JOMC 221 Final Project

The New Past: Oral History Projects Move Online

With the Web now reaching every corner of the globe, publishing oral histories to the Web makes them available to more people than ever before. Online oral histories provide valuable resources for education; a therapeutic outlet for survivors of personal, ethnic or national tragedy; as well as a better understanding of the minority experience. While not without its controversies, the marriage between oral history, which enables anyone to be a historian, and the Internet, which gives everyone a voice, is a natural and important step in the effort to preserve cultures worldwide.

Module Week 14: Business

The best thing about this course is the responsiveness of the course instructors. Brian has a strong and frequent presence on the discussion board, which is important because the forum is our classroom and his contributions (along with the Study Book) serve as our lectures. Additionally, it is tremendously helpful to receive feedback on weekly assignments and quick responses to e-mail.

Possible course improvements:

• It would be helpful to receive occassional feedback on our posts to the discussion forum, as we adapt to this learning style and to your expectations.
• I think it would be appropriate and helpful to have frequent peer feedback and editing sessions.
• In my mind, any good writing class implements examples of excellent writing as part of the reading assignments. While a basic understanding of theory (esp. semiotics) is important, some of our readings did not adhere to the writing and presentation rules we were learning. I would have liked to have had more readings written in an inspiring style.
• A number of the PDF readings printed poorly and were difficult to read.

Module Week 14

Lingering questions:

• Do I have what it takes to be a good writer?
• What story do I have to tell?
• This course has made me aware of a wealth of untapped (by me) information sources, but I am wary of trusting sources with which I am not familiar. Once the semester ends, how do I find worthy sources off the beaten path?
• Regarding Web writing, how do I target my audience well enough to cut through the clutter but remain accessible to a global audience?
• How can I balance my love for detail and description with a need to be brief and concise, particularly on the Web?
• How can I work to change negative perceptions of public relations?
• What does a master’s certificate mean in the professional world?

Learned and Improved

Through the course of the semester, I kept a list of points we covered to which I need to pay special attention. The list reflects my weaknesses as a writer and the strengths and comprehensiveness of this class.

Writing in general:

• Be precise, concise and correct
• Be more active
• Use the right word, not just a good work
• Eliminate everything that is not absolutely necessary
• Avoid clichés
• Be more cognizant of grammatical rules and errors
• Do not ramble, be deliberate and simple
• Avoid operators and verbal false limbs
• Stop using dashes
• Develop your own pearls, rather than stringing together quotes
• Have a goal in mind
• Read. Edit. Repeat.

Writing on the Web:

• If a work is going on the Web, it needs to work for a wide (global) audience, even if it was originally highly targeted to a specific audience
• Enhance scannability highlighting and linking words and by using headlines and short lists
• With headlines, don’t be clever or cute, avoid teasers and skip articles
• Develop a personal/company style guide
• Be even more concise

Web design:

• Every page must be able to stand alone
• Hyperlinks should be content, not labels
• Be wary of sending readers away from your work
• Contrast is good
• If you can leave it out, do
• Design for the least common denominator

Module Week 13 - Commercial Time

Branding Vonage: making sense of VOIP

The Money’s in the Marketing

Shortly after activating its 400,000th account, Vonage launched its voice-over-IP services into the United Kingdom in January 2005. The company sells its products from its Web site, around which marketing efforts are centered. In addition to the Web, Vonage has advertised the new service on television, the radio and in print media, and signed a £75 million marketing contract with Havas. This kind of comprehensive campaign summarizes the company’s worldwide branding strategy. (Vonage)

According to an article in Information Week, 50 percent of Vonage’s 2005 advertising budget is being spent online. Considering high-speed Internet access is required to use the company's products, targeting customers online is a smart way to go.

“In the first five months of 2004, Vonage spent a whopping $25 million on online ads, according to TNS Media Intelligence/CMR. Spending on TV, radio and print has been modest: less than $5 million last year and less than $2 million in first-half 2004, per Nielsen Monitor-Plus. A spring TV and radio campaign from Korey Kay positioned Vonage as ‘your telephone company's worst nightmare’ (AdWeek)."

In addition, Vonage ran full-motion video commercials on 15 high-traffic Web sites, including ABC News, About.com, Accuweather, CBS Sportsline, ESPN, FoxSports, Gamespot, iVillage, Lycos, Maxim, MSN, and Nick.com. The resolution of the video was designed to be much closer to that of broadcast quality than what Flash or Java provides, thereby ensuring a more positive experience for the person whose Internet surfing has been interrupted by the ad. (New York Times).

Stupid People on TV

Vonage has a series of television commercials intended to make people laugh and to realize they needlessly pay too much for their telephone service. The four spots show normal people doing dumb things and suffering the consequences. The commercials look like they were shot with a home video camera, adding to the everyday feel of the sequence. They feature:

1. A male running on a treadmill with his head covered. He falls, slides down the length of the treadmill and flies off screen.
2. Teenagers spinning in circles with their heads balanced on baseball bats. They stop spinning and run through the backyard, tripping and falling over each other. One slams hard into a storage shed.
3. A man cutting down a tree with a chain saw. He is cutting it from the wrong side and it falls on and crushes his car.
4. A helmeted child playing baseball in his backyard in front of the sliding glass door. He swings at a pitch, letting the bat go flying off behind him where it crashes through the glass door.

The scenes are wrapped up with the following, written and spoken: “People do stupid things. Like pay too much for phone service. So switch to Vonage. The Broadband Phone Company. Unlimited calls to the U.S. and Canada. $24.99 per month.”

The ads are intended to convey the idea that overpaying for phone service is as ridiculous as the featured activities. They are the kind of commercials people talk about and that evoke excitement when they air. Audiences want to see what stupid things people will do next. The content is basic enough to attract a wide demographic, which is important because almost everyone needs phone service. The simplicity of the ad theme is key because a lot of people don’t "get" VOIP, but they do get paying too much to their telephone service provider.

One-stop Web site

One of the most inviting aspects of Vonage’s Web site is the ability to watch the company’s “People do stupid things” commercials. The ads are entertaining and will have visitors coming back to the site and pointing their friends in that direction.

The company’s online press room provides the following for the media:

• news releases going back to 2001 in both html and PDF formats
• press and marketing contacts, complete with name, title, telephone number and e-mail address
• an image library with downloadable B-roll, photographs and company logos
• multiple product reviews from reputable organizations such as CNN/Money
• industry news from respected publications like the International Herald Tribune, Newsweek, New York Magazine, and ZDNet
• transcripts of coverage broadcast on television
• information on awards won and industry research

In addition, visitors find product and company information and have the chance to sign up for e-subscriptions to newsletters and press releases. The Web site encourages visitors to be customers, and customers to add advanced services.

Room for Improvement

Vonage's branding campaign is a great example of online marketing. Between spending half of the company's advertising budget online and packing so much information and interaction on its Web site, Vonage has its cyber-bases covered.

There is always room for improvement, however. With more than 550,000 active lines, the company can assume it has reached the low-hanging fruit and now needs to climb higher. New VOIP companies are being launched all the time and Vonage must use the Web to differentiate itself from its growing list of competitors. Marketing efforts need to be more two-fold, with one side targeting those who know and understand the technology and the other side targeting those who don't. Currently, Vonage's message targets those who don't, using a medium designed for those who do.

Additionally, the company needs to quickly utilize the Web to launch a crisis management campaign. Vonage is being sued over problems with its 911 service. (CNet) People will not switch from traditional phone service to VOIP if they feel their lives will be endangered by doing so. The company has not posted to its Web site a response to the charges or a statement reassuring current and potential customers.