal intervention from the interviewer, they were then asked a set of ten open-ended and probing questions about their thoughts and feelings regarding the experience. The data got collected and mapped on customer journeys and the website sitemap to understand the underlying dynamics of their behavior.
Website Users
How might we? HOW IT WORKS
VIDEO
Present Tongal as cohesive and trustworthy
GALLERY PROJECTS
POSITIVE POINTS PAIN POINTS
HOME
Film Maker
CREATIVE
HOME
AWARDED PITCHES
VIDEO
REGISTER
SHOW ME PROJECTS
GET STARTED
HOW IT WORKS READ MORE
BRIEFF & ASSETS
AWARDED PITCHES
Navigate users through customized journeys
BABBLE BABY OFFICIAL RULES
PROJECTS
OPEN IDEA
Mobile App Users
POSITIVE POINTS
VIDEO MENU: NOTIFICATIONS
BRIEFS
Filter project categories to meet user needs
PAIN POINTS
HOME
AWARDS
HOME
BRIEF
HOME: VIDEO
STRATEGIC DESIGN + MANAGEMENT | SPRING 2015 | 5200H
UPCOMING VIDEO
Provide lots of information with least clicks Define the main function of the app
POSITIVE POINTS PAIN POINTS
HOME
Facilitate decision making of creatives and businesses
Make the navigation intuitive and concise
Translating Findings to Visuals: Journey Maps
Generative Sitemap The data was also overlayed on top of the sitemap and valuable information was deduced from the way users were interacting with the different pages, highlighting that some never got reached by any of the interviewed users, while others were accessed by a select category, and some by all. This visual tool expressed the varying levels of interest in navigating the website pages, which when coupled with the interview questions and the user journeys, was able to generate valuable insight with key ‘How Might We’ questions.
The collected data triggered rich and insightful user journeys that illustrated the patterns observed from the navigation process and the feelings and thoughts that emerged while navigating. This qualitative method was the backbone of the ideation and prototyping steps that followed. The curvy lines of the journey maps fluctuate between negative experiences, which were represented by points situated below the line, and positive experiences, which were represented by points situated above the line. The journeys aimed to display several layers of information like the duration of navigation, the amount of pages accessed and the quality of the experience altogether.
GENERAL USER
Home
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Login Register Search Facebook
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NONE
BUSINESS & CREATIVE
How it Works Tongal for Businesses
Overview Tongal Awards
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Seasons
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Community
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For Businesses
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POTENTIAL BUSINESS
Get Started
Feedback
Tongal Timeline
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View Project Details Sponsors
GENERAL USER
Open Idea (project) Open Pitch (project) Open Video (project)
How might we? speak different languages of creatives and businesses customize their journeys while staying consistent identify the most effective pages of the platforms drive traffic to the blog with limited team resources?
Evaluation (project) Press Selected Press Release
Home
In the News
Gallery
Contact
Misc
Winner Forms
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Globe
Tongal Twelve
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Community Tongal Awards I am Creative Seasons Leaderboard How Tongal Works Projects Gallery
Awarded (project) Sort Videos Submit Video Submit Pitch View Project Details Prize Pool New Ending Soon My Favorites
1/6 interviewees stayed more
than 7 minutes on the website
100% interviewees felt relieved
when they landed on the ‘How It Works’ page
100% interviewees felt confused
while navigating the app
Official Rules
PARSONS THE NEW SCHOOL OF DESIGN
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digital platforms Insights on the Back End and Front End of the Website
Social Media
Interviews with Tongal employees and with contributors to platforms of competitive businesses raised crucial notes on the need for a back end automated process that would relieve repetitive tasks of the different stakeholders and promote collaboration, in addition to the need for a cohesive front end interface that engages in an honest voice the values of the company and its processes with the different stakeholders from businessmen to creatives and new users altogether.
Quantitative Data By observing the different social media platforms of Tongal and its two main competitors Mofim and Eyeka, for a one month period of time such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, valuable comparative data was generated. This quantitative social media research methodology positioned Tongal in the crowdsourcing social media ecosystem, with specific highlight on data relevant to the quantity of followers, comments, tweets, visits, responses, posts and likes
Back End
Front End COHESIVE How might we automate the recurrent project processes through the website and focus on new opportunitites?
CREATIVES
TONGAL EMPLOYEE
TONGAL EMPLOYEES
How might we capture value from the unused videos? How might easily present case studies for businesses?
UX
DEVELOPMENT
CUSTOMIZED JOURNEYS
CORRESPONDENCE
FEEDBACK
INTUITIVE How might we be familiar and creative in terminologies? How might we categorize pages for easy access?
ADD VALUE & FACILITATE
PAYMENT
AESTHETICS
BUSINESSES
Business Creatives
STRATEGIC DESIGN + MANAGEMENT | SPRING 2015 | 5200H
How might we use familiar visuals in new creative ways?
TONGAL EMPLOYEE
AUTOMATION
ALLOW COLLABORATION AMONGST STAKEHOLDERS
Positioning
Benefits
This methodology also highlighted the opportunity for improvements for Tongal’s social media platforms. The generated information deduced that Tongal’s Instagram platform was doing very well in comparison to competition while the Twitter and Facebook pages had room for improvements. Snapchat, which has more than one hundred million monthly active users and generates more than four hundred million snaps per day, was found to be an emerging social media platform provides an opportunity for exploration.
Threadless, an online community of artists and an e-commerce website, was researched as an example of a company that successfully engaged its audience through its Twitter platform and had witnessed an increase in revenue of $100,000. There are many benefits from social media that Tongal can benefit from such as innovation stimulation, authentic engagement, problem solving, two way communication, trust building, and organization shaping.
Tongal
One Month Activity: 24 January - 24 February 2015 TWITTER
FACEBOOK RESPONSIVE 18
?
No Response
4,475 Followers
81
1770
Comment likes
25%
Tweets
RESPONSIVE
?
34,638 Page Likes
200
No Response
Comment Likes
7,138
74
MOST FOLLOWERS
29%
Tweets
No Response
LEAST FOLLOWERS 87
Comment Likes
MOST FOLLOWERS
13
NOT RESPONSIVE
100 MILLION MONTHLY ACTIVE USERS
Posts
28
Followers
Likes
Posts
70
Likes
1,152
50
31
LEAST FOLLOWERS
MOST FOLLOWERS 20
Likes
Posts
406
Followers
NOT RESPONSIVE
400 MILLION SNAPCHAT SNAPS PER DAY
leverage our community’s social media platforms expand our social network and attract businesses
Followers
290
Visits
Page Likes
Followers
302
Page likes
22,412
2,728
87
Visits
119,228
Followers
LEAST FOLLOWERS
How might we?
RESPONSIVE
22%
Tweets
Eyeka
Mofilm
NOT RESPONSIVE
further engage the larger community stimulate innovation and further build trust use Tongal youtube channel to attract new users?
100,000 INCREASE IN REVENUE FOR THREADLESS THROUGH TWITTER
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integrated marketing Karageuzian, Roupen | Mecattaf, Maria Research Overview The research phase highlighted that Tongal had much room to further focus on the marketing side of its business. The capital that Tongal had allocated for this strategy was found to be negligible according to the conducted interviews and from the observed media expenditures. As is the case in most businesses, creating integrated marketing campaigns is essential to promote the brand in an effort to build equity, grow the community, and grow the business. Increasing competition and the mushrooming of numerous start-ups creates all the more pressure to double efforts in locking market share. The research findings highlighted the need for an integrated marketing strategy, which would be of essence at this stage of Tongal’s growth, with generated key “How might we” prompt questions. Allocating a proposed budget for campaigns could be a first step.
PARSONS THE NEW SCHOOL OF DESIGN
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AFFINITY
MAP
BUDGET COMPETITOR S
MEDIA PLAN CUSTOMERS
BRAND EQUITY MARKETING STRAGEY
BUDGET HOW IS THE MARKETING BUDGET ALLOCATED? IS THERE AN ALLOCATION TO SEARCH ENGINE OPTIOMIZATION TOOLS? WHAT ARE THE MAIN DRIVERS OF INCREASES IN EXPENDITURES FROM SEASON TO SEASON?
ENSURE CONSITENCY IN BUDGET SETTING AND STEADILY GROW THE ALLOACTION S?
HOW
MEDIA PLAN
BRAND EQUITY
COMPETITORS
HOW MANY FTES1) ARE REQUIRED TO ENSURE PROPER MEDIA PLANNING AND BUYING?
HOW IS THE COMPANY TRACKING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THEIR MARKETING EFFORTS INTERNALLY?
WHAT WILLTHE COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE LOOK LIKE GOING FORWARD? (B2B – B2C)
IS THERE A MBU2) CURRENTLY HANDELING BUYS?
ARE THERE PLANS TO SET UP MEASURING TOOLS3) AND METRICS?
WHAT ARE THE MAIN FACTORS FOR HIGH CHURN RATES?
UTILIZE THE COMMUNITY TO BETTER UNDERSTAND RELEVANT MEDIUM TO REACH TARGET?
BEST ENGAGE COMMUNITY TO COLLECT FIRST REACTIONS TO CAMPAIGNS AND BRAND PERCEPTION?
MIGHT
WE?
LEVERAGE IT’ S PLATFORMS AND STAR PRODUCERS TO SET ITSELF APART FROM COMPETITION ?
CUSTOMERS WHAT ARE THE ANTICIPATED CHANGES IN CUSTOMER BEHAVIOR? ARE THERE ANY LOYALTY SCHEMES IN PLACE TO RETAIN CUSTOMERS? (B2B – B2C) WHAT IS THE AVERAGE EXPENDITURE PER CUSTOMER? (B2B)
ANTICIPATE CHANGES IN CUSTOMER BEHAVIOR AND ADAPT CAMPAIGNS ACCORDINGL Y?
MARKETING STRATEGY IS THE INTEGRATED MARKETING STRAGEGY IN LINE WITH THE COMPANY MISSION AND VISION?
IS THE TONGAL APP BEING PROPERLY UTILIZED?
IDENTIFY STRATEGIC IMPERATIVES AND PRIORITIZE THE AREAS OF IMMEDIATE FOCUS?
1) FULL TIME EMPLOYEES 2) MEDIA BUYING UNIT 3) SOCIAL MEDIA LISTENING; BRANDWATCH – DATAT ANALYTICS; LIFTMETRIX – WEB PRESENCE MANAGEMENT; BRIGHTEDGE – ATTRIBUTION; CONVERSION LOGIS – CONTENT MANAGEMENT TOOLS; KAPOST)
STRATEGIC DESIGN + MANAGEMENT | SPRING 2015 | 5200H
integrated marketing Strengths
Weaknesses
Integrated As A ▪ It is cost effectiveMarketing to get a service done ▪ The service is executed quickly (within a few New Strategy weeks)
Marketing Core Values
▪ ▪
Lack of prioritization in key areas of focus Difficulty in navigating and interacting with the Because marketing is a key revealer about website ▪ Absence of HR affects the FTE in Integrated ▪ The quality of work is outstanding industry focus and target customers, Tongal Marketing to be carried Marketing strategies have changed over the and different functions ▪ 80% of customers come back for future must be aware of their win rates against projects years. The traditional media channels out that competitors. As such, their efforts should be ▪ Missing feedback system ▪ The mobile application is popular among the used to be the most used around the world ▪ Scarcity of advertising that actually affect brand focused on their competitive advantage, as the crowd such as TV, billboards, radio, newspaper and recognition interviews conducted with the different internal
magazines, are currently being allocated a and external stakeholders during the research much smaller percentage of the budget. An phase had illustrated that Tongal does not integral part of marketing campaigns today is communicate its core differentiating values on online curated marketing and the only way to its digital platforms. With those findings, key understandOpportunities customer behavior is to track their Threats‘How Might We’ questions were posed, which online activities, collect data ▪ Growing through connections made with on behavior, and grounded the following phases of ideation and ▪ Competition with advertising companies that usecustomers complex algorithms to customize ads for prototyping. Furthermore, integration with digital successfully use established the traditional ▪ Re-working each user. the Towebsite better follow a customer’s journey, marketing methods marketing tools and initiatives is a great benefit ▪ Incorporating the feedback loop and lessons companies use marketing softwares;▪ Social Rising competition from new start-ups in the learned for companies. Tracking content by the use of field and cluttering of the competitive landscape Media listening, analytics, Web Present ▪ Developing a strategyData to attract inbound clients search marketing and search engine ▪ Credibility is not always there becauseengine the ▪ Retaining current customers and building loyalty Management, as well as content management optimization is one such opportunity, and Tongal company is relatively new on the market ▪ Taking advantage of video archives by reusing and automation tools. Tongal could ▪explore Size of company compared to established could then curate its content and target various ▪ Investing in Software to track marketing advertising some or a combination of these softwares for agencies and conglomerates effectiveness and Equity personas throughout the different stages of their their future targeted campaign efforts and growth journey, at suitable times and through tracking effectiveness. most relevant media.
SW O T
HOW MIGHT WE…
how might we?
Differentiate ourselves from existing agencies and start-ups?
Further improve the userexperience of our Website? Implement a feedback tool and build loyalty?
Evaluate a prioritization plan of what should be done?
Enhance brand recognition and make it an integral part of our marketing strategy?
PARSONS THE NEW SCHOOL OF DESIGN
65
integrated marketing Social Media Marketing
Smartphones
Enhancing web advertising on relevant platforms would also enable better tracking. Social media channels have empowered everyone and anyone to create, much like the Tongal platform, share and comment online. As such, the consumer’s attention span has shifted to feed-based and mobile-centered consumption. Younger generations are more likely to adopt the latest trends via those feed-based SNS channels such as Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat. In response to those trends, viral web news trend tracking sites such as BuzzFeed, Mashable, Reddit and NewsWhip Spike have risen as disruptive forces in the industry as well. Twitter for instance has launched Curator in March 2015, a new free tool which allows media organizations, publishers, and broadcasters to identify, filter and display tweets and Vine videos on any screen in realtime. Therefore proper activation of Social media channels is indispensable for the success of a digital business.
Smartphones have become the most common means of communication and connectivity. With the cloud services dominating the ecosystem, allowing their users to seamlessly store and share information. According to the Microsoft report Cyberspace 2025, smartphone adoption has grown from one percent of the world’s population in 2007 to almost ten percent in 2012 in just five years.16 The report presents that this is expected to grow faster and reach an 80 percent smartphone adoption rate by 2025, which implies that for digital businesses, the necessary allocations to mobile marketing is the right way towards success.
16 “Cyberspace 2025: Today’s Decisions, Tomorrow’s Terrain,” Microsoft,
accessed 7 May 2015, http://www.microsoft.com/security/cybersecurity/ cyberspace2025/#chapter-1
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people development Wang, Jianan Tongal was founded in 2007 and on the growth spectrum, it currently occupies the space between a startup and a company. Through the initial interviews and research phase, it was established that Tongal does not have HR personnel. From this finding, further research was conducted to grasp the necessity of a small company having a human resources department, what functions it serves, and the type of solutions it provides.
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people development What is People Development?
A Case Study Problem
Interviews and research done on companies highlighted that the main objectives of a human resource department usually include recruitment, legal compliance, training, administration, rule culture, relationship management, intra-company communication, staff assessment-including job design and employee performance evaluation-, personal support, risk management, strategic role in business, and industry relationship.17
How can Tongal avoid lawsuit and legal complacence?
But how would all these objectives works for Tongal? and what would the prioritization be of each of these sectors? An organizational chart started developing as a primary step of studying the relations between the current employees , their roles, and the different departments, taking into consideration the three offices around the US. Meanwhile, interviews were held with people with various backgrounds, including internal Tongal employees, specialists in human resources in other organization, and consultant of legal compliance for start-ups. The insights from the interviews addressed the current and potential problems that might take place at any company and in specific at Tongal.
17 Mahapatro, Bibhuti, Human resource management, (New Delhi: New Age
Publishers, 2010)
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Most small scale companies are unable to afford a human resource department, however they cannot afford not to at the same time, especially when it involves legal issues. Business scenarios and examples from Twitter and KCPB have shown some costs that were paid in the past. These scenarios were shared with Tongal in the midway presentation and generate meaningful discussions about the importance of human resource as an insurance against potential trouble.
Employee Performance Evaluation At startups, employees are usually tasked to wear many hats and multi-task in a fast and highly productive environment. On the long term, the overlap of tasks and roles may diffuse information that is necessary to conduct employee performance evaluation and the metrics for measuring become nonfunctional. This especially causes a disruption of the balance between high performance and high recognition, which might create barriers to rewards and justice between employees.
Work Issues Complaints As the number of employment grows, the necessity to manage the internal relationships becomes more evident, in order to resolve conflict and solve any misunderstandings. Without human resource as a platform to refer to for expressing feelings and releasing stress, conflict, which usually requires a third party who acts as a mediator facilitating the debate, might not find a way out.
Lack of internal communication structure From the early phases of researching and interviews, it was evident that there is lack of awareness, knowledge, and communication between the teams in the three states in the US. They mostly work in silos and at the same time, the departments complement each other. This raised the question about the necessity of installing a clear communication structure or a methodology that not only would unify the values, vision, and mission of the company, but also could improve the work efficiency due to open internal communication. According to a study performed by MIT’s Human Dynamics Laboratory, communication proved to have played a critical role in building the success of teams.18 Therefore an internal communication tool might hugely increase the transparency of work environment and allow the employees to understand the working process and work more efficiently together.
18 Pentland, Alex, “The New Science of Building Great Teams”, Harvard
Business Review, April, 2012, https://hbr.org/2012/04/the-new-science-ofbuilding-great-teams
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people development So is human resource the best solution for those problems? Based on the findings from research material offered from a current HR study, it is also important to understand how to calculate the right way to hire HR personnel based on company size, which is about the HR-toEmployee Ratio equation.19 The ratio may be derived by dividing the number of full time HR employees by the total number of full time employees at a company. The average ratio is usually lower than 1, which means that for every one hundred employees, a company may hire one HR employee to perform the basic vital functions of an HR person. According to the Yeung’s research analysis, an HR department that utilizes extensive HR practices to drive business results throughout all levels of an organization, such as succession planning, training and organizational development, can expect to have a larger ratio, therefore may hire more than one HR employee for one hundred employees.20
Tongal currently has around 50 employees, therefore a potential HR employee would have half their time free to allocate to more tasks than the basic HR functions.
Conclusion and Next Steps The aim of the People Development department is to better organize the work of the employees, create a sense of motivation for efficiency and comfort, which requires selecting the right person to fit the right role catered to Tongal. As Tongal has been witnessing an increase in number of employees over the years, reaching over 50 in 2015, it is essential to consider building this department as soon as possible. In addition to creating the functions of insurance, safety, and security for employees, it would create value and increase business revenue for Tongal in the long term. Therefore, the next step is to test design a unique creative solution on this role to match the innovative nature of the company and make it exclusive to Tongal.
total number of hr ftes hr - to - employee ratio =
total number of employees ftes in the organization
19 Dooney, John and Smith, Noel, “SHRM human capital benchmarking
study: 2005 executive summary”, 2005, accessed April 20, 2015, https://www. shrm.org/Research/SurveyFindings/Articles/Documents/BenchmarkingStudy_ ExecSummary_final_online.pdf 20 Yeung, Arthur and Berman, Bob, “Adding value through human resources:
Reorienting human resource measurement to drive business performance”, Human Resource Management (2005): 36, 321, 335.
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business development Aizawa, Shota | Kang, Joonsoo | Morozowich, Nicholas | Trongkamolthum, Issaree Research Strategy To understand new opportunities which Tongal can capitalize on, market research was performed with a high degree of focus. The crowdsourcing landscape was examined, looking into crowdsourcing websites and articles on crowdsourcing business models as well as other innovative models in the new economy. Competitive analysis was also conducted from the research and interviews with seven employees; four from Tongal, two from the identified competitors, and one from ad agencies with a traditional business model.
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Market Research Small Medium Enterprises SMEs According to a recent survey conducted by Boston Consulting Group, SMEs spend only 3% of their marketing budget on digital marketing in 2012, while big companies spend 16% of theirs on digital marketing.21 Therefore from Tongal’s clients perspective, the numbers show that the current business strategy of Tongal is successfully focusing on the more lucrative market segment. However, when the target market of SMEs was further researched, it was found that over 95% of all companies in the US are SMEs, whereas Tongal mainly focuses on the 1% market segment which consists of large companies with big brands. According to another US survey conducted in 2014, 84% of SMEs plan to increase their digital marketing budgets next year. And according to the survey by BCG mentioned above, SMEs plan to increase their budget on digital marketing by 46%. In the near future, SMEs will surely occupy a bigger chunk of the digital market. Moreover, according to The Intuit 2020 Report, SMEs and big companies will form a barbell economy.22 There is an opportunity to go after an untapped market. Therefore, the current business strategy of Tongal might require opening up to the potential for growth and the revenue that awaits in this untapped market segment. Tongal might need to implement it’s own barbell economy, balancing a mix of SMEs and large businesses. 21 DiGrande, Sebastian, et al, “Unlocking the Digital-Marketing Potential of
Small Businesses,” Boston Consulting Group, March 19, 2013. 22 “Intuit 2020 Report,” Intuit, accessed May 7, 2015, http://http-
download.intuit.com/http.intuit/CMO/intuit/futureofsmallbusiness/ intuit_2020_report.pdf
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business development Touch Points in the Process Through a deep dive into the early stages of the processes, the SDM Business Development team began to understand the entire process. For Tongal to create great relationships with great brands, the research identified a very labor intensive process for the Tongal employees. A process flow diagram was crafted to uncover various touchpoints and a synthesized infographic visual represented the labor intensive steps where Tongal either facilitated or edited information as it flowed between the two external parties, the client and the community. The diagram helped blow out the process and attempted to capture every step and every touch point along the way.
The red points that lie above the main line are delays caused by the client, and many of these seem unavoidable. The yellow points that lie below are the delays caused by the community and these are necessary for their creation process. Decision points are represented by diamonds, these are delays caused by Tongal. This process was found to be very successful and profitable for Tongal, however it may not be scalable or sustainable at the current number of employees over the long term. As the portfolio for amazing videos and brands expands, more companies will seek out Tongal for their innovative and fun process. This might become a red ocean as competition continues to move into this space. The generated key insight was: How might we automate the process while maintaining the high quality relationships with clients?
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business development Future Projections From interviews, the gathered information indicated that Tongal X was an attempt to move into a completely underrepresented market, but this ultimately proved to be ineffective. Tongal X failed to fit into the process flow indicated above. The research and exploration phase of the business strategy of Tongal lead to potential future scenarios where Tongal X may exist with a highly automated process. Some possible scenarios were sketched involving the community to outsource some positions that would relieve some work load for the employees. The Tongal X model would then capture more small and medium businesses from the targeted market.
Comprehensive ecosystems for Tongal
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Moreover, the best practices from the automated and outsourced SMEs model may be chosen and applied to the current Tongal model to increase the bandwidth for the employees. This would potentially allow Tongal to work on other projects in new segments such as Small-Medium Sponsored Documentary. Tongal’s move into documentaries is a way to stay current and align with the vision and direction for Tongal from the beginning. By creating partnerships to produce documentaries, Tongal is fulfilling their future vision and will provide the infrastructure to exist in every market segments. Tongal is essentially creating its own comprehensive ecosystem.
Short-Term How might we increase efficiency in the shortterm by having a more innovative pitch process? Long-Term How might we achieve scalability by involving community members and increasing automation while maintaining quality? How might we create Tongal’s ecosystem that covers all market segment in video industry?�
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digital platforms Trongkamolthum, Issaree | Zok, Limassol website and mobile app Several insights were generated from the research done on the digital platforms of Tongal. The data that translated to user journeys and a generative sitemap was a main driver to the analysis phase. The information got synthesized and analyzed, and the phase of ideation resulted in ideas that created potential paths for the digital strategy of the Tongal platform to progress reflecting the core values of the business and supporting its sustainability.
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digital platforms The insights were many and the main ones may be highlighted as follows. The Homepage has potential to provide basic information about the company. The ‘How it Works’ page was a point of relief where users expressed comfort while navigating the page and interest to scroll up and down and click on the buttons in order to learn more. The ‘Projects’ page was received with interest and the video quality was appreciated There was no clear filtering process for the projects by category The filmmaker navigated more than 15 pages of the site and was highly interested in the process. After difficulty in understanding the company, excitement was expressed.
Users of the mobile app felt stuck at the main page of the app and the menu needed clarification through easy-to-read graphics. The businessman needed to see the main clients of the company and a quick sentence of what they do.
Fertile Future of the Online Education Industry From the research gathered on future trends and with the continuous rise and popularity of online education platforms, the SDM team suggested the below framework as a rapid prototype for crowdsourcing education in the long term via a Tongal production school. The fact that LinkedIn acquired Lynda.com highlighted as well the direction of the digital market and the anticipated expansion of the online education industry.
1. DEFINE 3. CROWDSOURCING EDUCATION CASE STUDY
MAIN FUNCTIONS OF THE DIGITAL PLATFORMS
Short Term
Long Term
Rapid Prototyping
Rapid Prototyping
CREATIVES
BUSINESSES
User Friendly
Easy to Navgate
2. CUSTOMIZE PLEASURABLE EXPERIENCES
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TONGAL PRODUCTION SCHOOL
TEACH THE ELDERLY
Feedback and Next steps
Social Media
After the co-creative midway presentation, major insights were highlighted for next steps.
communication with clients and creatives?
What are the main functions of the website and mobile app? How might the platforms target two very different customer segments and address their contrasting needs under one cohesive identity? How might we drive traffic to the unaccessed pages of the site? How can the backend of the website address automation processes to facilitate
Based on the quantitative research conducted on the social media platforms of Tongal, several “How Might We” questions and insights were generated How might we further engage the community in replying to Tongal’s social media? How might we expand our social network and tap into our clients’ circles of influence? How might we leverage our communities’ social media network for profit and create brand awareness?
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new business Aizawa, Shota | Kang, Joonsoo| Morozowich, Nicholas | Zok, Limassol Recap In order to arrive at an innovative business model that would drive success for Tongal into the future, the SDM team iterated on the opportunities identified during the early analysis and synthesis phases. With this goal in mind, the focus shifted to understanding the potential areas that existed within the crowdsourcing industry.
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new business Data Visualization
Touch Point Optimization Diagram
In the prototyping stage, ‘how might we achieve sustainability by leveraging a new business model’ was addressed, drawing from the potential of Tongal X. The team also addressed the ‘how might we achieve scalability by involving community members and increasing automation while maintaining quality’ prompt. The main explored theme aimed to address the potential for achieving efficiency while creating a sustainable ecosystem of product offerings.
The SDM team created the diagram below to visually depict the current situation at Tongal. The diagram showed that with the varying profit amounts generated from different projects, the amount of work performed by the Tongal producers remained constantly high, even with projects that offered little reward. The team therefore ideated on proposing an optimization of the touch points in order to reflect the amount of return on investment. Tongal needed to maintain the high quality offerings and services to big brand clients that channeled in high revenue. These relationships therefore offered vertical and horizontal potential across the different product categories. The SDM team focused on ideating solutions that would reduce touch points on low
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revenue projects in order to alleviate producers’ overall effort levels. The producers would remain dedicated to high profile client relationships where the highest returns on investment exist. As the team progressed toward the midway presentation, it developed several “how might we” prompts. Following the midway, solution to these questions were proposed and shared with Tongal.
Data visualization tool, Showcased in Class The team members were able to draw upon several insights gained by other teams. From the Digital Platform team, they learned the importance of leveraging the rapidly growing online education industries. They wanted to address the question ‘how might we create and leverage valuable partnerships with educational institutes and create valuable relationships between Tongal and film professors and students?’ From early interviews with Tongal employees, the SDM team understood the desire to someday create an online video production company. The team therefore looked for potential solutions that could satisfy the highest number of desired outcomes.
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Ideation workshops in class
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internal process Trongkamolthum, Issaree | Wang, Jianan The People Management Department The aim of the People Development team was to create a safe place for employees and encourage a more comfortable and efficient work space at Tongal. As Tongal grows and from the findings of the research phase, it seemed essential to consider building this department early on to allow for the sustainable development of the business as a whole. Apart from serving as a safety net for employees, the department would have potential for more support and would create strong value and increase revenue for Tongal on the long run. Therefore, the aim would be to design a creative solution, one that moves away from the traditional human resources department structure towards a more tailored one to Tongal’s culture.
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internal process Value for Long Term Development The SDM team raised key questions about what Tongal or any crowdsourcing platform aspires for in terms at an internal process system level, aiming to identify areas that can may be further investigated and developed. Several “How Might We’ questions emerged, as follows.
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The questions shed light on some of the problems that needed to be addresses and the order of importance in which they need to be tackled. From there on, further analysis showed that there was an emotional aspect beyond the practical processes oriented one that would lead to increased employee satisfaction and motivation in the work environment. It was found from the research that a comfortable environment and a more satisfied body of employees may undeniably have a multitude of positive effects like increased confidence, loyalty, leadership, collaboration, company endorsement and creativity.
The effect of a comfortable work environment on employees
Traditional People Management vs. Innovative Internal Operations The quest was to aim at creating an ideal environment by combining the traditional people development approaches that focus on practical functions of human resources management, with an innovative internal operations system that focus on the emotional functions. A people operations strategist (POS) would potentially merge both functions and help improve the Tongal people management methodology, thereby promoting further communication and efficiency at the company.
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internal process Management: How to Manage Employees Needs The research phase showed that the main objective of human resources departments in traditional companies is to offer the feeling of security for employees, at least this is how employees perceive traditional HR departments. HR usually tackles issues such as legal, compliance, benefits, compensation, performance appraisals, organization policies, general recruitment and training, and development amongst many others. The SDM team aimed to better understand these objectives in the development of its prototyped Tongal structure. As such, a workshop was designed to better understand the current and relevant needs for a People Development department with the aim to find out the priority for current employees’ needs and define the main objectives for the proposed POS functions.
Innovative Internal Operations The SDM team referenced William Glassers ‘Basic Needs’ as a theory and tool to monitor and measure abstract and personal issues related to needs, comfort and fulfillment levels. This theory helped guide the thinking process of how to enhance the quality of life for the employees.23 Several workshops were then conducted to explore the meaning of these five needs and how they may be applied at a workspace, like that of Tongal. The workshop therefore aimed to test the validity of the hypothesis that Tongal’s employees would work more efficiently and more comfortably if an Innovative Internal Operations department existed and a People Operation Strategist overlooked the efforts in that context.
23 ULM Classroom Management, accessed 7 May 2015, https://
ulmclassroommanagement.wikispaces.com/William+Glasser
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internal process Brainstorming Workshop : 5 Needs Word Clouds An internal class workshop was conducted amongst SDM students in order to better understand the meaning of each of the needs by the different participants. Needs were interpreted within two dimensions: general and work environment. The participants were asked to think about what each need meant to them and then map their answers on the diagram as illustrated below, placing them on the axes of management and culture & communication.
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Class workshop on Generated Word clouds for the five human needs for satisfaction.
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internal process With these result, the team then focused on the top right area which had the highest involvement in both categories. This helped narrow down the meanings of the needs and where the focus would need to be. The team listed all the words within those areas to act as the themes for each need for further development in the next workshop, with Tongal.
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brand identity Karaguezian, Roupen | Morozowich, Nicholas | Pedraza, Natalia project The team’s aim was to help identify the differentiated value proposition of Tongal within the crowdsourcing landscape and develop a proposal for the Tongal mission, vision and core values. The team also shared and applied a methodology for prioritizing strategic initiatives and as such, used the communication strategy of the Tongal brand identity as an example during the conducted workshops.
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brand identity INSPIRING THE COMPANY’S VALUE PROPOSITION
DEFINING TONGAL’S VALUE PROPOSITION
Exemplary leaders and organizations think, act, and communicate in a way that ‘comes from the inside out’, meaning that they first define the reason why they do what they do and why they exist. They then define their goals and the strategy required to achieve these goals, and finally offer the product or service that materializes their beliefs. This process ensures a unique and consistent message or manifesto that aims to inspire teams, clients, potential clients, partners and all related stakeholders towards the bigger cause.
The midway presentation concluded that Tongal’s differentiating factors were not broadly defined nor consistently adopted and understood among all the stakeholders. The SDM team therefore decided to conduct two workshops with the two main goals: firstly, to identify Tongal’s main value proposition, including its mission, vision and core values. And secondly, to conceptualize and apply a methodology to co-create and prioritize a strategy to communicate the value proposition internally and externally (as an example).
The mission, vision and core values are the main elements that compose any company’s value proposition. The mission states the purpose of the company and establishes the reason of what the company does and why it exists. The vision states the company’s future desirable state and goal and frames the direction of where the company wants to be. The core values reflect the spirit of the company - the values upon which the company acts.
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EXPLORING THE TONGAL LANDSCAPE In preparation for the workshops, the team developed the methodology that would be applied to explore the information necessary to collectively define Tongal’s value proposition. The methodology follows the design-thinking approach which comprises the exploration and analysis of the landscape, the communication channels and the strategy. Firstly, the team explored the crowdsourcing industry as a whole to better understand the components and drivers that make up the community and how members associate themselves with the brands. The team then analyzed companies that are successful at communicating their identity and value proposition as benchmarks to help identify commonalities and patterns.
Secondly, the team identified the ecosystem of all the stakeholders that are related to Tongal both internally and externally. Relationships were identified; among and within businesses, employees and community members. These relationships could be accentuated by delivering a unique and consistent message that involves and inspires all of the audiences. Finally, the SDM team identified certain activities that make up the strategy to diffuse Tongal´s message among all the stakeholders. The group conducted workshops and co-created the prioritization and implementation of the activities required to communicate the Tongal message.
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prototypes
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user experience Aujla, Jasmin | Figueira, Sofia | Mecattaf, Maria | Pinto, Paula Prototyping Methodology In order to decide which were the features that the new Tongal mobile app needed to have, the newly formed UX team, composed of the community team members who combined and addressed the insights generated from the research done on Tongal’s digital platforms and community, conducted two rounds of testing. An exercise was done where classmates were asked to create their own app using the features they had selected. The participants were presented with fifteen potential features, of which they could only select six to make up the app or create new features. The participants were asked to complete this task three times: to create an app most suited to ideators, to create an app most suited to filmmakers, and to create an app composed of the features they thought were most important for both stakeholders together. This exercise was run first with a group students aged between 23-29 years old and then with the Tongal employees themselves.
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user experience ROUND 1
ROUND 2
During the first round of testing the prototype of the new Tongal app, the participants proposed that some features should be merged into one and also suggested some new features. These suggestions helped the UX team to pivot the first prototype and create a new one for the second round of testing, this time with the Tongal team.
After doing some alterations to the prototype, the UX team was ready to do a round two of testing where it was found that the mobile app needed to have features focused only on filmmakers and other features focused only on ideators, therefore offering tools for both types of users, addressing the needs of the diverse members of the Tongal community.
FINAL PROTOTYPING The data collected from the initial prototyping rounds enabled the UX team to have a clear understanding of the most important features that the app needed to contain. In completing these testing rounds, the team acknowledged what matters to people using this app, and how they would like to interact with it. The defining takeaways from this testing phase was that the team needed to create one simple app that meets the needs of all community members: ideators and filmmakers. It is true that Tongal community members were not committed to being just an ideator or just a filmmaker, and thus, the app needed not to create a distinction between the two.
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user experience Next Steps: An online Prototyping Platform Having curated this research, the next steps of the process was to further develop the content of each feature and the visual design of the app. Leveraging the use of an online prototyping platform, InVision, the vision was translated into a tangible and usable mobile app interface that was further tested for functionality and content. It was important for the team to test their assumptions and design at each stage of the process to ensure a truly human-centric and easily adoptable end result.
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RESULT The final application design and features encompassed and displayed the research findings, allowing the testing and pivoting through the design thinking process. The key aim for this deliverable was to revamp and restrategize Tongal’s existing application to create a platform that encouraged more engagement from the existing community, enriching their experience, and also motivating participation from new members. A conscious and tested decision was made to create an app that appealed to all Tongal community members - the final features were tailored to meet their needs, support their involvement and harbor more creativity.
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user experience The App Features MY TONGAL - This is the user’s personal profile. Under this feature, the user will see their notifications, their winnings-to-date, and they will also have the opportunity to ask for feedback from the community. The ‘feedback’ feature will open up their work (ideas or videos) to the community and allow them to write comments. RESOURCES - This feature will incorporate three sub-features: Tips & Tools, Inspiration, and Tongler of the Month. Tips & Tools will provide guidelines and advice on how Tonglers can improve their work process, Inspiration will be a gallery of new and exciting posts related to the video industry and Tongler of the Month will highlight an ideator and a filmmaker that performed exceptionally well that month. SUBMIT - Will enable users to ideate-on-thego, a quick and simple feature where members can submit ideas from wherever they are. Pitches can also be submitted here, incorporating links to from other sites such as pinterest and carbonmade.
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VOTE - This feature allows all community members to vote on the top 20 ideas and videos for different projects. COMMUNICATE - The three features here are; Talk to Us!, Talk to the Community!, and Invite people to collaborate. This allows a user to ask Tongal questions, as well as communicate with their peers within the community. The third sub-feature also enables community members to collaborate with each other on specific projects. SUPPORT - This will outline the contest rules that lawfully must be included in the app. There will also be information here about how community members can receive technological support from Tongal. If this application was to be taken further to full implementation, further user testing and content reiteration would need to take place to ensure the platform was ready to go live.
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brand identity Karaguezian, Roupen | Morozowich, Nicholas | Pedraza, Natalia CO-CREATING TONGAL’S MISSION, VISION, AND CORE VALUES The identification of a company’s mission, vision and core values implies the need to search inside the tasks and products and find the underlying reasons and drivers of these outcomes. The team conducted two workshops, one with the SDM class and one with the Tongal team, in order to brainstorm and test assumptions about the way Tongal is perceived. Three main questions were framed to guide this process and work towards drafting the Tongal’s mission, vision and core values: Why does Tongal exist?. Where do you think Tongal wants to be in 2025? What makes you feel proud of Tongal? The results of this part of the workshop became solid components that set the tone for the next steps.
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brand identity The generated ideas and concepts were then prototyped during the workshop when participants were asked to use the ‘Franken Ideation’ methodology to come up with strong and coherent messages that describe Tongal’s main value proposition. The processes revolved around selecting words and messages, either purposefully or randomly, combining them and experimenting with the results. Participants had only a limited amount of time to complete all the different phases. The internal workshop highlighted some of the main areas to explore for drafting the manifesto. The results were shared and discussed and built upon during the final stages of the process. “Tongal inspires you to be creative and gives the opportunities to connect media makers with market access” “Tongal is changing the video industry by enabling a creative community to connect and co-create with brands”
Recurring themes were identified when comparing the results of both workshops. The Tongal team results listed below helped narrow the scope and focus of the next steps. “Tongal is a cool and young company that gives access to creatives to collaborate and tell stories to satisfy the clients and disrupt the video industry” “Tongal is a creative validation for brands and storytellers who will change the industry through trusted collaboration” “Tongal enables unique and undiscovered stories to be told by helping talent from anywhere to meet opportunity” “Open exchange for creative storytelling between creatives and brands” Results of all the exercises are listed in the Appendix of this document.
“Tongal generates unique video content by providing the community with a creative outlet and bringing brands closer to their customers” “A cool and online and offline video education platform that gives creative a voice in a financially smart system” “Go to platform for video content and open collaborative democratizing video making by a large amount of creators and providing easy access to clients”
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brand identity THE TONGAL MISSION
THE TONGAL VISION
Tongal’s roadmap should start with the definition of its mission; it states Tongal’s purpose and establishes the reason of what the company does and why the company exists. The mission serves as a standard against which Tongal can weigh its actions and decisions:
The vision is related to the company’s future desirable state and goal, and it frames the direction of where the company wants to go in order to accomplish sustainable growth.
VIDEO: To inspire unique and undiscovered open exchange for storytelling and video making. PEOPLE: To give talent a voice and opportunity by democratizing the creative process of video making. BRANDS: To empower a global video community by providing a platform to co-create with brands, bringing them closer to their customers.
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VIDEO: Aim to disrupt the video industry through impactful innovation, making Tongal and Video synonymous. PEOPLE: Be the go-to-platform to ideate and co-create videos and responsibly grow our community payout while inspiring them to be the best they can be. BRANDS: Bring a global portfolio of creatives, consumers and quality brands closer together than ever before.
THE TONGAL CORE VALUES
Recognizing Quality
The core values compose the spirit of the company, which is made of principles upon which the company acts.
Rewarding Creativity Diversifying Opportunity Co-Creating Passion Expressing Purpose
core value word cloud
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brand identity communicating the tongal value PROPOSITION
A. Approve and make an official version of Tongal manifesto
Businesses that communicate their message from the inside out are often better understood by their customers than those businesses who apply a sales pitch strategy. Furthermore, making sure that employees are involved and inspired by the mission of the company generates internal buyin and endorsement of the message to clients and related stakeholders. The message should be communicated considering the company’s particularities, processes and culture. Having that in mind, the team conducted a workshop to co-prioritize along with the Tongal team, the communication strategy. The communication strategy was developed considering the actual positioning and the desired future state. The suggested sample activities that were defined to communicate the Tongal value proposition are the following:
B. Create incentives for community members to spread the word of the new Tongal manifesto C. Establish internal alignment and get buy-ins from all Tongal members (workshops, memos, events, internal advertising) D. Generate targeted messages for external clients (advertising agencies) and partners E. Develop a budget to communicate the new manifesto internally and externally F. Develop a media plan to communicate the new manifesto (social, media, plan, PR) G. Crowdsource the manifesto video and post on official webpage and Tongal app H. Designate roles and deadlines
Key Identified Initiatives To Communicate Manifesto A Approve and make an official version of Tongal Manifesto B Create incentives for community members to spread the word of the new Tongal manifesto C Establish internal alignment and get buy-ins from all Tongal members (workshops, memos, events, internal advertising) D Generate targeted messages for external clients (advertising agencies) and partners E Develop a budget to communicate the new Manifesto internally and externally F
Develop a media plan to communicate the new Manifesto (Social media plan, PR events)
G Crowdsource the manifesto video and post on official Webpage and Tongal App H Designate roles and deadlines
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The method that was used considers ease of implementation and criticality as the main dimensions to prioritize each of these initiatives. This exercise served as an example to illustrate the framework. Key Questions
Dimension
▪
How necessary is it to implement this initiative
Importance
Low
Impact
High
Capabilities Availability
Low
Implementation Timing
High
immediately so as to address a critical need?
Criticality ▪
How significant is the impact of the initiative?
▪ How available are the required skills at Tongal to implement this initiative? ▪ How quickly can the initiative be implemented?
Following the prioritization that was done by different groups during the workshop, the team synthesized the information of the resulting graphs which indicated the order of execution: which initiatives are to be executed in the short, medium and long terms.
Initiative Prioritization Matrix
High
Short Term H
A
G C
Medium
Criticality
F E
Medium Term
D B
Low
Ease of Implementation
Parameters
Long Term Low
Medium Ease of Implementation
High
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brand identity According to the results, the most critical initiatives that are theoretically easy to implement and therefore are the short-term and immediate roadmap constituents are focused on identifying Tongal’s value proposition and establishing internal alignment around this message. This includes the assignment of the roles and deadlines. Considering Tongal’s competitive advantage in video-making, it can crowdsource the manifesto video and post it on the official webpage and application, delivering one consistent message for everyone.
Secondly, the medium-term initiatives are characterized by being moderately critical and somewhat harder to implement than the first bucket. The results of the workshop suggest that at this stage, Tongal should focus on developing a media plan to communicate the Tongal manifesto, including the allocation of financial and human resources to communicate the manifesto both internally and externally. Finally, the activities that were identified as the hardest to implement and less critical for Tongal are those arround the creation of targeted messages for external clients and partners, and the generation of incentives for community members to spread the word of the new Tongal manifesto.
Initiatives Waves Timeline
Evolution Stages
Wave 3 – Long Term Sustainability Initiatives
Focuses on developing a list of initiatives and detailed implementation roadmap necessary for long-term sustainability
Wave 2 – Medium Term Initiatives
Focuses on tackling the important issues that Tongal needs to address for medium-term sustainability
Wave 1 – Short Term Initiatives Focuses on executing initiatives that would have immediate impact on sound operations 0 – 6 Months
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6 – 24 Months
24+ Months
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NEW BUSINESS Aizawa, Shota | Kang, Joonsoo | Morozowich, Nicholas | Zok, Limassol Round I Prototypes Proposed Business Models Valuable key insights were generated from the earlier phases of researching and analyzing the collected data. With classmates, a workshop session using Franken ideation techniques resulted in blue sky ideas. The team then held several meetings that resulted with four main business model ideas that they tested on the Tongal employees. Using rapid prototyping was crucial to reiterate on ideas of great potential and cancel out any assumptions.
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NEW BUSINESS
Automation of Operational Process of Tongal Projects Rechanneling time and energy of Tongal Employees
To exploit opportunity of startups with low budgets and increase inbound revenue source, this new business model enables Tongal to have automated process by reducing touch points with clients and by incorporating voting system of the community in a process of selecting ideas. This business idea can be assumed to leverage amateur community members who is not capable of producing superior quality movie to big brands such as P&G while video production for mobile platform would be considered as one of product offerings to avoid cannibalization of existing business model.
Prototype 1: Automation of The Business Operation Process CURRENT INTERNAL TOUCHPOINTS CLIENT EITHER DOES NOT RESPOND OR RESPONDS “NO” WAIT FOR LEGAL EMAIL
RFQ
READ THRU ALL IDEAS
WAIT
START
ID CLIENT
PITCH COLD EMAIL
WAIT FOR REPLY
1 TVC
CREATE QUOTE
DRAFT CONTRACT
CREATE BRIEF
SEND PAYMENT
SELECT TOP IDEAS
POST WINNING IDEAS & NOTES
END
TONGAL POST COMMUNITY POST SEND OUT TO COMMUNITY
2 HOURS TO 2 YEARS
1 WEEK
THE SYSTEM AUTOMATES COMMUNICATION DURING THE INITIAL PHASE
New Internal Process 1
New Community Integrated Voting
“Hi, I’m Susan. Thank you for your interest in Tongal. Please fill out the form then I will contact you shortly.” Service Menu
SELECTION PROCESS
6 Website Publishes Brief and Gives Client Access to Interact with Creatives on Website
2
COMMUNITY MEMBERS CLIENT
3 Service Inquiry
OKAY
Website Automatically Notifies Tongal Employee By Sending An Automated Email with One Action Button
5
Tongal Producer Refines Brief and Approves It
Brief Revision
Approved
Direct Communication Between a Client and Community Members on Website Publicly
7
Conversation? Client Receives Guidelines for Writing the Brief
8
Automatically Notifies Both Sides
Guideline for Brief
Community Members Vote for Best Ideas (30%)
30%
4 10
Community Members Vote for Best Pitches (30%)
30%
Vote by a Client (50%) + Approval from Tongal
9
50% 11
50%
AT MOST 30% COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
Thoughts | Feelings | Comments
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CLIENT
50% TONGAL
FINAL APPROVAL
20%
Vote by a Client (50%) + Approval from Tongal
Client Posts Brief in a Conversation
100% AUTOMATED FOR INBOUND
30%
WINNERS Automaticcaly Announced
Business Case for Automation
Executive Summary
The first business model suggested was adapted from a previous iteration. The SDM team looked for solutions that would exploit the inbound revenue opportunity of startups with low initial budgets. The team identified Small to Medium Enterprises (SME) as an untapped opportunity for Tongal. Taking into account the low initial budget constraints, the SDM team looked for innovative ways of making this market accessible.
This new business model would enable Tongal to utilize an automated process, reducing touch points with clients while incorporating a partially curated community voting system to engage the community in the process of selecting winning ideas. The potential for a new voting system was highlighted by the SDM community team as a major painpoint for Tongal producers during the exploration phase. To avoid conflicts with Tongal’s current model, the SDM team focused on SMEs. Since SMEs do not have the same requirements for Television Commercial (TVC) videos, the team proposed focusing solely on creating web-content videos. Given the insights gathered by the Community team, it was also obvious that there was a need to engage the section of the filmmaking community that was not qualified to produce TVC-type videos. Since these videos are of lower quality, Tongal can leverage more amateur video makers from their community who are not yet capable of producing superior quality content for big brands such as P&G. Tongal can still guarantee overall quality because the videos would be completely crowdsourced. Mobile platforms were emphasized as a desired distribution channel that avoids the cannibalization of the existing business model.
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NEW BUSINESS
Tongal U Videos As Projects for FilmMaking Classes Gainaing startups as a new client segment
By leveraging the ambitions and resources of aspiring filmmakers currently enrolled at film universities across the country, Tongal can restructure their existing business model to cater to startups with small budgets but big potential. Tongal U will exist as an offshoot of Tongal. Tongal U can create partnerships with film universities to further expand the level of talent that exist within this new community. Tongal U can create relationships within the dynamic filed of startups, offering these students benefits including potential internships and stronger portfolios. At the same time, Tongal U can leverage their relationships with flim equipment companies to offer film universities incresed access and availability to the best equipment available. The long-term goal of this project is to create Tongal sponsored online film school.
Prototype 2: Tongal University 1
2
STARTUPS
TONGAL U
3
FILM SCHOOLS
Professor = Tongal’s producer
Image: New_Biz_Idea_2
PROFESSOR
PROFESSOR
FILM STUDENTS
FILM STUDENTS
FACILIATOR AND PLATFORM
INBOUND LOW BUDGET OR EQUITY
N ATION MUNIC R SELECTIO T COM E DIREC FOR WINN G OTIN PEN V
4 &O
5 Launching R/GA accelerator in 2013 to help grow startups, the agency has raised the bar with a new level of commitment. It now has equity investments in over 30 startups. As the client’s business grows, R/GA grows too, and the return can be exponential. "We know it’s hard for startups at the start, so we take equity instead of payment," Wacksman said. "It’s a new long-term income stream and a future model for agencies."
COMPETITION
Barry Wacksman, Chief Growth Officer at R/GA
50%
EQUIPMENT
FROM RENTAL COMPANY
FILM STUDENTS
30% CLIENT
TONGAL
FINAL APPROVAL
20%
WINNERS
CONNECTIONS TO STARTUPS
STRONG PORTFOLIO
Videos As Projects for Filmmaking Classes TONGAL U
TONGAL ONLINE FILM SCHOOL
The SDM team looked for solutions that would they would interface with the students directly, Short term strategy Long term strategy alleviate the workload and touch points of Tongal controlling the quality. Tongal could gain a producers. The team identified film students as a reputation for assisting film students as they seek potential opportunity for Tongal and professors to create relevant portfolios. Thoughts | Feelings | Comments as potential stand-ins for Tongal producers as
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Executive Summary By leveraging the ambitions and resources of aspiring filmmakers currently enrolled at film universities across the country, Tongal can restructure its existing business model to cater to startups with small budgets and big potential. Tongal U would exist as an offshoot of Tongal. Tongal U could create partnerships with film universities to further expand the level of talent that exists within this new community. Tongal U could also create relationships within the dynamic field of startups, offering these students benefits including potential internships and stronger portfolios. The long-term goal of this project would be to create a Tongal sponsored online film school, as found in the ideation phase of the digital platforms.
Case Study - Ad Agency Startup Incubation Program The SDM team wanted to draw on industry examples when developing potential relationship ideas. Such relationship ideas had previously occurred between SMEs and ad agencies. The ad agency, R/GA, created an accelerator in 2013 to help grow startups. In response to the low budgets but high number of startups and SMEs seeking the agency’s assistance, R/GA decided to accept equity as payment for the agencies work. The agency got equity investments in over 30 startups. As the client’s business grows, R/GA grows too, and the return can be exponential. "We know it’s hard for startups at the start, so we take equity instead of payment," Barry Wacksman, global chief growth officer of R/GA, said. "It’s a new long-term income stream and a future model for agencies."
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NEW BUSINESS
Advertising Agencies Subscribe to the Tongal Crowdsourcing Platform Gaining unreached client segments of big brands
To expand Tongal’s reach into under represented areas of opportunity, this new business model enables Tongal to approach big brands with large production budgets that have existing relationships with ad agencies. Tongal will create strategic
Prototype 3: Tongal, A Subscription-Based Crowdsourcing Platform for Ad Agencies
partnerships with ad agencies, generating additional revenue through the access to Tongal’s community of ideators, pitchers and film makers. Tongal can leverage their relationship with ad agencies to expand their current portfolio of clients, with intent of further developing relationship with new brands in these untapped industries.
FACILITATING THE ROLE OF CREATIVE DIRECTORS AT AD AGENCIES
ANNUAL CONTRACTS WITH AD AGENCIES McKinney
Ogilvy
Wieden Kennedy+
Leo Burnett
TONGAL = PRODUCTION DEPARTMENT COMMUNITY = PRODUCTION COMPANY
Access to
Annual Subscription AD AGENCIES ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION TO TONGAL PLATFORM
7,000 community members Ideators / Pitchers / Film Makers
WHAT’S IN IT FOR BRANDS? 1
THEY STICK WITH FAMILIAR AD AGENCIES
2
THEY MAINTAIN CONTROL AND SUPERVISION THROUGH CD
3
ACCESS TO TONGAL’S UNIQUE PROCESS AND 7000 CREATIVES IN THE COMMUNITY
FINANCE
GAS
WHAT’S IN IT FOR TONGAL?
PHARMA SPORTS
1
GAIN NEW CLIENT SEGMENTS LIKE PHARMACY AND SPORTS THAT ARE USED TO OLD MODEL OF AD AGENCIES
GOV. 2
RELIEVE TONGAL PRODUCERS FROM CUSTOMIZED WORK
3
TONGAL PROVIDES SEVERAL WELL-GROUNDED AD AGENCIES
CATERING TO EVERY CLIENT EVERY SINGLE TIME WITH A CROWDSOURCING PLATFORM BEFORE THEY SPEED UP TO COMPETITION AND CREATING ONE THEMSELVES
THE CLIENT
CLIENT SERVICES
Thoughts | Feelings | Comments
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TONGAL
Relationships with Ad Agency
Executive Summary
Through the earlier research phase, the SDM team learned that Tongal was working with several ad agencies, when requested by clients who already had existing relationships with those ad agencies. From interviews conducted by the SDM team, it was found that Tongal had no desire to become an ad agency itself and had no plans to offer the full range of content and distribution that agencies offered. That was the reality of the landscape that allowed for Tongal to interface with these agencies only when clients saw Tongal as a valuable asset. There remained the opportunity for advertising agencies to one day enter the crowdsourcing industry. This business model is a way to avoid that scenario completely.
This new business model enables Tongal to approach big brands with large production budgets that have existing relationships with ad agencies. Tongal would create strategic partnerships with ad agencies, generating additional revenue while ultimately building relationships with the end clients. By offering the ad agencies access to Tongal’s 70,000 community members of ideators, pitchers and filmmakers, the ad agencies would adopt the role the Tongal producers with the main responsibility entailed in that. The ad agencies would rely on Tongal to drive content development and ultimately Tongal’s filmmakers would serve as an external production house for those ad agencies. Tongal can leverage this relationship to expand their current portfolio of brands, with intent of further developing relationships with these new clients in previously untapped industries, for example in the pharmaceutical and sports brands industries.
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NEW BUSINESS
Tongalstock.com Platform for stock videos Opportunity for non-winning creatives Leveraging existing database with flexible contracts
To capitalize on potential revenue source of non-winning submissions, Tongalstock.com will offer clients monthly subscription access to non-winning video submissions. By modifying the video submission contract to include an option for directors to migrate their
unselected videos onto platform, Tongal’s community can have a “second chance”. The contract modifications may include the requirement for community members to scrub their videos of any proprietary information prior to personally uploading videos onto the platform. By establishing a closed channel, Tongal can create a monthly subscription model for clients, where clients may request to have videos re-edited to incorporate logos or products.
Prototype 4: Tongalstock.com - The Platform for Stock Videos TONGALSTOCK.COM A SUPPMENETARY SERVICE
Benefits 1
UNSELECTED VIDEOS WITH THE POSSIBILITY OF REMOVING THE BRAND GET POSTED ON A TONGALSTOCK.COM PLATFORM.
stock.com
2
AD AGENCIES HAVE AN ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION TO TONGALSTOCK.COM PLATFORM AND EVERY DOWNLOAD IS CHARGED (SHUTTERSTOCK.COM MODEL).
3
THE CONTRACTS WITH THESE CREATIVES MENTIONS THE POSSIBILITY TO BE UPLOADED HERE AND THEY ARE THEREFORE PAID LESS, GIVING THEM EXPOSURE SOMEWHERE ELSE WHERE THEIR TALENT MIGHT BE NEEDED.
4
THIS IS AN OPTIONAL CONTRACT FOR CLIENTS AND IT WILL DIMINISH THE COST, HOWEVER GENERATING
FLEXIBLE CONTRACTS
REVENUE ON THE STOCK PLAT-
UPCYCLE
EXPOSURE
Thoughts | Feelings | Comments
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Supplementary Platform for stock videos
FORM.
Opportunity for Non-Winning Creatives
Executive Summary
During the research phase, the community team had identified several pain points in the experience of the non winning Tongal community members. This business model allows for nonwinning submissions to become a revenue source for Tongal as well as community members who had submitted content that was not selected.
Tongalstock.com capitalizes on the potential revenue source of non-winning submissions by offering clients access to non-winning video submissions through a monthly subscription model. By modifying the contracts with clients to include a limitation on their option to purchase initially unselected videos as well as addressing any IP concerns, Tongal can capitalize on a previously neglected resource. By modifying the video submission contract to include an option for directors to migrate their unselected videos onto platform, Tongal’s community can have a “second chance”. The contract modifications may include the requirement for community members to scrub their videos of any proprietary information prior to personally uploading videos onto the platform. By establishing a closed channel, Tongal can create a monthly subscription model for clients, while offering clients a pay-per-use option to have videos reedited or re-shot to incorporate new logos or products.
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NEW BUSINESS Prototype 5: Blue Sky Idea One of the ideas generated during a SDM brainstorming session centered around the potential for community members to upload personal videos of their interactions with landmarks and other points of interest. Tongal Partners with National Geographic and Google Maps? So, Users Access Videos when They Interact with.
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Feedback from Tongal: Generated Insight for Reiteration for Round II The five prototype posters were posted at the Tongal offices and allowed time for all employees to interact and write their feelings and thoughts regarding the business ideas, which provided the New Business team valuable insight and key concerns to reiterate and enhance the product through a validated learning approach of a lean startup. Among the five prototypes, participants showed strong interest in the TongalStock.com idea, particularly giving positive feedback on the idea of an annual subscription model for ad agencies. In addition, several participants questioned if the TongalStock.com can utilize the current Tongal process to upcycle unused ideas and pitches, by getting rid of intellectual property issues. Furthermore, concerns regarding additional labor inputs on new business development, feasibility of transparency in the voting system and strategic relationships with advertising agencies were raised from participants. This valuable feedback lead us to narrow down our suggestions into focusing on what works in specific time frames. Based on the given time priorities, the team categorized the ideas into short-term and longterm plans and decided to focus on further developing TongalStock.com as followings.
Prototype posters at Tongal’s office 1. Short-term Business Plan TongalStock.com 2. Long-term Business Plan Automation of Operational Process of Tongal Projects Tongal U Subscription Model for Advertising Agencies Blue Sky Ideas
Reiteration The TongalStock.com prototype was reiterated, combining the received feedback to bring together unique ways of looking at sustainable and scalable solutions from different perspectives, and adding key strategies from the other long-term plans.
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NEW BUSINESS Round II Prototypes Prototype I: Tongalstock.com Concept The concept for tongalstock.com after reiterating was for Tongal to utilize their current assets and provide more opportunity to community members to make more revenue, while educating and encouraging them to participate more actively. This would also allow the development of new marketing tools that increase inbound clients, and it would allow for a new revenue source to attract startups and ad agencies.
Multi-Sided Platform Business Model The business model of this prototype is a multisided platform, where community members who did not get awarded would get the chance to participate as main stakeholders in the service, catering to startups with low budgets, and providing creative work for subscribing ad agencies. Thus this model aggregated the talents of the community to provide as services for the other side of the platform, the potential clients.
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Three Revenue Stream Options 1- Freemium: Subscription-based + Pay Per Use Example: Shutterstock All clients are offered to have a membership of varying payment plans depending on the type of client, needs, and budget. The basic membership is offered for free with limited access to posts of ideas, pitches and videos, up to ten idea posts per day, a preview of the pitches, and the first 30 seconds of a video that may be fully viewed upon payment. This level of details may be further tested and reiterated to fine tune the prototype. Clients like startups may have the option to pay per use instead of paying a monthly subscription, and may be allowed to have certain amounts of views based on their payment plans. Paying members may have full access to posts in each section: ideas, pitches, and videos. If paid members get interested in a post in the pitch and video sections, they may contract with a creator to pursue several scenarios; either ask the creator to make a few videos for the client, or ask the creator to re-pitch the idea to meet the client’s needs and launch a new project on the Tongal platform skipping the ideation and pitching phase and aiming directly to the video.
2- Subscription-Based Freemium Model Example Spotify All clients are offered to have a membership. Basic membership is offered for free to have full access to posts: ideas, pitches and video, after having to watch an advertisement before the video starts. These video advertisements may be those of Tongal’s clients, and for eliminating the advertisement videos, members would need to upgrade their plan. Paid members would also be allowed to view the creators’ contact information and therefore pursue contracts for the pitches and videos.
3- Advertisement-Based Distribution Platform Model Example: Youtube The two revenue models mentioned above may be short term ways of setting up a distribution platform channel, and as the long term plan, tongalstock.com may follow the youtube model. Tongal would them be aiming to become a channel to distribute its own video content, incorporating documentaries by 2025. Until then, it may have gained enough traction of active viewers of Tongalstock.com who may then shift to the distributed channel, and the revenue model would shift to advertisements from brands.
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NEW BUSINESS How It Would Work The non-winning submitters would receive an email from Tongal anouncing the results and giving them the option to publish their content on tongalstock.com and gain potential future projects that would allow them to make revenue. The condition would be that they take IP over Tongal. In addition, we will consider any concerns of IP by reviewing contract with clients
The Website Layout A tabular module on the homepage displays the three categories: Idea, Pitch, Video Idea: searchable by industry and keywords Pitches: video thumbnails Videos: video thumbnails
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NEW BUSINESS Prototype II: Blue Sky Idea Crowdsourced 360 Videos At Concerts Executive Summary it is a video production backend where the concert streaming happens by projecting shots from the audiences. This provides a 360 experience for users viewing online, not at the concert.
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Prototype II: Blue Sky Blue Sky Idea 2: Crowdsourced Google Map videos in Collaboration with National Geographic Executive Summary In this proposed blue sky idea, Tongal would utilize Google Maps by crowdsourcing highquality videos of attractions and places that have not previously been explored yet. Crowdsource videos of unexplored places and attractions in the world Videos would be screened in collaboration with National Geographic Links to Google Maps Street View platform and adding video crowdsourcing to that Tongal logo would be displayed on Google Maps and the video windows would automatically pop up when the logo is clicked
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internal process Trongkamolthum, Issaree | Wang, Jianan | Zhang, Jing The Prototype and Its Goal From the research and analysis of earlier phases and from the various ideation and brainstorming workshops performed in the Integrative Studio class with high engagement of Tongal, a prototype was developed with a focus on a proposed people operation strategist (POS) position which overlaps both areas of expertise, traditional people development and innovative internal operations, in a role that is customized to Tongal’s needs. This would result in the combination of the operation’s core functions and address the five basic needs of employees at the workplace. Conceptually, the prototype may be imagined as a big box with five components. Each component would have its own function, system, activities, tools and directions. They may be combined together to create new activities or systems as well. The goal of this prototype is to propose a new operational system for the people operation strategist (POS) to manage the working culture of Tongal and create a highly efficient environment with effective tools for daily work tasks. The next step would be to find the focus of these components and cater specifically to Tongal by understanding the activities and tools needed by the employees, through several workshops.
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internal process The Prototype Five Components for Innovative Internal Operations
Prototype Testing Workshop A workshop was held in class to test this concept and strategy aiming to test assumptions, improve the current structure, and discover the prior focus directions.
Workshop One Focus: Traditional people management methodologies Aim: Understand what people operations means for the current employees
The workshop was focused on answering the main question of what the main needs of the current Tongal employees are which would be provided for by this people operations strategy, and by analyzing the priority and frequency of those needs would allow us to discover the opportunity for merging the innovative system with the traditional structure.
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Result: The answers got collected and rearranged into an order of priority as provided by the workshop participants, as the above chart displays. The needs, from highest to lowest, priority that were mentioned by the majority of the participants were salary and promotions, dispute, entry and exit, benefit and health insurance, learning and training, performance evaluation, complainant, vacation, internal operation rules (paper works), personal leaves, fun activities and career development. For all these needs, over 50% people have rated salary & promotions and dispute as their priority issue, while learning and training shares a similar rate of nearly 45%. From the workshop, the average frequency of all the listed needs are around 4 months to 6 months. Apart from some of the needs cannot be predicted, such as dispute, complaint and personal leaves.
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internal process Workshop Two Focus: Innovative internal operations strategy Aim: Discover what could an innovative internal operations strategy offer Tongal. Process: During the second workshop, the participants were asked to divide into five groups and focus on one specific need each. As found in previous brainstorming workshops in class, the testing was drawn to compare with the generated word clouds of the previous phase. The five major themes headlines sheets that were handed out to the different group members to jot down ideas on those functions. The functions were
Workshop Two: Ideation on the five main human needs for satisfaction at the workplace STRATEGIC DESIGN + MANAGEMENT | SPRING 2015 | 5200H
activities, compensations, tools and/or systems, and after the ideation exercise, the teams were asked to choose their favorite and present it to the room for feedback. The workshop gave insights to convert abstract and emotional needs into practical functions. Results: The favored and shared ideas were social group events (Survival), a forced day-off (Freedom), fun activities on Summer Fridays (Fun), happy free afternoons to spend time with loved ones (Love and Belonging), and a reward system (Power). Those concepts may have great potential to be combined and developed in depth for a cohesive and innovative people development strategy for Tongal.
Workshop Three Focus: Innovative internal operations Aim: Define what could be the prior area of focus during the early stages of development
During the third workshop, the participants were given blank bar charts of the five needs and were asked to highlight which needs were the most important for them at the workplace and which ones were currently met. After the charts were drawn out and colored, the gaps between them demonstrated the opportunities for improvement, and this exercise provided the team with a clear priority of needs for the prototype to be further developed.
Results: From the above chart, it was concluded that the top filled chart is the freedom, which meant that the majority of the participants believed that freedom, such as flexible working hours and flexible working locations were important to their levels of comfort at a workplace. Furthermore, the fun factors showed the biggest gap, which directed the people development team a more focused opportunity.
Workshop Data Analysis After collecting the results from each workshop, the data was analysed to allow for further focus for a close-to-final prototype development. From the first workshop, although salary & promotion and dispute issues were the top needs, training and learning had more potential and opportunity to develop further with the top needs of freedom and fun. Therefore, for the next prototyping phases, the focus was on combining training and self-improvement with freedom and fun.
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internal process The Proposals
Proposal One
Combining freedom needs like having a day off, with fun needs like holding social gatherings or shared activities, the findings were further categorised into the following proposals.
Culture Club: Programmed Day Off
1) Private day off 2) Programmed day off The private day off is a day that employees may use to do anything. The programmed day off however is a day when employees are not working at the office, but instead are attending programs or gatherings that the company organizes for them. The proposals are suggestions within the framework of freedom and fun, combining both the traditional function of training with selfimprovement, overlapped with other practical HR functions such as reducing disputes within an organization.
Result: The people operations strategist (POS) would be responsible to host monthly events that gather Tongal’s employees. These events would vary in creativity levels and types, bringing the employees together for the main goals of having fun and enhancing their knowledge about the film industry. Therefore the proposed themes would be hosting guest speakers from the Tongal community, and holding movie nights at local bars. A consistent and concurrent evaluated methodology would be devised to further enhance the system and tailor it to the diverse employees needs. Freedom: Openness to choice of topics, themes, locations, activities and guest speakers Fun: Enjoying a social event through creative activities and meeting influential people Training: Deepening employees knowledge and understanding in the monthly thematic topics Example of the Culture Club: A movie night at the local bar
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Proposal two A Day of Storytelling: Programmed Day-Off Result: The TOngal team selects a topic for storytelling once a month. The employees would together shoot a movie in one day, starting with ideation to pitching and then to filmmaking. This activity aims to provide an opportunity for empathy of the employees to their community while gaining deep insight on the details of how the process works. This creates openness and involvement in the culture of the company.
Freedom: The topics would designed by the employees Fun: Providing a day off for the employees to work on projects together Training: Gaining a deep understanding of the community and how the filming industry works POS would be in charge of managing the projects, select the topics, the dates, locations POS would organize the groups POS would gather evaluations to reiterate and enhance the strategy Example of a day of storytelling:
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internal process Proposal Three Tongal Montage: Programmed Day Off + Private Day Off, As A Reward Result: This monthly activity would involve all Tongal employees shooting amateur videos, compiling the clips into a short movie, overlaying a soundtrack. and posting on social media, in one day, aiming for maximum exposure gained with hashtags, likes, and replies. When and if reached a certain level of exposure, the employees get a day off. This proposal aims to strengthen their bonds with the community by creating a
sense of fun and creativity in the office culture, while promoting Tongal on social media as a creative company. Freedom: Openness to methods and technicalities of shooting and allowing for creative storytelling Fun: It’s all about having fun! POS would be in charge of selecting the monthly themes and announcing the day off.
An example of Tongal Montage. After a certain number of likes on Facebook, the employees get one day off
STRATEGIC DESIGN + MANAGEMENT | SPRING 2015 | 5200H
Next Steps The above proposed strategy tackles the fun and freedom needs of humans at a workplace. Through a long term strategy, the POS would evaluate, reiterate, determine metrics for measuring the success of the strategy, and evolve the strategy of the innovative internal process in order to address the other three needs of the traditional people management research findings, aiming for maximum employee satisfaction. Those needs are love and belonging, power, and survival.
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conclusion
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appendix 2025 - Trend Report Community Digital Platforms Business Development/Operations Integrated Marketing People Development Brand Identity
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2025
trend report
Work shifts from full-time to free agent employment. By contracting directly with a business or through an agency, these contract workers increase business efficiency, agility and flexibility.
40% of America’s Workforce will be Freelancers
Seniors will work beyond the traditional retirement age and many will start small businesses both for financial support and lifestyle.
Women hold more leadership roles in the workplace, politics and education. Many women will start their own businesses to provide flexibility for their familes and avoid traditional constraints that once kept them out of the workplace.
10%
1%
2007
2012
2025
Worldwide, smartphone adoption has grown from less than 1 percent of the world’s population in 2007 to almost 10 percent in 2012, a tenfold increase in just five years.5 If this pace of mobile adoption continues, 80 percent of Internet connections could originate from a mobile device by the year 2025.
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w e
Econom Longer The cos a small o further d
l c o m e
mies of Scale are No Entry Barriers: st of starting and running or personal business will decline.
Small Businesses and Global Giants will Form a Barbell Economy : A Large froup of small business will increase with greatest growth found in personal and micro-businesses.
During the same period, the entire European Union will add only 105 million new broadband subscriptions, from nearly 143 million in 2012 to 248 million in 2025.
By 2025, India will experience growth of over 3000% in the total number of broadband subscriptions, from about 20 million in 2012 to more than 700 million.
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Community Engagement
A study of community behaviour in crowdsoursing websites. landscape | there would be no crowdsourcing without a community in order to understand the future of crowdsourcing a company needs to know:
An organization that
understands what
motivates its crowd
Who is the community? How do they behave?
will sustain a productive crowdsourcing platform
What motivates them? Where are the opportunities?
who | personas 10 interviews translated into 4 personalities that exist in crowdsourcing COMMUNITIES.
USING PERSONAL FUNDS - Using her own money to participate with no guarantee that she will make a profit. QUALITY - Without financial and technological support, her work won’t be at it’s usual quality. CLIENT INTERACTION - She likes to meet with her clients to discuss the video plan.
Painpoints
Painpoints
FEEDBACK - Receiving constructive feedback from other filmmakers would be useful to improve his work.
from
from
from
PEER 2 PEER ENGAGEMENT - He would like to see other film makers submissions.
35 chicago, usa
college sophomore engaged ideator
freelance filmmaker ocasional ideator
CONTACT A PERSON - It’s hard to contact someone to get more information about a project.
ben
19 boston, usa from
29 new york, usa
experienced filmmaker completely engaged
Painpoints
SAM
kelly
31 mexico city, mexico
consultant beginner non-adopter
IDEAS ARE CHEAPER - Film makers make more money than ideators LOSING STREAK - A streak of not winning anything puts a strain on further engagement. TRANSPARENCY - Seeing other people’s ideas would encourage her to think of more ideas.
LACK OF SUPPORT - If Tongal gave more support, like discounted studio time or equipment rental, she would be more inclined to produce something.
PERSONALIZED PROFILE - A portfolio represents a filmmaker, the Tongal profile isn’t personal to each community member.
Painpoints
Alex
CONFUSING - The site was confusing to navigate. WHO WINS WHAT? - Unclear how prize money is divided, and the number of winners at each stage. COMMUNICATION - No communication with ideators whose submissions didn’t win. DISCOURAGEMENT - To find out you didn’t win from looking at the project page on the site.
how and what | journey maps, motivations and insights we mapped the journey of each persona to understand their behaviors and motivations at each moment in the process. occasional
non-adopter
Notification of project opportunity
Understand project scope
Brainstorm ideas
DEvelop content
Upload content
Wait for result
EVERYBODY STARTS INTRIGUED
PROJECT BRIEFS MUST BE CLEAR AND CONCISE
information increases satisfaction
the opportunity to express creativity is a high point for all users
THERE’S A SENSE OF PRIDE IN SUBMITTING YOUR OWN CONTENT
for the less engaged waiting is a low point
information about results is important to build a relationship
motivations
MONEY COMPETITION
TRANSPARENCY SUPPORT
colLABORATION
exposure portfolio
EXCLUSIVE community CHANNELS
VOTING
FEEDBACK EVENTS
insights
highlights moments
feelings
engaged
Happy satisfied surprised intrigued unaffected confused unsatisfied
people begin projects with a plan of how they will spend the prize money
demanding too much from the community could prevent them from joining
users want to make meaningful connectionS THROUGH SHARING AND EXCHANGING CONTENT
there are low barriers to enter the video industry
SEEING OTHER PEOPLE’S IDEAS SPARKS CREATIVITY TO DEVELOP OTHER IDEAS
voting creates buy-in from users
constructive feedback is important for an idea to evolve
freelancers reach out to their own network for support
Result
EVENTS motivate engagement AND PROMOTE WINNERS
ideas can be expressed in different formats
next steps | how might we How might we create a positive competitive environment?
how might we facilitate a feedback system?
Jasmin Aujla, Natalia Pedraza, Paula Pinto, Sofia Figueira Integrative Studio, Rhea Alexander, 2015
how might we enhance community connections, online and locally?
how might we capitalize on our biggest asset, the community?
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community personas Alex 31 mexico city, mexico experienced filmmaker completely engaged
KELLY 29 NEW YORK, USA Freelance Film maker occasional ideator
Before being a full-time Tongler, Alex was a producer in a small film production agency in Mexico City. He began his career being very active in the film production process, but as the years went on and he gained more experience, his role became more bureaucratic. Alex discovered Tongal whilst conducting online research one night , and decided to give it a try. He liked the nature of the projects, the shortlisted ideas, and saw this as away to rekindle his creative side. He began getting involved by submitting an idea, although nothing came of it, he was still interested in the process and wanted to produce a film. Not long after, an interesting project came along and he created a pitch that was accepted. “I had butterflies when I received that e-mail, it felt like I was starting out my career all over again” - Alex immediately shot the film over weekend, with the help of some friends. He received a prize for third place, which was not only immensely satisfying but sparked his interest to become more involved with Tongal. He then began to submit more and more pitches to the site, that were accepted more often than not. Since then, Alex has produced 7 videos for Tongal, all of which have been placed in the top 10.
Kelly is a young freelance film maker living in NYC, she has experience working in advertising, and producing/directing music videos. She usually gets her freelance jobs from people who have used her before, or recommended her within their industry. She also reaches out to upcoming bands/musicians about producing videos for them. Once she receives a project, she usually has a crew of other freelancers whose help she will enlist. You could say Kelly is part of a freelance community, whereby they know each others strengths and will take each other onboard for different projects.
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Kelly doesn’t see the value for her, in using her own money, time and resources to produce a Tongal video, especially when there is no guarantee of winning. However, she likes the ideation side, and any extra cash is good for minimal effort. She will occasionally check out the different out the different projects and submit ideas for videos. She submitted a video once, when she first joined Tongal, but didn’t hear back from them and it wasn’t in her interest to submit again. As a creative person, Kelly finds it easy to come up with ideas for different videos. Therefore, contributing to Tongal as an occasional ideator works well for her.
ursula 19 BOSTON, USA college sophomore engaged ideator for pocket money Ursula is a college sophomore in Boston, studying international relations. She enjoys reading, playing sports and hanging out with her friends. She was introduced to Tongal by a friend of hers, who showed her how easy it was to submit an idea and maybe earn money from it. She submitted a few ideas in the beginning and didn’t hear anything back, but of her 4th submission she won $75! This really excited her, and encouraged her to submit more ideas - she thought if she could keep winning with her ideas she wouldn’t have to take a part-time job in a coffee shop to get some extra pocket money. However, sometimes when she goes through a bad streak of not winning anything, she gets bored of the process and lacks inspiration to stay involved. But every time she gets a win, she gets back into the spirit and stays engaged. She does think it is unfair that filmmakers make so much more than ideators, because without the idea there is no video.
ben 35 chicago, usa consultant beginner non-adopter Ben recently heard about Tongal through a friend and decided to give it a go. He always liked the creative side of things but never really had the time to explore it. He saw this as an opportunity to have a new hobby that was different and didn’t require much commitment. He logged into Tongal, checked out the site, and found it a bit confusing. Though he understood the concept, it wasn’t clear how and where he could get started. He eventually set up a profile and looked at some previous winning videos. The next evening he received an email about a new project opportunity. He accessed the project through the email link. Again, he got confused with what to do, how the prize money is allocated (does one person win it all?), but soon learnt where to submit his ideas. He really thought about his ideas, and then submit two. The following week, he hadn’t received an email about his submissions, and was unsure whether his ideas had been accepted or not. He then checked the website, and realized the winners had been chosen and he did not win. 2 weeks passed and he continued to receive updates about Tongal projects. However, he wasn’t inclined to submit again and found the emails annoying. He unsubscribed from the email list and cancelled his account.
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digital platform
Tongal Digital Platforms
How Might We?
Research on Website and Mobile App Generative Customer Journeys & Insights of Interviewed Users Navigating The Front End Interface
Insight for The Back End Interface from Interviews
100% interviewees felt relieved when they landed on the ‘How It Works’ page
HOW MIGHT WE BRIEFLY PRESENT WHAT TONGAL IS ON THE HOMEPAGE AND ELIMINATE CONFUSION?
WEBSITE FIRST TIME USERS RANDOM
How Might we make the site a One-Stop Shop?
HOW MIGHT WE PRESENT TONGAL IN A COHESIVE PROFESSIONAL, TRANSPARENT, AND TRUSTING IDENTITY?
VIDEO
HOW IT WORKS
CAPTURES FEEDBACK
CUSTOMIZES EXPERIENCES
FACILITATES COMMUNICATION
GALLERY
POSITIVE POINTS PAIN POINTS
PROJECTS
1/6
HOME
HOW MIGHT WE FILTER THE PROJECT CATEGORIES FOR EFFECTIVE QUICK DECISION MAKING FOR BOTH POTENTIAL CREATIVES AND BUSINESSES?
interviewees stayed more than 10 minutes on the website
SHOW ME PROJECTS
AWARDED PITCHES
BRIEFF & ASSETS
VIDEO WEBSITE FIRST TIME USER FILMMAKER
CREATIVE
HOW IT WORKS
AWARDED PITCHES
BABBLE BABY
HOW MIGHT WE CAPTURE VALUE FROM UNUSED VIDEOS FOR BOTH CREATIVES & BUSINESSES?
TONGAL EMPLOYEES
OPEN IDEA
PROJECTS
HOW MIGHT WE EASILY PROVIDE CASE STUDIES CUSTOMIZED FOR THE NEEDS OF BUSINESSES?
BUSINESSES
OFFICIAL RULES
GET STARTED
READ MORE
POSITIVE POINTS
HOME
PAIN POINTS
REGISTER
HOME
100% interviewees felt confused while navigating the app
MOBILE APP FIRST TIME USERS DESIGNERS
CREATIVES
“Brands now want to create a consistent conversation with their customers than just produce a viral video.”
HOW MIGHT WE DEMONSTRATE THE SEQUENCE OF THE TONGAL VIDEO MAING PROCESS CLEARLY WITH THE LEAST AMOUNT OF CLICKS?
VIDEO BRIEF BRIEFS
MENU: NOTIFICATIONS
HOME POSITIVE POINTS PAIN POINTS
HOME: VIDEO
HOME
AWARDS HOW MIGHT WE AUTOMATE THE RECURRENT PROJECT PROCESSES THROUGH THE WEBSITE AND FOCUS ON NEW OPPORTUNITITES?
UPCOMING VIDEO
HOW MIGHT WE PROVIDE A CONCISE AND INTUITIVE MENU THAT IS EASY TO NAVIGATE?
HOW MIGHT WE MAKE THE APP MORE VISUALLY APPEALING TO ALL STAKEHOLDERS?
HOW MIGHT WE PROVIDE MORE INFORMATION THAT IS CLEAR TO THE NEW USERS OF TONGAL?
TONGAL EMPLOYEE
More Insight HOW MIGHT WE STRONGLY MARRY THE UX, AESTHETICS, AND DEVELOPMENT PROCESS?
Tongal Website Map Navigation Analysis
COHESIVE Home
Projects
Current
Open Idea (project)
Login Register Search
Gallery
Past
Open Pitch (project)
Overview
About
I am Creative
How it Works
Vimeo
Evaluation (project)
Tongal Awards
I Need Creative
Sort Videos
Prize Pool
Forums
Submit Video
New
Submit Pitch
Ending Soon
View Project Details
My Favorites
Tongal for Businesses Tongal Music
How Tongal Works
How Tongal works
For Creatives
Tongal Timeline
For Businesses
Get Started
For Music
Tongal FAQ
In the News
Tongal Forum
Get Started
Feedback
Tongal Timeline
Home
Tongal for Creatives
Tongal Blog
Gallery
Privacy Policy
PAGES T HAT RELI EVED PAI N T POI NT S
SAME DESIGN AND FEATURES ON COMPUTERS, TABLETS, AND MOBILE PHONES
Projects Tongal Twelve HOW MIGHT WE ELIMINATE REPETITIVE INFORMATION AND MAINTAIN THE CONSISTENCY OF THE WEBSITE?
Tutorials
HOW MIGHT WE PUBLISH MORE BLOG POSTS WITH LIMITED TEAM RESOURCES?
HOW MIGHT WE USE OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL TO ATTRACT CLIENT SEGMENTS?
What's New? What is Tongal? HOW MIGHT WE IDENTIFY THE MOST EFFECTIVE PAGES OF THE WEBSITE AND MAKE THEM EASILY ACCESSIBLE TO USERS?
Official Rules
PAGES ACCESSED BY CREAT I VES ON LY
EYEKA FILMMAKER
HOW MIGHT WE DRIVE TRAFFIC TO THE BLOG?
Misc
Winner Forms
Terms & Conditions
ACCESSED PAGES
RESPONSIVE
Selected Press Release
Press
Contact
Careers at Tongal
HOW MIGHT WE MAKE IT
Sponsors
In the News
Globe
DEVELOPMENT
Awarded (project)
Leaderboard
Blog
HOW MIGHT WE SPEAK DIFFERENT LANGUAGES OF CREATIVES AND BUSINESSES AND STAY CONSISTENT?
UX
Seasons
HOW MIGHT WE DELIVER IMMENSE AMOUNT OF INFORMATION SEAMLESSLY THROUGH AN INTUITIVE USER EXPERIENCE??
AESTHETICS
interviewees did not view the blog page, the press page, the awards page, the music page, the forum, and the FAQ
Open Video (project)
Community
Help
TONGAL EMPLOYEE
100%
HOW MIGHT WE EXPLOIT OUR CLIENTS’ SOCIAL MEDIA TO ATTRACT USERS AND PROMOTE TONGAL?
Analysis of Social Media Platforms of Video Crowdsourcing Companies One Month Activity: 24 January - 24 February 2015
Tongal Mofilm
Eyeka
100 400 Million Monthly active users
Facebook RESPONSI VE
18
R ESPO N SIVE
?
22%
Tweets
No Response
4,475 Followers
1770
34,638
Comment likes
Page Likes
25%
81 Tweets
7,138 LEAST FOLLOWERS
74
MO ST FOL LOW ER S
29%
Tweets
No Response
? 87
Comment Likes
Visits
119,228
Followers
L EA ST F O L LOW ER S
MO ST F O L LOW ER S
13
87
Comment Likes
Posts
Posts
70 Likes
1,152 Followers
Likes
100,000 increase in revenue for Threadless through Twitter
31 Followers
L EA ST F O L LOW ER S
MO ST F O L LOW ER S
290
Visits
Posts
SOCIAL MEDIA BENEFITS
20 Likes
406
STIMULATE INNOVATION
Followers
Page Likes
NOT RESPONSI VE
302
50
28
Page likes
22,412
2,728 Followers
HOW MIGHT WE EXPLOIT SNAPCHAT TO ATTRACT NEW CLIENTS AND CREATIVES? R ESPO N SIVE
200
No Response
Million Snapchat snaps per day
FOLLOW AUTHENTIC ENGAGEMENT N OT R ESPO N SIVE
N OT R ESPO N SIVE
HELP SOLVE PROBLEMS TWO WAY COMMUNICATION
? HOW MIGHT WE FURTHER ENGAGE THE COMMUNITY IN REPLYING TO TONGAL TWEETS/ FACEBOOK LIKES/ INSTAGRAM LIKES AND COMMENTS?
STRATEGIC DESIGN + MANAGEMENT | SPRING 2015 | 5200H
? HOW MIGHT WE EXPAND OUR SOCIAL NETWORK
AND TAP INTO OUR CLIENTS' CIRCLES OF INFLUENCE?
? HOW MIGHT WE LEVERAGE OUR COMMUNITIES'
SOCIAL MEDIA NETWORK TO DRIVE MORE WORK, MAKE PROFIT AND CREATE BRAND AWARENESS?
BUILD TRUST CO-SHAPE THE ORGANIZATION
As of April 5, 2015
JUNE MEMEI NICK SHOTA
CURRENT PRODUCT OFFERINGS DIGITAL VIDEO FOR BIG BRANDS
AFFINITY MAP
: Market positioning
DOCUMENTARY AND SHORT FLIM
TONGAL X
Multi Client Portfolio
LEGO P&G UNILEVER
CLIENTS/ VIDEO LENGTH
PRICE PER VIDEO
Rumi Spice Shipster Skills.com
60-100k TVC
25-30k
10-15k SOCIAL
DirectTV Sundance Lionsgate Woman in Film
100k
6k
DIGITAL
Short Term Client Relationship
All content
All content
Single Client Portfolio
4 Weeks IDEA
PROCESS/ TERM
1 IDEA 2
3
PITCH
4 Weeks
VIDEO
Long Term Client Relationship
PITCH
1 PITCH
5 Weeks
2 - 4 Weeks VIDEO
20 Weeks
SIZZLE
: Opportunities
VIDEO
HOW MIGHT WE CREATE LONG TERM RELATIONSHIP WITH MORE DIVERSE CLIENTS?
HOW MIGHT WE MIRROR TONGAL’S CURRENT EFFORTS TO ACHIEVE AN ECOSYSTEM? HOW MIGHT WE MOVE TONGAL IN THE DIRECTION THEY WANT TO GO WHILE MAINTAINING THE CURRENT BIZ MODEL?
BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT JOURNEY MAP
Identify an Opportunity
does it work? Who are COMMUNITY members? How RELIABLE is Tongal?
AUTongal
CMO of Chain Restaurants and Hotels
Arrange Initial Meeting
Seek for Contact Person
PE
HOW MIGHT WE OFFER POTENTIAL CLIENTS A TASTE OF THE POWER OF CROWDSOURCING AT TONGAL WHEN MAKING AN INITIAL CONTACT?
Follow-ups and Wait for Good News
Prepare Relevant Materials
Cold Emails RS
UA
O TI
Tongal X
Pitch Tongal as a Consultant at Company
Email Pitch
Interested in Tongal
BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
Multi Client Portfolio
I would like to know more about you. HOW
Tongal is not an agency so we DO NOT PROVIDE A PITCH. When we send a cold
email or pitch email, all we say is TRUST US!
Long Term Client Relationship
Short Term Client Relationship
N
How can I TRUST Tongal over other advertising
agencies like Ogilvy? How Can I assure the QUALITY
Single Client Long Term
Small- Medium Sponsored Documentary
of video would MEET my EXPECTATION?
Not Interested in Tongal
CEO of Brand Strategy and Marketing Consulting Firm
Single Client Portfolio
HOW MIGHT WE STANDARDIZE EXTERNAL MATERIALS AND MORE EFFECTIVELY ORGANIZE ARCHIEVES? HOW MIGHT WE CREATE AND IMPLEMENT A NEW FEEDBACK SYSTEM TO BRING RELIABILITY AND CONSISTENCY TO THE EARLY STAGES ?
Case Study: Rentity’s Pitch Process Innovation
Rentity recently used a publicly shared Slides presentation to spread the word about their work and collect feedback from investors, potential teammates and clients. They created a deck that outlines the problem, solution, business model and team and shared it publicly, with comments enabled.
MOBILE-BASED PLATFORM AND THE RISE OF SMEs
SMALL AND MEDIUM-SIZED ENTERPRISES
80 percent of Internet connections could originate from a mobile device by the year 2025.
OUR INITIAL IDEAS 1. Develop the pitch deck with the same process as Rentity within selected Tongal community members.
Economies of Scale are No Longer Entry Barriers The cost of starting and running a small or personal business will further decline.
10%
1%
2007
2012
EL
RB
2. Share it with potential client, mentioning "We have asked our Tongal community members how they think of your brand and how they want to build brand message through video contents. They will fill out the slide 5 (Ideation slide) with their ideas in 2 days. Please check the slide 2 days later. This is how we work to help develop your brand.'
w e l c o m e BA
business development
BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
SMEs (Small and medium-sized enterprises) and Global Giants will Form a Barbell Economy
L
EC
ONOMY
HOW MIGHT WE PROVIDE NEW BUSINESS MODEL TO CAPTURE SMALL/MEDIUM BUSINESSES?
2025
HOW MIGHT WE PROVIDE MOBILE-FIRST STRATEGY?
3. Community members who share ideas will be given a coupon or a gift. More importantly, community members will also have the satisfaction of cooperating with Tongal for new biz.
Video Advertisement Distribution will be more Automated and Moible-Based
4. Potential clients can feel how it works. They will feel like they are already involved in the whole process.
Case Study: Charity Water Automated Fundrasing
Video Programmatic Distribution 2014 2016 5% 25%
: NPO for developing campaign” to campaign. In
(of Total Digital Ad Spending)
purified water distribution to countries created “birthday let individuals create their own 2012, 6,292 birthday campaign
launched and $2.9 Million raised.
Programmatic Distribution By Mobile 2014 2016 44% 69% (of Programmatic Digital Ad Spending)
HOW MIGHT WE INTRODUCE AUTOMATED PROCESS FOR SMBS TO LAUNCH THEIR OWN PROJECTS?
HOW MIGHT WE MAKE AN ECOSYSTEM IN MOBILE SPACE THROUGH PARTNERSHIP WITH DISTRIBUTORS?
ROADMAP
CLIENT EITHER DOES NOT RESPOND OR RESPONDS “NO” EMAIL
ID CLIENT
START
WAIT
PITCH COLD EMAIL
WAIT FOR REPLY
WAIT FOR LEGAL
RFQ
1 TVC
READ THRU ALL IDEAS
CREATE BRIEF DRAFT CONTRACT
CREATE QUOTE
TONGAL POST
SEND PAYMENT
SELECT TOP IDEAS COMMUNITY POST
END
POST WINNING IDEAS & NOTES
SEND OUT TO COMMUNITY
1 IDEA
WAIT
RECEIVE REPLY
RECEIVE QUESTIONS
TONGAL POST
COMMUNITY POST
WEB POST
SEND OUT TO COMMUNITY
PROCESS STEP
END
Client Experience Innovation Feedback System
Feedback Implementation Long-term Relationship
DELAY FROM COMMUNITY CREATE DOCUMENT
COMMUNICATE REVISIONS
SEND VIDEOS
RECEIVE REQUEST
WEB POST
COMMUNITY SUBMISSIONS
B2B Marketing
Product/Service Diversification Small/Medium Companies
10 - 20 years later
New Biz Model
New Revenue Source
DECIDE WINNER
WAIT FOR REVISIONS EMAIL
READ THRU ALL IDEAS
ASK CLARIFYING COLLECT POST REPLY QUESTIONS ANSWERS
CREATES
Picch Process
DELAY FROM CLIENT
COMMUNITY SUBMISSIONS
WAIT FOR ANSWERS
START
Picch Deck
DECISION POST WINNING SELECT TOP IDEAS & NOTES PITCHES
COMMUNITY TONGAL POST COMMUNITY POST
VIDEO
START / END SEND PAYMENT
2 WEEKS
RECEIVE QUESTIONS
PITCH
4 Weeks
DECIDE WINNER
READ THRU ALL IDEAS
ASK CLARIFYING POST REPLY QUESTIONS
START
2
1 WEEK
LONG PROCESS
CONFIRM REVISIONS
SEND SUBMIT VIDEOS PAYMENT
END
3- 6 Months
1- 3 years
3- 5 years
COMMUNITY RE-SUBMISSIONS
4 WEEKS
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integrated marketing
Strengths ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪
It is cost effective to get a service done The service is executed quickly (within a few weeks) The quality of work is outstanding 80% of customers come back for future projects The mobile application is popular among the crowd
Weaknesses ▪ ▪ ▪
▪ ▪
Opportunities ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪
Growing through connections made with customers Re-working the website Incorporating the feedback loop and lessons learned Developing a strategy to attract inbound clients Retaining current customers and building loyalty Taking advantage of video archives by reusing Investing in Software to track marketing effectiveness and Equity
Lack of prioritization in key areas of focus Difficulty in navigating and interacting with the website Absence of HR affects the FTE in Integrated Marketing and different functions to be carried out Missing feedback system Scarcity of advertising that actually affect brand recognition
Threats ▪
▪ ▪ ▪
Competition with advertising companies that successfully use established the traditional marketing methods Rising competition from new start-ups in the field and cluttering of the competitive landscape Credibility is not always there because the company is relatively new on the market Size of company compared to established advertising agencies and conglomerates
HOW MIGHT WE… Differentiate ourselves from existing agencies and start-ups?
Further improve the userexperience of our Website? Implement a feedback tool and build loyalty?
Evaluate a prioritization plan of what should be done?
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Enhance brand recognition and make it an integral part of our marketing strategy?
What will crowdsourcing look like in 2025?
What will crowdsourcing look like in 2025?
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integrated marketing What will crowdsourcing look like in 2025?
NEXT STEPS
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people development
PEOPLE DEVELOPMENT INITIAL ORG CHART
KAREN, NICK James DeJulio Mark Burrell CFO DOCUMENTARYPresident & CPO (CA) (NYC)
TONGAL X
BIG BRANDS
AND SHOUT FLIM
NYC
Rob Salvatore CEO Media & Production (CA)
CHICAGO
Joan Decolibus Regional Director
Parrish Snyder EVP of Global Accounts
CA
Jack Kloster EVP - Business Development
Erin Fredman SVP, Creative Strategy
Jamie Newton Head of Central Accounts
Jason Provisor Head of Marketing Strategy
Scott Krenitski Global Accounts
Daniel Besquin Global Accounts
Steven Han Head of Technology
Katie Nulty Account Director
Rob Cancilla Account Director
Sri Pangulur Regional Director
Lucy Wells Producer
Brett Leeson Head of Channel Partnerships
Ingrid Vining Head of Community
Romi Jordan Marketing Lead
Caleb Light-Wills SVP, Head of Production
Sarah Donze Lin Cong Producer
Kate Doll Account Director
Emily Dreibelbis Account Executive
Matthew Blos Corporate Development Chris Gwiazda CFO
PEOPLE DEVELOPMENT JOURNEY MAP Phase one 0-6 MONTHS
The main objective of People Development Department is to
maximize the return on investment from the organization's human capital and minimize financial risk.
Phase two 6-24 MONTHS
The importance of HR @ Tongal is directly correlated to HOW MUCH TONGAL VALUES THE WORK TONGAL PRODUCES?
Administration
Rules & culture
Relationship management
Staff assessment job design performance remuneration
Intra-company communication
Employment contracts conditions & disputes
Personal support
THE POTENTIAL ONE
Recruitment
Strategic role in the business
Krista Lang People Development @ Tongal Freelance Writer, Blogger, Film Editor
28
Termination of employment
Administrative Associate @ Google
BA, Theater, General Studies University of California, Los Angeles Jogging, Yoga, Road trips, New Tech Reading, Blog, Tweeter HRIS, Human Relations, Operations Training, Time Management
Provided support for eight engineering managers/directors and their respective teams (over 100 people) Managed the manager/director calendars and team calendars Arranged travel for teams and filed expense reports Coordinated large onsite events and video-conferencing
Production Coordinator @ Pixar Animation Studios Managed producer and team calendars Assisted with various department needs from Editorial to Art
Future - How might we...?
What if one employee is not happy with working in the team, who he/she could make the complains to ? What if the emplyee suddenly sufers medical accident or want to quit the job for personal reason without ahead notice and influnce the busniess? What if the employee is over stressed on the multi-task workload?
De-motivated Workforce
Damage to Company Image
How might we let the CEO do what he really good at, and free him from struggling with the employee paper works ?
- Flexibility - Employee sheet is available - Employee feels part of the team
- Lack of accountability of manager and Employees to archive clear and Measurable performance level - Poor perfomance on current emplyee managemenent
S W Low Productivity
High Employee Turnover
Industrial relations
Legal compliance Training
Current - What if...?
Loss of Revenue/Business
Risk management
O T
- Advanced technologies and tools to increase emloyee’s working effieciency - Promote Tongal as a great place to work for, increase the community - Support the mission individually and together from each department
How might we avoid weak employees relationship and connections? How might we offer rewards to the right employee and ensure they are gaining what they deserves? How might we make the emailing communication system more efficient for every employee? How might we understand the employee’s need, and improve the feedback (Internal issues) system? How might we encourage employees to express their POV? How might we improve the regluations and office rules to make employees feel more secured?
- Budget constaints - Discover the right person for HR position
Low External Customer Satisfaction
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brand identity RESULTS WORKSHOP BRAND IDENTITY
Give talent a voice and democratize the creative process:
WHY DOES TONGAL EXIST?
To give people a voice
LOVE | Videos and want to lead the industry
To enable people to learn new skills
Because they love films
To develop better ideas from a diverse group
To grow the love of making videos
To enable cultural diversity in video-making
To create a new category in the video industry
Provide a voice to those without access
To create a powerful video crowdsourcing community
To democratize the creative process Creative access to anyone
To be leaders of the video world
To allow anyone to be creative
To change the way videos are made
To provide opportunities
To disrupt the video industry
Make creative dreams come true
To make video making easy
Equal access to creative work
Spread greatness of video
To lower barriers to entry to enter video industry
To lead the future of filmmaking Tell stories Change structure of the ad industry:
To lower/ remove entry barriers to film making video industry To create a more fair creative economy
To change the industry
Talent needs opportunities
To produce videos by consumers for consumers
Creatives want more freedom
To be unique in what they offer Make video more playful and inspiring Change structure of the ad industry To allow consumers to decide how brands communicate with them
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Provide democracy to freelancers all over the world Change the way creative work is done
Create a community: To generate a diverse and creative community To create a community that makes video fast To create a powerful creative community Outlet for creative ideas needed People want creative validation To connect talent with businesses Facilitate communication between directors, ideators and clients To help companies be closer to their consumers: generate brand love
To make it easier and cheaper for brands to generate content To provide video at a lower cost To create ads for companies at low cost To help brands make videos at a low cost Brands don’t like agency model Brands need content Limited attention spans Budgets are shrinking Brands want excitement/ something fresh To make money
To connect people and brands easily
Because crowdsourcing is cool
To bring consumers closer to brands
To be unique
To cut out the middle man
To succeed
To give media designers access to brands To bring talent to brands
To teach people a different process of video making
To connect clients and freelancers
Talent can't break in
Be a leader in the freelance economy
Platforms divide audiences
To unite cultures / people globally to produce great content
Opportunity in the marketplace
To provide tools to the community to make videos for clients
To bring new ways of working
Brands want to get out of their own way To provide a platform
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brand identity WHERE DO YOU THINK TONGAL WANTS TO BE IN 2025? Tongal = Video The go-go for video content
Innovation platform to XXX Impactful innovation – using video to help cure/ solve something major True innovation platform resource: products, ideas, positions
The google of video content
Leader of crowdsourcing platform
Video = Tongal
Trusted collaboration source
The next Youtube for crowdsourcing videos
Operational:
A nation specialized in any type of videos
More companies in US
Tongal land = DisneyLand (online and physical video) Channel to inspire people through video Top video sharing platform Biggest archive of videos (homemade) Place for gen Y to go to for creative video work Global Brand: Globally recognized brand Famous Truly global Internationally developed Well-known brand Well- known from any perspective Reliable consistent work for global brands and global talent Will attract BIG companies Top 10 company to work in
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Team will be bigger (more employees) New partnerships (studios, ad agencies) In – house production Completely hands off process Integrity – never forget where we came from Average community revenue + $75K for top 20% $ 1 B annual community payout Film Production Film production Hollywood of East Coast Crowdsource films Truly disrupted Hollywood – not exclusive anymoreFilm maker Democratic marketplace for short film creatives Crowdsourcing movies
It’s a Creative Outlet
Education: The New “Film School”
Proud cause: we give a creative outlet to people
Recipe / Resource to make videos
Creative outlet
Educate people about filmmaking
Creativity pool
Provide studio of film making for young people (physical) Platform to empower people through video (educational) Internet: The new network – contributing on every channel and every device
Community Creative people with passion Creative industry Large amount of people to work together Like minded community Proud because they are open to crowdsourcing many things
Internet broadcast Emotionally: Selfless: all about the user Adaptive to future generations needs Technically: High tech 2025: Seamless integrated aware Easy to use and to update.
WHAT MAKES YOU FEEL PROUD OF TONGAL? Brand Exercise:
Innovation
Family
Challenge
Adaptative
Soul
Story Telling
Quality
Social
Smart / Esthetic
Lifestyle
Durable
Pioneer
Creativity community
A platform that is collaborative Equal opportunity to public Led by an Inspiring Team Smart people Supportive Team that feels inspired by helping people They care about their community To Provide Opportunities for People to Grow Give people job and help them grow creatively Watching people evolve and improve Opportunities to people Proud cause: we help creatives make a living Give jobs to many people Proud because they pay well Seeing work posted by community outperform “professional” Seeing community take the role of members in community PARSONS THE NEW SCHOOL OF DESIGN
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brand identity By Democratization of their ideas
And Cool Way:
People recognizing undiscovered talent
They are cool
Proud because we democratize access to clients
Cool and young brand
To showcase that a good idea can come from anywhere
Logo is kind of cool Have collaborative project with Parsons SDM
Clear process: ideation –-> production
They partnered with Parsons
All ideas are welcome
We have a collection of soft drinks in office
Seem skeptics turned to believers
They have a full fridge of soda
And Satisfy Big Clients: They have awesome big clients Portfolio with big brands Satisfied clients In a Unique:
VALUES Our values serve as a compass for our actions and describe how we behave in the world Recognizing Quality
They are unique
Rewarding Creativity
Innovative / Original
Diversifying Opportunity
That’s MY work
Co-creating Passion
They are up to date with tech trends
Expressing Purpose
Variety Global Sustained Brave guts Proud cause grow fast Effort to grow Growing with Tongal together Its young people because its NOT google. I got long way to go!
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bibliography
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bibliography Csikszentmihalyi, Mihali, Creativity: the psychology of discovery and invention, (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2013) “Cyberspace 2025: Today’s Decisions, Tomorrow’s Terrain,” Microsoft, accessed 7 May 2015, http://www.microsoft.com/security/ cybersecurity/cyberspace2025/#chapter-1 Dooney, John, Smith, Noel, “SHRM human capital benchmarking study: 2005 executive summary”, 2005, accessed April 20, 2015, https:// www.shrm.org/Research/SurveyFindings/Articles/ Documents/BenchmarkingStudy_ExecSummary_ final_online.pdf DiGrande Sebastian, Knox, David, Manfred, Kate, Rose, John, “Unlocking the DigitalMarketing Potential of Small Businesses,” Boston Consulting Group, March 19, 2013. Graham, Shawn, “The Entrepreneurial Renaissance and the Rise of the Independant Workforce,” Fast Company, July 13, 2013, http:// www.fastcompany.com/1766679/entrepreneurialrenaissance-and-rise-independent-workforce Hamburger, Ellis, “An Oculus Rift In Every Home”, The Verge, accessed on 7 May 2015, http://www.theverge.com/a/virtual-reality/qa_fb. Howe, Jeff, “The rise of crowdsourcing”, Wired, June, 2006, http://archive.wired.com/wired/ archive/14.06/crowds.html “Intuit 2020 Report,” Intuit, accessed May 7, 2015, http://http-download.intuit.com/http.intuit/ CMO/intuit/futureofsmallbusiness/intuit_2020_ report.pdf
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Kaufman, Micha, “Five Reasons Half of You Will Be Freelancers in 2020”, Forbes, February 28, 2014. http://www.forbes.com/sites/ michakaufman/2014/02/28/five-reasons-half-ofyou-will-be-freelancers-in-2020/. Kumar, Vijay, 101 Design Methods: a structured approach for driving innovation in your organization, (New Yersey: John Wiley & Sons, 2013) Lidwell, William, Holden, Kritina and Butler, Jill, Universal Principles of Design, (Beverly, MA: Rockport Publishers, 2010) Mahapatro, Bibhuti, Human resource management, (New Delhi: New Age Publishers, 2010) Martin, Bella and Hanington, Bruce, Universal Methods of Design, (Beverly, MA: Rockport Publishers, 2012) Mootee, Idris, Design Thinking for Strategic Innovation, (New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons Inc, 2013) Nussbaum, Bruce, Creative intelligence, (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2013) “Online Video and The Media Industry: Quarterly Report Q1 2010”, Brightcove and TubeMogul, accessed 7 May 2015, http://files. brightcove.com/brightcove-whitepaper-onlinevideo-and-media-industry.pdf. Pentland, Alex, “The New Science of Building Great Teams”, Harvard Business Review, April, 2012, https://hbr.org/2012/04/the-new-scienceof-building-great-teams
Seth, Amit, Morgan, Dave, “The Data Driven Future of Video Advertising,” Nielsen, accessed 7 May 2015, http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/ insights/reports/2014/the-data-driven-future-ofvideo-advertising.html Stickdorn, Marc and Schneider, Jakob, This is service design thinking, (New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, 2011) “There Is An App For That”, The Economist, January 3, 2015. http://www.economist.com/ news/briefing/21637355-freelance-workersavailable-moments-notice-will-reshape-naturecompanies-and. Tongal, accessed 7 May 2015, www.tongal.com Trimble, Chris, “Why Online Video is the Future of Content Marketing,” The Guardian, July 2, 2014,, http://www.theguardian.com/smallbusiness-network/2014/jan/14/video-contentmarketing-media-online. Wells, David, “10 Online Marketing Trends and Predictions for 2015,” Inbound Now, http://www. inboundnow.com/10-online-marketing-trendspredictions-2015/. Willig, Carla, Qualitative Research in Psychology, (New York: McGraw Hill, 2008) Yeung, Arthur, Berman, Bob, “Adding value through human resources: Reorienting human resource measurement to drive business performance”, Human Resource Management (2005): 36, 321, 335. ULM Classroom Management, accessed 7 May 2015, https://ulmclassroommanagement. wikispaces.com/William+Glasser
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biographies Professor Alexander, Rhea Professor Rhea Alexander is a Parsons alumni and social entrepreneur with interdisciplinary expertise pioneering 3BL along the value chain while manufacturing and designing international home products. Her work, acknowledged in press for balancing design with social and environmental perspectives, was recognized with industry awards, and her collections were developed for top-tier retail companies such as Lane Crawford, Umbra, Neiman-Marcus, and Banana Republic. She worked as an international development consultant for SMEs in the private sector and on a variety of high-profile architecture and product design projects in New York and Milan, focusing her design and management strategies on social innovation, empowerment, and community development. Teaching the courses Integrative Studio and Managing Creative Teams at Parsons, she continues her investigation and application of design thinking to successfully address infrastructure, socio-economic and environmental impacts, and resilience.
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biographies MS SDM Students
Figueira, Sofia
PGDM 5200 Integrative Studio
Sofia recently moved from Brazil to New York to complete a master’s in Strategic Design and Management at The New School. She holds a dual B.Sc. in industrial design and graphic design from the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-RJ). Since graduating, she has worked as an innovation consultant focussing on design thinking and strategy. Her interests lie in design research and ethnography as she believes that empathy is vital to solving the challenges in the innovation proccess.
Aizawa, Shota Shota Aizawa is a business professional with years of experience in managing consultancy at Boston Consulting Group. He was a core member of the initiative that launched the energy and public sector practice area at BCG Tokyo. Shota aims to become a business designer by merging design thinking into the business planning process in New York.
Aujla, Jasmin Prior to enrolling in the master’s program at Parsons, Jasmin held a marketing and client service position at a corporate communications design agency, where she facilitated the launch of several sustainability reports for big brands like GE, Merck, and PepsiCo. By upholding relationships with corporate clients and collaborating with the in-house design team, Jasmin enjoyed generating and promoting meaningful and innovative CSR strategies, which she completed with success.
Kang, Joonsoo Prior to making his big move to New York City, Joonsoo was a PR and creative design specialist at Burson-Marsteller, a global public relations and communications firm, working there from 2011 to 2014. He handled various corporate communication activities like PR, digital marketing strategy and design for various multinational corporations including the Ford Motor Company, FedEx, HP, LG and the Walt Disney Company.
Karageuzian, Roupen As a senior consultant of the consumer & retail practice in Strategy& (formerly Booz & Co.), Roupen has contributed to many projects across a diverse track of clients, including both multinational and regional conglomerates. Learning the Parsons design thinking method, he aspires to expand his family business, a prominent shirt manufacturing and wholesaling enterprise in the Middle East.
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Morozowich, Nicholas Nick is a technology innovation professional with a demonstrated understanding of the endless opportunities for the future of radical change. Having worked as program manager in several companies, Nick interacted with diverse teams on four continents across ten countries. Nick has a propensity for always incorporating designcentered systems thinking, project management for the continuous improvement of systems, products, and services.
Mecattaf, Maria Jessica After obtaining a bachelor’s degree in business management in Montreal, Maria then worked in venture capital. She moved to New York and decided to pursue her master’s degree in strategic design and management at Parsons as she believes that design thinking is going to shape the future of business.
Pedraza, Natalia With a strong background in economics and business and work experience as a design entrepreneur, a strategy consultant and a leather industry leader, Natalia believes in the staggering opportunities that lie at the intersection of design with management. Her experience has given her the managerial skills necessary to analyze and design new business models and currently adopts a design practitioner’s hat to strengthen her skill set.
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biographies Pinto, Paula
Zhang, Jing
Paula is a strategic thinker who aims to expand her skills by solving challenges using design methods and creating meaningful experiences. Before moving to New York last year, Paula spent four years working in the advertising industry in Brazil, where she was born. Working collaboratively with planners and designers allowed her to develop a strategic approach on how to analyze brands from various perspectives, understand their core values, and translate them in a way that fully engages the end consumer.
Jing earned her bachelor degree in graphic design and business from the University of Oklahoma, having both design and business background gives her a different perspective in strategic thinking. She is good at giving creative ideas and that gives her better understanding in branding. By applying design thinking into branding, she always knowing explore surprises for others.
Trongkamolthum, Issaree Issaree is a graduate architect from Thailand who has been working in several design fields such as graphic design, event design and marketing. She seeks to make change in human behavior by providing people enhanced options for better and healthier lifestyles through design strategy.
Wang, Jianan Jianan holds a bachelor’s degree in Industrial design and technology from Brunel University, London. As an industrial designer, problem solver and innovation strategist, she is passionate about challenging the usuals and changing the little things that make a big difference.
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Zok, Limassol Experimenting with design thinking and sustainable business models, Limassol aspires to impact human behavior through technology. With a strong background in graphic design and a Red Dot Award for communication design, she currently writes about design thinking on her website and works at the Entrepreneurial Lab at Parsons.
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