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=**__Mission Statement:__**= ====The [|Visual Culture and Communication Association] (VCCA) seeks to create opportunities for students in the Visual Culture and Communication program at University of Toronto to share their creativity and be recognized for their achievements. This will include organizing showcases that will enable students to publicize their artistic works, while gaining valuable insight from their colleagues, professors, and industry professionals. Furthermore, VCCA will actively promote the Visual Culture and Communication program to companies, informing them of the value that hiring a graduate from the Visual Culture and Communication program will provide, and generally raising awareness of the program. As a new program, it is vital that the Visual Culture and Communication program and its students work hard for recognition and respect; members of VCCA hope to aid in this cause by marketing the program, showcasing student’s talent, and organizing professional critiques and competitions.====

=**__Background:__**= ====The Visual Culture and Communication Association was founded January 2012 in relation to the Visual Culture and Communication program is offered by the University of Toronto, solely at the Mississauga campus. The program provides students with a foundation in visual culture, communication studies and digital practices that are learned at Sheridan College. The Visual Culture and Communication program is a specialist stream that used to be apart of the Institution of Communication, Culture and Information Technology, however in 2011 it became an independent specialist program now under the Department of Visual Studies. The program features a variety of concepts covered ranging from “art to advertising, propaganda to documentary photography, and film to websites,” (Department of Visual Studies).====

====As the rise in visual communication and design becomes almost a necessity to most 21st-century companies, it is essential to make the program more renowned amongst the advertising industry and related industries. Thus, having students trained in knowing how to appropriately apply visual content to companies’ social media platforms can increase the impact of their message they are trying to get across and strengthen their brand identity.====

====The goal of this student society is to ultimately enrich the student experience of university life, while creating a foundation for their future by networking with other students, showcasing their work and hosting panels with industry related professionals VCCA aspires to achieve this.====

=__**Marketing Objectives:**__=

====**Primary Objective** - The primary objective of the entire campaign is to increase awareness of the VCCA among students at UTM through the use of social media, online affiliate advertising and other low cost marketing. VCCA is a new organization so getting attention and spreading the word about the association is very important for its future success.====

====**Long-Term Goal** - Our long-term goal is to create a well-established and active community around the VCCA website, Facebook and Twitter profiles. By using several promotions and online advertising techniques, we would like to see membership grow by 5% every year.====

**Short-Term Goals** - A key component of the campaign is the use of social media to create awareness for the VCCA. As such, we will have short-term goals based around our social media profiles:

 * ====To achieve 150 "Likes" on Facebook by September 2012.====
 * ====To gain 100 followers on Twitter by September 2012.====

====September 2012 was chosen as a deadline to gauge the success of the social media campaign because our aim is to create a larger following for the VCCA leading into the next school year. If the campaign is successful by that time then we can leverage our social media platforms as a great avenue for communication with anyone interested in the VCCA.====

====**Value Exchange** - VCCA brings a lot of value to the existing market in that it caters to a specific target demographic. The association aims to create a place where VCC specialist students can go to discuss their field of study, find out about relevant upcoming events and even create great connections with student, faculty and business professionals in their field. As mentioned previously, the goal of the campaign in the long-term is to increase awareness of the association and gain members within the community. If these goals are successful then we will see an increase in the value that the VCCA brings to the market with each new member. As the community grows so too does the impact and value of the association. With a larger community the VCCA can have larger events, garner more attention from business professionals who will in turn help to advise community members, and with interested members, we may be able to find willing volunteers to help with the administration of the association. In many ways, the VCCA offers a service to its target market and with each additional community gained through the online marketing campaign the quality of service it is able to offer increases.====

=__**SWOT Analysis:**__= - Will attract many of students who are enrolled in the program to join - Easy to promote throughout UTM since it deals with a program offered in their school - Already credible and established program - Strong partnerships with companies willing to promote VCCA - Allows people to share and create ideas together - Allows prospective students collaborate with professors and people who are already in the field - Bringing people with strong and advanced learning in visual and digital communication together - Able to market ourselves to various forms of social and traditional media such as twitter, facebook, blogs, banners, posters, and emails || ===Weaknesses ===
 * < ===Strengths===

- Only available to students at Mississauga campus
- Tailored mainly to students enrolled in VCC program only- Could be difficult to reach out to people to join outside of UofT - Deregulated program, students having to pay more money || - Association that is focused on a growing field that is increasing with students each year - Many online marketing methods that can easily attract newcomers - Strong partnership with Astra Zeneca a company that is in alliance with UTM and supports many of the CCT and Science programs - Able to attract newcomers by face to face promoting around campus - Promote our association through CCT lectures, have banners around campus, pubs, UTM radio and during school sports events - Further branch out to people outside of UTM and show others what the program and our association can offer for them - Members are able to promote our association through word of mouth throughout schools ||< ===**Threats** === - People might consider online marketing and emails as Spam - Might be hard to find our association in search engines when people look us up - Low funding might limit the amount on advertising - Competition from another programs might limit the amount of space to advertise around UTM ||
 * < ===Opportunities===

With the creation of VCCA our goal was to start an organization dedicated to the students who are enrolled in the UTM program of Visual Culture and Communication program. We did not however limit ourselves to targeting our marketing only to VCC students but also a broader array of people ranging from anyone who has an interest in visual communication to prospective newcomers. While, there are various methods we are going to market our association towards students already in the program such as promoting ourselves through lectures, posters around the campus, school newspaper, UTM radio station and the VCC website. We plan to spend a lot of our marketing outside the realm of VCC to get people outside of UTM to join and companies to continue to sponsor us. The way we plan on doing this is through online marketing, in which we intend to pull in a lot of new clients through the digital realm of advertising. Some of the ways we are doing this is through online banners and through relevant websites focused for student learning. The links would re-direct users onto our website where they would learn more about what the organization is about. Other methods of marketing is through emails that would inform people who we are, we plan on using Mailchimp to send emails throughout Utormail to inform students around UofT about our association. Additionally, we will utilize social media to further extend our marketing through Facebook, Twitter, online memes and online school blogs. We plan on rewarding people part of the association by featuring their work online on our website, as well as, showcase events hold at UTM’s Blackwood Gallery. We intend on making our website sticky which will get users to constantly come back to our web page. We plan on doing this is by having our tweets constantly updated on the side, artwork being added regularly by users and up to date internship positions available, this will further get users to constantly to stay hooked to our association in the incentive of being rewarded.
 * Strategies:**

Since we have a strong sponsorship with Astra Zeneca a company that has close ties to UTM and the ICCIT and Science programs we are lucky enough to get noticed by a very highly acclaimed company. We plan on holding events at the AstraZeneca Canada Center for information and technological literacy where other people interested in our association and VCCA members can come together, talk and share their work. Lastly, we also plan on using logos and slogans to have our company embedded in people’s minds; we plan on using a simple and effective slogan “We live in a visual world.” This way we can see if we are successful or not would based on the amount of views, the turnouts, and the members who respond and eventually who join in to help and become part of our company.


 * Sponsorship:**

=__**Promotional Materials:**__=

1) //Affiliate Marketing//

One of the various types of promotion we created is having an animated gifs on affiliate websites to draw users to our website. By having an interactive link to the VCCA website will hopefully engage others from outside of the program and the university to a more diverse audience that will showcase the program on a broader scale. Additionally, by enabling this user-click feature into a banner advertisement it will help track who is clicking the link and from where. The leaderboard banner can go across the top of a blog, where its contents are related to visual culture. Its content is related to finding information about the school and program. While, the rectangle banner can be placed on the side of a blog or website with other related programs and companies due to its small size and information is related to social media content.

2) //Website Integration//

In order to create a main space for VCCA to communicate with its members we will create a website that can house all of the important information about the association while also being updated regularly with new content and blog posts. The website will allow the VCCA to create their own custom tailored space while also acting as a home page for all of the other social media endeavors. For example, a tweet could look something like the image below and be used to draw all of the followers on twitter back to the main VCCA website. A well functioning and well-designed website is integral for the success of a social media campaign because you are very limited in what you can say on a social media site, especially one like Twitter.

Below is the proposed website design:



3) Memes Create a viral campaign to help get the program out there and amongst the art and design industry. As well as, use meme generator to play upon cultural codes.

4) //Social Media// To cultivate a community that adds and shares in the same interests as VCCA to further promote the program and bring people together.



[|http://www.facebook.com/#!/vcca.utm] [|https://twitter.com/#!/VCCassociation]

5) //Video Contest// VCCA will attempt to gain its initial members by promoting an online video contest for VCC students to showcase their works. The contestants will create a short video of themselves displaying their portfolio of design work, entitle the video “VCCA Video Contest: //Student Name//”, and finally posting the video on YouTube and various social networking websites to encourage voting, liking, retweeting, etc. A link to the video will also be posted on the VCCA website and the judges will score each contestant based on the number of the various social networking voting categories, as well as the overall quality of the work, and presentation of the contestant. There will be small prizes for first, second, and third placed contestants, as well as, a place on the reserved recognition page on the VCCA website at the end of the contest. The contest will take place over two weeks, encouraging the contestants to share their videos as much as possible in a short amount of time.This will spread awareness of VCCA and improve Search Engine Optimization for the website since it will allocate links to the VCCA page and create social networking importance through the various voting categories on websites such as Facebook and Twitter.

6) //Video Interviews// VCCA will go beyond a member profile page on the website by also including a short video of each member explaining what they think of the VCC program and what they hope to accomplish with the skills they acquire through the program. This will promote the idea of VCCA and their credibility, while at the same time benefit its members since site visitors can get a better sense of each of the members’ personalities as opposed to a simple written profile. VCCA hopes to promote its brand while also promoting its members.

7) //Reciprocal Linking// VCCA will attempt to contact the people who run certain websites such as the top Google PageRanked graphic design blogs including: Design Observer and Smashing Magazine who receive a great degree more visitors than the VCCA website and let them know that we would be willing to place multiple links throughout our website to their respective websites in exchange for one link to our website placed on their own. This will build upon the VCCA website search engine optimization as well as spread our brand to the leaders of the graphic design blog realm. VCCA also hopes that in the future, article swaps between VCCA and the various other websites will become a reality which will create in context links for the VCCA website.

8) //Search Engine Optimization// VCCA will combine the efforts of all the other online promotions in improving its SEO ranking, as well as, a focus on content rather than traffic when publishing and sharing articles. Once adequate funding is available for VCCA, an affordable online service will be contacted to further improve SEO. By the end of 2012, VCCA hopes to be ranked No.1 for all searches pertaining to the Visual Culture and Communication program.

=__**Six Environtments:**__=

// Geographic: // VCCA is a student society within the University of Toronto Mississauga Campus catering to the students of Visual Culture and Communication program. These students attend classes both at UTM, as well as, Sheridan College at the Oakville Campus, both of which are suited with a vast array of technology available for student use. Furthermore, UTM is located in proximity to the Square One area, where numerous businesses are expanding, offering a number of job opportunities in various industries, some of which are in design which VCCA can take advantage of. Through affiliate program marketing and even word of mouth given the close distance, VCCA can be at a first-to-market advantage with the growing business establishments and job offerings in the design industry. Moreover, UTM itself is expanding with new buildings and technologies that will surely boost the overall popularity and credibility of the campus, thus, making it more attractive to applying students who might in turn expand the community of students in VCCA.

// Competitive: // UTM houses numerous student associations, some related to each other across programs. This makes for a highly competitive environment where the various associations attempt to book events and gain the attention of the university itself, as well as, maintain a level of attractiveness for the various talents who study on campus. The proximity to two Sheridan College campuses and their respective student associations also adds to the number of competitors and level of competition in creating a brand for VCCA. In addition, the well-established student associations will have limited advertisement space within their respective websites for newer student associations such as VCCA to compete for.

// Economic: // Students who attend UTM, particularly in programs such as VCC, DEM, and CCIT fall under the classification of being “deregulated” and required to pay an above average amount of tuition per school term, therefore it is sufficient to say that majority of the students in VCCA will be apart of a certain class of wealth. In other words, it is expensive to be a VCC student, therefore, all planned events or merchandise should attempt to be inexpensive enough so not to add to the large student expenses. Entering the market with affordable events and merchandise will lend to a penetration of the market, which could also lead to a faster rate of brand establishment and recognition. Furthermore, it should be noted that VCCA is a new student society, therefore, initial funding is required to stage certain events and activities. UTM Students’ Union only gives a certain amount of funding to accommodate for other clubs and societies.

// Political: // UTM encourages the creation of student organizations and associations, as a result, there are low barriers to entry in the political environment. It is also not very difficult to establish a student society through UTMSU, since there are only a small number of rules to follow, which pertain to the abstinence of hate crimes such as racism and discrimination, as well as, other crimes including theft. All other provincial laws and university laws apply as well to each member of the student society. All of this means that VCCA is a reflection of UTMSU and UTM itself, thus, all members of the organization must act in accordance.

// Socio-cultural: // UTM has benefited from the fact that it is located in one the most multicultural cities in Canada, as well as, the fact that it bears the crest of a world-renowned educational institution. The attraction of globally dispersed student talents makes an extremely cultural diverse population of students at UTM. In a global market, it has become evident that successful engagement in creating culturally diverse organizations is key to the success of those organizations. It is no question then that VCCA must create an environment for a culturally diverse student society to thrive, which will in turn reflect success upon VCCA itself.

// Technological: // The technological environment at UTM continues to expand upon its established advanced base of equipment it already possesses. Sheridan College Oakville Campus also contains an industry-leading base of technology, and in association with ICCIT and VCC programs, lends to a multitude of innovation for the students of those programs to become acquainted with. A program such as VCC requires the use of certain technologies to be able to do the quality of work that its students produce. It is therefore evident that the availability and growth of the technological environment at both UTM and Sheridan College are beneficial to the students of VCCA. Promoting the fact that VCCA students will have the opportunity to operate such technology will surely increase the population of students in the VCC program and the VCCA student society.

“About VCC.” //Department of Visual Studies//. University of Toronto at Mississauga, n.d. Web. 25 Mar 2012. .
 * Works Cited**