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Work Experience Week 2 Day 1

Monday 8th of July was the first day of my second week at Experian.

In the morning, I had a meeting with Jade Gamlin all about an introduction to content and social. She told me a bit about her role in the company, that she works with Experian 3 days a week and is a contractor. Essentially, she runs Experian’s social media for example, Facebook and Instagram. She posts on these sites in order to bring customers in. She also often find social influencers with high followings for paid advertisement. This is when the company pay people to mention and feature their company and products in order to increase brand awareness and have a higher drive to their website and social media accounts. These ads can be mentions on stories so that people can directly swipe up to be taken directly to the website, or full on posts where the influencer can talk a bit more about why they enjoy the brand or product. This can be very expensive though since for one of the ads, for every like or view that the post got, it cost Experian 12p and that post gained a total of 38,000 likes meaning it was very expensive for Experian.

We then went to 10 Group, an agency that works with Experian in Oxford Circus where we had an incredible lunch that they provided for us. They talked about how they were formed and what they are all about. They create content and freely give it to news channels and places like that, which means they don’t have to pay for an advertisement slot and it is featured freely.

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Work Experience Day 5

05.07.19

Friday 5th of July was the final day of my first week of work experience at Experian and today I was going to be watching the user testing which was very exciting.

In the morning, I had a talk with Tony Ward all about user testing and had some preparation for the sessions later on. Part of the aim of these sessions is to reduce the number of people using phone calls to ask Experian for help. Instead, they are trying to encourage emails, chat groups and asking the experts about it. He explained how the session would work; one person is the moderator for the session (in this case it would be Tony) who is in the room with the user and starts the questions and conversation while the rest of us watch the live broadcast in a nearby meeting room.

The intention of the study is to understand the user’s motivation, trigger or needs for engaging with customer support, evaluate current help and support experience on Experian.com and finally, to get initial feedback on concepts for customer support redesign.

The first user testing was in the morning and it started out with us finding out a bit about the man and his financial situation. The man was quite knowledgeable about finance and credit scores so he had a pretty clear idea about what he was being asked. He used to use Experian but he swapped to clearscore because he found it more reassuring and because he finds it hard to log into Experian and check his score. He said that he previously tried to reset his password but it didn’t work and he also tried the call center but that didn’t help either so he gave up on it. He was shown the current help and support page which he liked overall, particularly the top FAQ’s which he found to be rather helpful. He liked the format, the warmer images, the ‘ask the experts’, the ‘people also viewed’ and he really liked the ‘need more help?’ section where you could select from; ‘via chats’, ‘ask the community’ or ‘raise a ticket’. He was then shown a new prototype of the website for the help and support section which he felt was quite corporate and could be warmer with more imagery and softer colors. Overall, he finds Experian very trusting, an expert in the field and always the go to option.

The second user testing in the afternoon was with a lady in NE London who has a slight fear or lack in confidence towards money and finance. Her financial goals are to improve her savings and decrease her mortgage. Previously if she has ever needed any help she would go to Experian, mainly the app as she liked the ability and ease to just message them or call for help. Looking at the website currently, she felt that the top FAQ: “how do I cancel a paid subscription?”, paints a bad image of the company and what they have to offer. She also felt that there was a lot of content present which was a bit too much for a beginner like her to digest as well as wanting a bit more education on money matters for example: what is a credit score? and why do we need one? She found the page rather overwhelming and wishes for the page to not contain as much content. She wants simpler questions for a deeper understanding. She also liked the “ask the experts section” similarly to the previous user in the morning. Then she was shown the new website prototype her thoughts were; it was cleaner, she liked the buttons better, she likes the how can I help? section better, it’s less content heavy, it feels more personal with the direct pro nouns of ‘you’ and she feels overall it’s much more accessible.

Overall, both users seemed to enjoy the newer prototype of the help and customer support section much better than the current one, with some slight additions and alterations that could be made.

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Work Experience Day 4

04.07.19

Thursday 4th of July was the fourth day of my work experience. In the morning I had a talk with Cecil Campbell all about an introduction to design within Experian. 

He discussed with me all the details for next Tuesday where we will be filming and editing a small video about the ECS employees at Experian explaining and answering questions about marketing, which will be targeted at graduates and millennials. He told me that he wanted it to be styled similar to Vogue’s 73 questions with celebrities, which has this quite quick, energized and spontaneity about it and he wanted this to be reflected in a similar way within the video for Experian. In order to have this natural feeling to the answers and to not feel too scripted, the people taking part will not be told the questions in advance and therefore cannot prepare any structured answers. We will have a sheet prepared with all the questions we are going to ask and I need to ask them with lots of  energy in order to try and have the same energy reciprocated back to the camera. I’m will also be allowed to film the interviews if I would like which should be an exciting opportunity. He then showed me some of the editing software that I would be using to edit the video and it was certainly a step up from imovie and other ios  editing apps i had used before. However, much to my relief, I was reassured as he said he would teach me how to use it on Tuesday and that I had nothing to worry about which was good.

Then we traveled back to London Bridge to the Shard for a presentation by Jellyfish and Google called “A view on creative: inspired by data” in the afternoon. People from lots of different companies attended as well and we all gathered in a large room for the presentation.  There were many different talks that occurred from a variety of speakers but there were a few that stood out to me in particular.  

One of the talks that I enjoyed was called “what does success look like?” and it was presented by Abi Howson, the head of video at Jellyfish. First she showed us a short video about Jellyfish’s past success which was a nice appreciation of their achievements for everyone to acknowledge. She then went through the different stages of advertisement success. The first one is brand awareness aims. This is used mainly by top brands for example, coca cola. This is all about increasing their own brand awareness to consumers, extend their reach and be front of mind. The second one is consideration, which is mainly for brands or companies that are selling products in general and it’s all about people considering to by their products. The final stage is action and an example is Netflix which is when people are consciously enjoying the advert and then go to sign up or buy whatever it is that they are advertising. She also talked about the three divisions of a successful campaign which are; having a strong creative concept, the culture of learning and creative use of ad formats. I really enjoyed this talk because the discussion of successful advertisement, I felt like I could really relate to as I have experienced those different stages myself when watching ads before.

Another talk that I really enjoyed was called “Creativity for all” and was presented by Jordan Berkowitz who is the creative business partner for Google. The first thing he talked about was the three enemies to creativity. 

The first is experience. He explained how having experience can have a good thing but creatively it can hinder and hold back your abilities. This is because in life as you become more experienced you start to overthink things and our minds develop and change due to what we are taught and the people all around us to become less creative and more rational for more non creative jobs in the future. This is why children are so creative, it’s because their minds are not developed so they have no limits to their imagination or what they can or can’t do.

 The second enemy of creativity is time. He said that when we say “I don’t have time to do this” it’s not true. We all have time for things we just don’t manage it well. He spoke of a method that he found quite useful to force out that creativity whilst also conserving time called crazy 8′s. How this works is you fold a piece of paper in half, 3 times so that it creates 8 different squares on the page when you unfold it. You then have 8 minutes to create 8 possible new ideas for whatever product or concept you are brainstorming about, for example a new phone. I like this advice because it is a very good way for creative expansion. 

The final enemy to creativity is specialism. Specialists say that you are not special, no one is special but everyone can be far more capable than they realize. This is because everyone thinks that they aren’t capable of doing stuff that sounds out of their comfort zone or expertise. He demonstrated this by asking the audience “who thinks that they could be the new siri?” and almost no one put their hands up. He selected someone from the audience and stood back to back with them and they both read out a conversation from a script that could potentially happen between a person and a voice activated help device. It was simple and proved that anyone could do it and it’s just their minds holding them back and telling them that they aren’t capable but in reality, we all are.

Another presentation I also enjoyed was called “when data attacks” presented by Max Vinall, creative director at Jellyfish and Richard West, head of creative at Jellyfish. They said that creativity and data is all a combination of; words and pictures, human and technology, art and science and emotional and rational thinking. They talked about trusting your creative intuition despite what the data might tell you because from an emotional and creative perspective, data is not always right. They talked about the case study of Nike partnering up with Colin Kaepernick despite everything that happened with him in NFL. Instead, Nike trusted their own creative intuition and ended up creating a very successful advertising campaign and made a lot of profit from it. I found this presentation very interesting because it was all about trusting yourself and your gut feeling because often it can pay off for you in the future. 

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Work Experience Day 3

03.07.19

Wednesday 3rd of July was day 3 of my work experience and it was an extremely exciting day for me since i would be travelling to Google, the youtube studios and Jellyfish at the Shard.

The day started out with travelling to the Google office in Kings Cross. When you entered, there was a large reception area in the massive atrium with views up to the skylight in the roof and the many crossing staircases to all the different floors. As you looked up the building, all of the internal windows to different floors and offices had images of emojis or cartoon characters and words or phrases stuck on them entirely made out of post it notes which i thought was a nice creative flare to the building. We met Adam who works in the Tottenham Court road offices, and he showed us around some of the space. We went up to the third floor and managed to see one of the cafes and even an in office gym with a running track going around it as well as signs to a doctor and massages. I thought these additional features to the office were a great idea since it seems to boot people’s productivity and mindset since they have the opportunities to relax and exercise within their high intensity jobs. We went up to floor 9 and ¾ where all the meeting rooms were named after different characters and features of Harry Potter which I found very amusing and liked a lot.

We finally went up to the top floor, via the final staircase which had a very long drop down, to the final cafe and balcony area. All the food and drinks at google are free which I thought was a wonderful feature to have and certainly appeals to the employees. The cafe had lots of windows all the way around which let in a lot of light to the area and lots of people were having small meetings at the tables there which created a nice chatty and warm atmosphere in the room. At the end of the room there was a door which led onto a large balcony with a view of Kings Cross St. Pancras station as well as a wonderful view of the skyline of the city. It was a very clear day with blue skies which made it a great view to see London. We got some drinks and a few snacks and I talked to Adam about apprenticeships at google. He works in the business side of google and the apprenticeships that that side offers were mainly for one year with some cases of people being offered a full time role, although it was fairly uncommon. They have thousands of applicants each year but only choose a select couple of them which means that being offered the apprenticeship is a great privilege. We then had the opportunity to talk to a girl who was currently in an apprenticeship at google herself. She was working in the other more tech side of google rather than business which meant she had a longer, two year apprenticeship which you could extend to three in order to gain a full bachelors degree which she is currently completing. It was very interesting being able to talk to someone in this situation because I was able to ask her questions all about how she managed to gain the apprenticeship at google, what subjects she studied and what she plans on doing in the future.

After we finished at google, we traveled down to the youtube studios which were situated right underneath the google offices. We met Harriet who took us around the upper entrance level where there was also a small cafe as well as a seating area in front of a small stage. She informed us that they often have a large variety of events held there, sometimes large meetings, product launches and even fan events like small concerts or meet and greets. She then took us downstairs where we saw their main studios which can be used freely for filming for people with youtube channels over 10K subscribers. She said that they let those people use the studios because it helps newer up and coming youtubers grow their channel and subscriber count. The studios in the past have also been used for music videos, livestreams and some other events. We then got to see the green room for people to prepare in, the editing booth, sound booth and production room. These rooms can be used freely by people with more than 100K subscribers. She showed us that you can even use the production booth to livestream certain events from multiple cameras and still making it top quality. She told us a bit about her experience at working there and how much her job can differ from day to day and also that over time she’s met many famous stars from youtube. I thoroughly enjoyed my experience at both google and youtube as each place was so unique and I feel like I learnt so much more about both companies, despite the fact that I always use google and am a big youtube fan.

Then in the afternoon, we traveled to London Bridge to visit Jellyfish at the Shard. Initially I had no clue what Jellyfish were or what they did as a company so I truly went into it without any previous knowledge. Jellyfish is a digital marketing agency that partners other companies in order to help them. First, I had a tour around Jellyfish’s two floors of the shard and saw all their office space. The had a very open layout around the building with fantastic views over the city and you could see many iconic London landmarks from there. I sat down in one of the booths with a group of people from the company where they gave me an introduction to digital marketing. As I didn’t know much about what it was beforehand, I was completely new to everything they were talking about. They told me about how important their relationships are with their clients and how they are a partner, evoking a sense of trust and long lasting instead of being just another agency. They also talked to me a lot about paid advertisement and I had a much more in depth talk about google and their paid advertisement, now gaining a much deeper and clearer understanding about it all. It is an area which really interested me as it’s something that is part of my daily life since I use google all the time but never knew anything about it and how one click can pay google a range of 1p to £25. I also heard a range of stories about how everyone found themselves with a job at Jellyfish since its a fairly new company being around only 20 years. It was really interesting since everyone had such different journeys, ranging from starting out in catering, playing on the women’s arsenal team and even discovering Jellyfish because of a cool camper van. One of the things that I learned about Jellyfish and it’s something that I really respect and appreciate about them is how much they do behind the scenes for everyone else. Because they are a partnering company and help their clients, their clients are the ones that typically receive the success from it and Jellyfish are quite unknown for what they do by most of the public. However, having an insight into their company and what they achieve makes me respect them even more than before.

I thoroughly enjoyed today, visiting the google offices and youtube is something I’ve always wanted to do and I feel like I got to see so much there. I really loved visiting Jellyfish because all the people I met were extremely lovely and welcoming and the office space was very inviting and homely. I also learned so much about digital marketing from them in such a short space of time and I can’t wait to go back there tomorrow.

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Work Experience Day 2

02.07.19

Tuesday 2nd of July was my second day at Experian and I was extremely excited for what the day held in store.

 In the morning, I had a meeting with James Carter which was all about an introduction to Brand; Global brand strategy and visual identity. This was an extremely insightful start to the day as he asked me what I initially thought of when I was told the word ‘brand’. Immediately I thought of logos and the visual representation of any brands which he informed me was correct but there was also much more to it than that. He explained the idea of having a visual image of your brand and how you are perceived by the rest of the world is extremely important for your reputation, since if people think poorly of you, then no one will use your product. 

He talked to me about the three stages of your advertisement and campaigns which were; why, how and what, in that particular order. He demonstrated this in an example of apple and how the most effective companies compel you to buy their products over anyone else’s because of the ‘why’ factor. Pretty much every company focuses on what they do and how they do it which appeals to the rational and logical side of the brain however, the most successful companies do all that but also add why they do it, and start with that. These companies explain why they do what they do and why they stand for it, which appeals more to people’s emotional side of the brain which is also more long lasting and effective. This allows those companies to expand their market and create more products, with people inclined to buy them. This insight to the neurological reasons and strategies that are taken into account when creating new advertisement and campaigns was extremely interesting as it’s something that most people don’t take into account or even notice when creating adverts. 

I was also introduced to the branding of Experian and how important it is to create an enticing and consistent logo that can be recognised world wide. In the past, the colours used in the old logo were blue, red and white which were very plain and dull colours which influences people’s perception of the company more than you would think. These colours created an image of coldness and distance between the company and the customers, giving the idea that it was just another corporate company and it didn’t stand out very well in the large range of logos that we all know and recognise. However, Experian changed their logo in the recent years to something much better and inviting to their customers giving it a more fun and personal appeal. The new colour scheme is made up of blues, purples and pinks in different shades which definitely makes the logo feel more warm to an audience. The previous image art by the side of the logo changed from a collection of blue squares to a few coloured ‘squircles’ and even the text font had changed from a standard default font to a new one with slightly more rounded edges which again added to that more personal touch with the customers. This talk was a very insightful learning experience for me as I feel that I learned a lot more about what goes into branding, which was much more than I initially thought. 

I then had the opportunity to travel to Oxford Circus and visit the BBH offices which are a company that do some of the advertising for Experian. First I had a tour around the offices which were very cool. I really loved the open glass roof in the centre of the building and how the skylight could just light up the whole area, right down to the centre of the bottom floor through the open atrium. I then talked to people from each of the four departments at BBH, strategy, accounts and finance, creative and production. Each area was equally interesting to learn about since each played a very different yet still crucial role in producing good advertisement for their clients. I was particularly intrigued by the creative and production sides of things, the areas where they mind mapped their many concepts for the advert and then the production team who actually create the final product and produce it. They showed me some of the adverts that they had created previously for brands such as Audi, samsung and of course Experian. I also got a small insight into a new upcoming advert for samsung and i got to see the very first unpolished version of the ad and in comparison, the latest and almost final one in order to show how much editing and finesse really goes into producing adverts with top quality in the production team. 

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Work Experience Day 1

01.07.19

Monday 1st of July was the first day of my work experience at Experian. The day started out in Victoria as I traveled to Cardinal place. When I arrived, I went to the ECS department (Experian consumer services) and met some of the team and also received my desk that I would be stationed at for the two weeks. I had a tour around the ECS offices, with Reanne pointing out all the different departments that there were. I got to also tour around the rest of the Experian floor, with small insights to the different areas such as finance, data protection and the different meeting rooms, all named after different areas of London such as Mayfair, Richmond and Pimlico.

Then, back at the desks, I was given an informative talk through of the different jobs of ECS and how they help people and the company. I learnt all about the products that Experian have launched to help people with their credit scores and data protection. I was shown the newest Experian website and it’s free credit score check for people to use and also the different packages that Experian offers for customers to upgrade to. I learnt about how different rival companies pay search engines such as google in order to have their website listed at the top of the results for people’s searches, so that they are more likely to click them. I then went through my schedule for the next two weeks with her, outlining all the timings for everything, where we would be going and what I would be doing. I also got to see what the Experian website used to look like years back, and how it has changed to look like it does now and how that helps gain more customers for the company.

Around midday, I was invited to join the marketing huddle hosted by Louise which was an interesting and eye-opening experience. All the people from her team gathered in a large space in the corner of the office and talked through a presentation of the data collected from the last week and last months and comparisons to previous years. This data was mainly to do with whether or not the company had reached their target for each sector for the week. These sectors were things like number of people who signed up for the free credit score check and the percentage of people who continued with it in a free trial for the main package. All the different areas talked about everything they had achieved in that week and their plans for the next one allowing everyone to get a fuller understanding on how the department of the company was doing overall. At the end, an inspiring talk was given about Usain Bolt, about how much he overcame and also what he went on to do in his career after running and how he should inspire the rest of us.

After lunch I had a talk with Gabriella Neudecker all about Experian’s advertising and how it helps the company improve. She showed me some of the rival companies to Experian which are also credit score companies and how there is a constant persistence to appear right at the top of the search engine through consistent bidding so that they are the top result of a search and how it can pay google every time someone clicks on a page that they are advertising. She showed me some of the recent TV adverts about your ‘data self’ and also some of their other banner format adverts for websites, youtube and other forms of social media. She also introduced me to the comparison of similar companies in different surveys which informed us that many people felt Experian were ‘experts’ and ‘reliable’ but they didn’t always feel that they were ‘available to me’ or as ‘personal’ as some other companies which highlighted the areas that the company may need to focus on in the future. 

Overall, the day was an extremely insightful and an eye-opening experience about the ECS department where I hadn’t known much before. It was a very interesting day where I learned a lot of information about not only Experian, but also other advertisement as well and I am extremely excited about the days ahead.