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Quiz time, Spring break and How to shake hands.

Hi guys,

Welcome back to my blog! :D

In the last class, we had another online session where we learnt about business etiquettes. This is super useful since I study International Business Management, so I’ll probably be dealing a lot with clients or organizations from other cultures. These business etiquettes are universal but of course can’t be applied to all countries. We learnt how to properly shake hands, write emails, answer phone calls or even give business cards. The whole class had fun comparing cultures and introducing norms of our own countries.

This class was a short one. The second half we spent doing a short but super exciting quiz to test our knowledge. The quiz was a fun game-like format, there was a timer, and everyone competed against each other, scored points and got ranked at the end. The page is called Quizizz.com. This concept reminds me of Kahoot which is similar to this, I first learnt with Kahoot 3 years ago in my university in The Netherlands. I personally think Kahoot is more entertaining and has better graphics. The quiz stressed me out a bit because time was running out super fast but I had a lot of fun doing it, and was so proud for arriving at 4th place :D

The rest of the time we spent working in teams again since we’ll have to hand in the team report and the individual report after the holidays.

But for now, let’s enjoy Spring Break (or Semana Santa in Mexico)! Have a nice holidays and I’ll see you again soon :)

Hasta luego,

Phuong.

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Essential oils, Zoom and The Accidental Icon.

Hi guys,

Welcome back to my blog! :D

I know I missed last week’s entry but I’m back now. It’s been a crazy week and there was tons of exams.

So in the class before last class, we learnt about a super interesting topic, it was Style, following the personal style quiz. As I told you before, we all got to figure out which style we belong to. It was fun, and in this class, we got to experience style within other dimensions :D. The teacher brought a whole bag of essential oils with more than 30 scents. We took turn to sniff them hahaha, that was fun and we all got to experience style in the smelling sense since last time we’ve already learnt about style in the visual sense.

 And the class last week, we had the class online. I have never done an online class before but I have to say it was pretty entertaining, it felt kinda intimate because we were video chatting with each other and staring at each other’s faces on the screen, which I think is super cute. There are even buttons for raising your hand and it was more interactive than I had expected. The app is called Zoom in case you’re curious and wanna try it out.

The teacher showed us some music and we tried to guess which style they are. So yes, we covered the third sense – hearing. The tunes were really nice and ranging from jazz to Madonna’s. The class was most fun when we discussed her music style evolution. And we came to the conclusion that her style changed a lot and her time has passed now haha.

After that, we discussed The Accidental Icon. She is truly adorable, I think she’s 64 already but still super youthful and bold in her fashion style. She also looks super hip, I admire her so much. If you don’t know her, Google her or check out https://www.accidentalicon.com/, you’ll know what I’m talking about :D

The last part of the class was us dividing into small chat rooms to discuss our group projects. Yes, you can do that with Zoom, how cool is that? So basically, the teacher can break the class up into small groups and we have our individual chat rooms, the teacher can occasionally jump into each room and answer our questions.

 I hope I gave you a great spiritual tour of our classes, I think they’re super fun and interesting, especially these days, when we talk about styles. I hope you guys liked it :)

I’ll see you guys next week with more stories of and lessons!

Hasta luego,

Phuong.

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100% Natural, meat dresses and Style.

Hi everyone,

Welcome back to my blog! :)

Do you know what your style is? Or if you kinda do, have you ever wonder what it actually is called?

In this week’s class, we all got to find out what our style is by doing a small quiz. It was a useful and fun exercise, as we even got to guess each other’s styles before looking at the results. And we also saw examples of some celebrities like Beyonce, Elton John and Queen Elizabeth, and what their styles are in these 7.

There are 7 styles: Natural, Traditional, Elegant, Romantic, Seductive, Creative and Dramatic. And the general idea of these styles are pretty straightforward, just like their names.

Today I got to find out that my style is Natural. The idea is that I prioritize comfort and convenience over looks. I think this is so correct that it hurts haha. I got 11 out of 18 points for Natural, which is really high so I’m almost 100% Natural. I think this is great in the sense that I’m a simple, efficient person, I don’t really care much about looks. Whatever I wear, it needs to make me feel comfy, I need to move freely in it, be on-the-go and it doesn’t generate lots of work like touching up the make up every hour, fixing the bow on my hair or adjusting the tight skirt. 

However, I wasn’t always like that. I used to care about looks and spent time choosing sophisticated clothes to wear. Usually, I was only going Natural when the situation demanded me to, like when I went on a long trip and couldn’t pack much. But ever since I moved away from my home in Vietnam 3 years ago and went to live in The Netherlands, I guess things changed. Since then, I have packed my entire life in a suitcase and moved 4 times and living an independent life makes me reconsidered my wardrobe and probably also my personality and style. After some time, I think I just got lazy and stopped caring so much about clothes and these things. Because just like our teacher said, style can change depending on time and situations. But I’m happy with the way things are and my style, it reflects who I am today and I feel comfortable with it, emotionally and physically :D

I thought this was a very fun and relaxing class, and the knowledge we gained from this one would help us later on, when we need to analyze the style and image of our clients. 

From now on, these styles are stuck in my mind and I think every time I see someone, I won’t be able to stop myself from wondering: “Which style does this person belong to?” :)

Below is an image I found online of what I think my style looks like:

Just kidding!!! I’m totally not into meat dresses. It’s actually the one below :D

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Jargons, a mind game and a lot of confusion.

Hi guys,

Welcome back to my blog.

In the last class, we learnt about some useful marketing jargons like SEO and SEM. Last year, I did an internship in an E-commerce company that specializes in social media marketing. Thanks to that, I got the chance to experience first hand these types of jargons and applied my knowledge on the spot. It was a great internship, I learnt so much and now I actually get to see these practices in theory, which is not necessarily a good order but I’m glad I got to know about this from my colleagues and boss in the company :)

The second part of the class was super interesting as we got to play a game of perceptions. Sounds cool right? The concept is familiar, we have a partner that describes a picture to us, and we draw it (without seeing the picture of course).

I had such a great time because this game is a special one. The pictures weren’t regular ones but instead, are ones that play with your perceptions. The person who sees it perceives it in their own way, and the person who listens perceives it in another. And the describing also messes things up a bit because people aren’t always that clear when they try to get their point across. 

In my case it was extra hard because I have 2 partners (the number of students were uneven). So yup, that’s right. They each described in a different way and it confused the hell out of me. 

From this class, we all learnt that the image is only the reality or perception of the one seeing it and nobody have the same perceptions. The great part about this is that communication plays a huge role since seeing the image is one thing but making it understood is another, especially when it comes to the abstract pictures we had to describe for the game, you should have seen them (I attached them at the end of this post).

Anyway, that was a very fun and interactive class which helps us learn about perceptions and communication. And we also learnt that we are better off not becoming artists (hahaha). 

Thanks for reading my blog and see you next week :)

Lots of love,

Phuong.

Look closely and wait til you see it all :D

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Two crazy weeks, Mexican culture and self-perception

Hi guys,

The last two weeks were so crazy with tons of exams but I am back!! :D

In the previous classes, we revised some of the knowledge related to market research such as primary and secondary data and how to gather them. We also revised a bit on defining objectives and audiences for our market research. These are super useful knowledge that I have learnt in previous years of my study but now I actually get to put them into practice with a real client.

After that, the whole half of the class was spent on working in groups. We had to complete the first parts of our final report for our client – La Tradición del Maíz. These parts include:

·         Company History

·         Mission

·         Vision

·         Values

·         Human Capital Analysis

·         Up-to-date Problems and Needs of the Company

·         Market Research Methodology and Justification and Topic Guides

Since we decided to make a focus group and product testing, we also created a topic guide that would help us figure out the potential partners’ opinion and thoughts on the company’s current image and products.

My group was very efficient, we finished our tasks during these class hours. I have a feeling that everyone in the group really enjoy working on this project mainly because we kind of clicked well together as a team, and also that the company we chose is a very interesting one. La Tradición del Maíz is a very traditional company with a nice product range representing the Mexican culture which I am really happy to learn about.

In the same week, we also had to deliver the individual project. This project is a smaller one that we do in pairs like I told you about in my first blog. We each get a partner in class whose image we will analyze and advise on, and the partner does the same for us. I personally think this one is more fun because it’s more intimate and we get to know more about each other’s lives. For this report, we need to write about their Personal History, SWOT Analysis, their Immediate and Medium-Term objectives, their Publics or Audiences, and their Self-perception. I really enjoyed conducting interviews with my partner, asking him about his future plans and objectives, his family and friends, and his personal life and the best part is we really get on well with each other.

And that is all for this week. I hope to see you again next week with more to tell :)

Hasta luego,

Phuong.

[phannguyenphuong-blog]

Dixit Jinx, the marketing mix and a pop-up store

Hi everyone,

Welcome to my 3rd blog post. How are you doing?

In my last ImCom class, we learnt about Marketing research and the marketing mix. By “learnt”, I meant we “played” a bunch of games. Yup that’s right, games :)

The class was divided into 5 groups and each one was assigned to play a board game. My group played a game called Dixit Jinx. The goal of this was to get to know the game, relax a bit, and use this to write our marketing mix of the product, in this case the product is Dixit Jinx.

That wasn’t the best game I played, in fact, it was pretty boring. Fortunately, when we started doing research for our marketing mix, I found lots of reviews for this game.

“Well, I most definitely think now that Dixit Jinx exists to make regular Dixit looks better.” - Tiago Perretto (Boardgamegeek.com)

I couldn’t agree more with this comment, probably because I have already played the original Dixit and that game was way too good.

Anyway, the main point isn’t really about the game. So as I was saying, we made a marketing mix out of this whole experience with the game. Firstly, a product description and its assets were made, followed by the target market. My part was to research on the price and distribution channels of the product. And finally, we came up with some promotion strategies for this game, one of them was to open a pop-up store to showcase the products and interact with the customers, show them how to play it.

In my opinion, although the game was pretty bad, I really enjoyed the concept of learning through playing (which is one of our promotion strategies where we give the game to schools for the kids to play and learn). I had a fun time with my group, everyone was enjoying themselves, and it didn’t feel like a class at all :)

Key takeaways of this session:

1.    Learning by playing DOES work

2.    DO NOT buy Dixit Jinx

3.    But DO buy Dixit, including the expansion packs

4.    There’s still nobody reading my blog (except probably the teacher, thank you for reading Mrs. Martinez)

If you’re reading my blog (and you’re not my teacher), please let me know. That would seriously make my day :D

And that’s it for this week. Thanks for reading and talk soon!

Lots of love,

Phuong.

Buy this one. ^

Not this one. ^

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The price of consulting, some deep thoughts and a bond

Hi everyone,

Welcome to my second blog :)

Last Wednesday, in my ImCom class, I got to learn about the different strategies of pricing a consulting service. It’s fascinating to see how many different ways there are and what each one does. Fun fact: one of them is illegal in many countries! Right after that, we got to sit down with our consulting start-up firm (our team) to directly apply our new knowledge by calculating the price we’re going to charge for our service and choosing a pricing strategy to use. Spoiler: we did not choose the illegal one (just to be sure!).

While learning about everything that goes into the costs of the service, I was surprised at an item called “emotional cost” which is something you should include for “soldering through” anything to satisfy your clients. From my understanding, if I need to visit Africa and risk exposing myself to Ebola so that I can bring back some corn samples for my clients, I should be charging that fee.

One of the activities we did in class was to look up the average consulting fees for Mexico and since I’m Vietnamese and one guy/the only guy in our group is from France, the fees for our own countries as well. And below are the things we found on Google:

1.       France – 8000 pesos per hour

2.       Vietnam – 2000 pesos per hour

3.       Mexico – 600 pesos per hour

It’s crazy to see how large the gaps are. France is surely expensive and I’m not surprised. But Vietnam charges a much higher fee than Mexico is quite surprising. From my Mexican group mates and my teacher, I learnt that consulting firms don’t get paid much in Mexico. It makes me sad to see how such an important job is so undervalued while it could potentially change lives of individuals or organizations. I have never worked as a consultant nor used this service. However, from my point of view, everyone are naturally already using or engaging in consulting everyday of their lives. Everyone grows up from taking advices of people with more knowledge and experience, and everyone gives opinions and advices to others all the time. I’m not usually this deep but this topic got me thinking, about what consulting is and its importance.

In the last part of the class, my teammates and I worked on our price calculations and talked a little bit about Mexico and ourselves. It was a very enjoyable session and our team got to bond with each other, we talked, joked, laughed and worked together. I’m really glad I got to know my team a bit better in a comfortable group atmosphere.

I really hope you (yes, you!) enjoyed reading my little blog as much as I enjoyed writing it. If you’re curious about what we learn in this class or just want to read some random thoughts, please come back next Friday. And if there are any questions for me, please don’t hesitate to send me a message, because if you do, you could be the first one (and the only one)! Thanks for reading and talk soon :)

Lots of love,

Phuong.

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Corn, a 20-year-old Mexican, and me

Hola,

First of all, if you’re reading this, it means you’re one of my very first readers, and probably also one of my “very few”. I would like to say thank you for being here :)

My name is Phuong, i’m from Vietnam. Currently, i’m doing my exchange semester in Mexico City as part of my Business study. One of my most favorite classes so far is “Image and Communication” (Let’s call it ImCom) which is what this whole blog is about. 

Now I hope I didn’t lose you at “classes” or “my name is”. I have to admit that all the classes I’m taking here in Mexico are super interesting and hands on, I’m having so much fun studying, which never happened before. Particularly, in ImCom, I get to form a group and find a company, and we will consult them about their image. And the best part is that we also get to work with a partner in class, and consult our partner on their personal image. So that’s 2 projects alongside each other.

The company my group has chosen is a very Mexican one, I guess you can put it like that. It’s called La Tradición Del Maíz which roughly translates to “the tradition of corn”, and it specializes in corn based products like tortilla. We had so much fun choosing a client and especially choosing a name for our “Consultancy firm”.

For the second project with our partner, this week we got to interview them and create some type of analysis on how their image could be improved or changed. My partner is a 20-year-old guy from Mexico City with so much passion for art and music as he creates his own music in his free time. We had an amazing chat in the sun where we talked about our lives, our family and our passions, and even our future. At some point, I completely forgot that it was an interview, but instead, it just felt like a conversation between two good friends. 

It feels good to be able to enjoy my life here in Mexico, to meet new and amazing people, to follow classes that I truly love and to realize that there are much more to come :)

That’s all for now. See you next Friday and I’ll tell you more about my journey into the world of “Image and Communication”.

Lots of love,

Phuong.