Chen 1
Summer Internship Report
Isabel Chen 122030
Business Mentor: Britta McKenna
Encore Batavia under Four Hawks, LLC
August 19, 2020
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Summer Internship Report
Isabel Chen 122030 Business Mentor: Britta McKenna Encore Batavia under Four Hawks, LLC August 19, 2020
1. Executive Summary
“Baby boomer,” “millennial,” and “Generations X and Z” are all familiar terms referring to the different Western cultural generations beginning from the late nineteenth century. And as they all signify a period of time in history, there are an array of associated ideas, beliefs, and traditions that come along with each. This research paper serves to explore how design and social media platforms can best cater to audiences of all generations, taking into account the differences in interests, opinions, and tendencies of each. Through observations and studies, it’s most effective to approach the audience in an attitude that is equally diverse as it is, finding a harmony between the two ends of the spectrum, and maintaining diversity and inclusivity. After presenting these findings, key learning takeaways and suggestions for future social media outreach are discussed.
2. Business Context
2.1 Industry Description
The nonprofit, foundation, and philanthropy industries are made up of charities and other non-government organizations that exist to address a social issue or provide a service that benefits the community. According to Vault, an online description database of industries, volunteer work and community service have long been widespread popular activities people participate in to give back to their community, especially after the Civil War, and over time, groups have been formed to branch out from the purposes of original foundations. Well-known national organizations of this industry include UNICEF, the International Rescue Committee (IRC), and the American Red Cross, however countless others founded by students and civilians at the State and local levels alike also exist. Within the nonprofit industry, there are two main types of charity foundations: public and private; the former receiving donations from the public, and the latter from an individual, family, or another private corporation. Additionally, according to Vault, there are also ten sectors into which the nonprofit sector is divided: “arts, culture, and humanities; education; environment and animals; health; human services; international and foreign affairs; mutual membership benefit; religion related;” and miscellaneous. Thanks to its versatility, to this day, the nonprofit sector continues to be an industry that largely contributes both to the public wellbeing as well as the American economy.
2.2 Company Description
the past week’s progress, what we plan to do for the upcoming week, schedule any individual Zoom calls with each other if necessary, and clear up any questions. On Wednesdays at 1 pm, we met on Slack, a messenger designed to be an online workspace (Fig. 1).
Figure 1. The #team channel in the Four Hawks Slack workspace
Standups consisted of all team members reporting in the following: #progress, #next, and #blocks. Each team member would update the team with our progress, what came next, and if we had run into any roadblocks. After discussing this, we would continue through the week. Finally, on Fridays, I completed my Summary of Work report (SOW) and turned it into the shared folder on Google Drive. Throughout the week, I also logged my daily work, my plans for the following day, and daily hours worked into my intern journal-slash-timesheet. Through this system, I had three checkpoints each week, which was a good way to experience the weekly meetings I might have attended at an office workplace if I had worked at the internship in person. Week one of the internship, as a preliminary warmup design project, I created a design for our Summary of Work reports, made at the end of each week to summarize the projects I had worked on, reflect on learning experiences, present any questions I had to the business mentor, and plan out the objectives for the following week. My task was to create a template that was simple and fun, contained all the necessary sections, and could be edited by my business mentor and the other intern. During this process, I utilized problem-solving to choose a medium that would allow me to create a template with uneditable main components, yet also allowed others to edit text boxes and make other minor customizations. I designed three different document backgrounds and decided to use Google Slides rather than Documents, which allowed me to create a
custom theme and set slide dimensions, as compared to Documents, which didn’t allow for as much creative freedom. I created slides templates with the three SOW designs along with editable text boxes, all with considerable differences in style to create a diverse set of choices. Britta and Rohit ended up deciding on the third design, which we went on to use throughout all ten weeks of the internship. Template 2 (Fig. 2) had a playful tone, while 3 (Fig. 3) was more standard and professional.
Figure 2. Template 2 Figure 3. Template 3
I also provided different color options for Template 3, and instead of sticking to only one, I applied each color theme to a different slides layout so that the color could be custom-chosen each time the template was used. Next came my main responsibilities as a social media intern. There were three main parts to my social media outreach process: planning, design, and execution. In the first part, I created a table schedule (Fig. 4) for the July and August months, in which I planned social media posts every other day of the week, unless there was a post that I determined needed less exposure than the others, which were usually quote or fun fact posts.
Figure 8. Initial design sketches of each logo
After deciding on which basic sketch to use, I then drew the logos over the sketches in Photoshop and created a clean line art. Afterwards, I experimented with different color schemes and typography (Fig. 9) for each. For each design, I had 3 to 5 variations in color scheme and 3 to 5 in text, making for about twenty-three variations total. I experimented with a variety of color schemes, both generated randomly and inspired by other brands. I considered contrasting themes and moods, such as youthful, mature, energetic, calming, etc. I also played around with serif, sans-serif, and SC fonts to get a feel for different levels of professionalism, friendliness, or modernity that each version gave off. Developing the final lineup of color and text variations for each logo design took 2 to 3 weeks.
Figure 9. Three out of many color scheme and typography variations of the logo designs
On Sunday, August 16th, I gave a presentation to the Encore Batavia intergenerational advisory council on the work I did as an intern and presented three concepts for the Encore Batavia logo. I explained my social media outreach process, the responsibilities and tasks I had as an intern, and how I designed the final three logo concepts. I presented the logos in black and white and without typography (Fig. 10) first, so as not to influence the council members’ choices with color and text. The third logo, illustrating five people forming a circle, proved to be the most popular among the
advisory council since it had the strongest representation of community. They also voted on their favorite text variations for Logo 3.
Figure 10. The three logos in black and white
After the meeting, I worked with Britta to develop branding standards for the final logo: a multitude of different versions of the same logo design that can be applied in a variety of contexts. For example, I created several versions of Logo 3 with different color schemes in case Encore Batavia ever chooses to print the logo on black or dark-colored paper. I also created several versions with both white and transparent backgrounds for the same reason. Lastly, I made final adjustments to the font choice, placement, and size, and provided the files as .eps to allow ease of editing in the future by others.
4. Business Project Research
4.1 Questions
Whenever social media outreach is done, the objective is usually to expand the audience of the platform as much as possible, yet still targeting a specific demographic of people. Within this paper, the main concern is how social media outreach can be structured to cater to viewers of all generations -- what are some main reasons social media outreach tends to end up only being well-received by one group of people? How can social media content be generalized to fit audiences of all ages and backgrounds? These questions were the main subject of exploration during my internship experience.
4.2 Methods
Many aspects of the questions above were answered in my day to day work as an intern, specifically the social media part of my responsibilities. While posting on the Encore Batavia Facebook page, I often posted at different times throughout the day -- usually the morning, afternoon, and evening timestamps -- and gauged viewer
engage to encourage them to engage again (Martín). The size of the audience also affects marketing goals. A page with a large following is less concerned with reach and engagements than it is with the speed at which people will see and interact with the post. Meanwhile, a page with a smaller gathering will need to focus on growing their reach and engagement count before they can even start to consider the speed at which their followers do so. Next is the actual content of the posts -- varying styles and moods of the social media post graphics has varying effects on audiences of different backgrounds. The actual text, pictures, and topic of the posts need to be interesting to both elderly and youth audiences as well. Youth audiences tend to favor brighter colors that pop out as well as humorous themes -- something lighthearted and not too deep (Slootweg & Rowson 2019). On the other hand, elderly audiences favor a maturer, calmer theme that might include an appeal to pathos or more educational information (Slootweg & Rowson 2019). Finding the perfect blend between fun and inspirational is the ultimate sweet spot in balancing the direction you work towards in engaging people from several different generations. Furthermore, as can be expected, different generations also have different “moods” and lifestyles that come along with their associated time period (Taylor 2017). Users of different generations usually also have different reasons for which they would browse on the internet -- younger generations are looking for a fun or intriguing distraction, while older generations tend to go online to find information (Kamiel 2017). Taking this into account when formulating social media posts is also necessary in order to find the balance between content that is both interesting enough to hook younger audiences and educational enough to gain the appreciation of older ones. The third aspect is the scheduling of the posts. Since most users from younger generations need to attend school, they’re more active on social media in the morning and evening, before the start and after the end of their classes. Generations in the middle generally follow the same pattern, but also check social media in the afternoon during a lunch break. Lastly, older generations tend to be more passive in their use of social media, often only going online if they receive a notification or are otherwise prompted (Williams 2019). Taking this into account, determine the percentages of different generation users that make up the page followers to decide which times in the day to regularly post so that there is a higher chance of them being online to see it.
4.4 Limitations
Some limitations to the research was that only one social media platform was used, which was the organization’s Facebook page. Facebook has a good variety of users from different generations, but I also would have liked to see the effect of the development of an Encore Batavia Instagram page, which would’ve been geared more
towards younger audiences. In the past, social media was a domain largely used by younger generations, but in recent years, the percentage of older generations that are becoming more proactive has steadily increased. According to the Pew Research Center, between 2009 and 2011 alone, internet use among those who were 65 years of age and above increased by 150 percent. Ever since then, it’s only been continuing to grow. It shows exactly how widespread the influence of social media is, beyond the age groups most expected to be familiar with it. However, there still are limitations that come with each social media platform. Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter all house populations of users with different percentages of cultural, political, generational, and ethnic backgrounds. For instance, the ratio of Generation Z users to Baby Boomer users on Facebook will be very different to the ratio on Twitter. Since the Facebook page was the sole platform used and qualitatively observed, as well as the way the application’s algorithm works, the reach of its posts were inevitably limited to the specific sample population that, for a certain reason, prefer using Facebook over other social media platforms. Furthermore, since the organization is still only beginning to take root and establishing an online presence, its following was not large enough to collect more results. A growth from 50 to 181 page likes during my internship was a good start. At most, the demographics of the audience could be considered a sample of the population, but to collect more accurate results and understand a bigger part of the picture, a larger following needs to be achieved. The COVID-19 pandemic played a huge role in stalling the progress of Encore Batavia’s projects, many of which involve meeting up in person. Since these activities had to be put on hold, I couldn’t see the effect of continuously holding activities on social media outreach over time. Keeping this in mind, as the organization continues to develop in the future, holds more events, and grows in following, substantial improvements can be expected in its social media platform as well.
5. Business Project Key Learnings & Recommendations
5.1 Learnings
Social media outreach is 90 percent the work of the organization and all depends on the remaining 10 percent of whether or not the audience will choose to like and comment once they see the company’s posts. The research on the target audience, its demographics, and suitable content and scheduling all work together to achieve the cumulative result of reaching the right audiences that will allow the company to grow and spread its influence. There is a bit of difficulty in increasing engagement rates, but it can be done with time and commitment. Lastly, finding balance between content that
https://www.vault.com/industries-professions/industries/nonprofit-sector
Slootweg, E., & Rowson, B. (2019, January 7). My generation: A review of marketing
strategies on different age groups. https://doi.org/10.1080/22243534.
.
Taylor, J. (2017, August 1). The Differences Between Each Living Generation. The
Odyssey. https://www.theodysseyonline.com/the-differences-between-each-of- the-living-generations
Williams, R. (2019, November 22). Gen Z prefers entertainment, social media in early
dayparts. Mobile Marketer. Retrieved August 19, 2020, from https://www.mobile
marketer.com/news/gen-z-prefers-entertainment-social-media-in-early-daypart s/567877/
Zickuhr, K. (2010, December 16). Generations 2010. Pew Research Center. https://
www.pewresearch.org/internet/2010/12/16/generations-2010/
7. Appendices
7.1 Weekly Timesheet
7.2 Supplementary Material
Daily Internship Journal