Energetic and engaging title

Monday marked the start of our company project for SSM (Suomen suoramainonta). We had Pasi Latva telling a bit about his company and what kind of help they need from us. Long story short is their digital platforms need a makeover. Since everyone who is going to end up reading this blog knows about our task I'm gonna skip straight ahead to my views about SSM and this task.

A close person to me has worked a brief period for SSM so I knew something about this company beforehand. Then there's Latva telling about the company and what they're doing and why, so nothing wrong with that and I don't have anything against him or SSM. But the videos he showed about the nature of the work left a bad taste in my mouth because those videos are clearly meant for marketing and to attract potential workers and have little to do with reality. Since we are doing the project to help the workers who read and visit lisäduuni.fi I'd expect to hear the employees honest version about the job instead of seeing that video which is meant for marketing. But no harm done, we're gonna do a survey and ask what the distribution workers really need and want to see at lisäduuni.fi to help with their work. More progress on that next week.

Latva telling about SSM's customers (Photo: Anna Ikonen)

This week's guest lecturer has survived a gunshot wound. He has made his name in entertainment business. Can you already guess who? NO, not 50cent but Petteri Avilia. He was quite honest about his past troubles so it made easier to connect with him and his story when he was talking to us about personal branding. Avilia had great points about everyone being responsible for their own success. The lecture could be summarized to sentence "Be the man you want to be". Avilia learned from his past mistakes so it's possible for anyone to be successful. Other great life tip from him was to remember to be energetic. I actually attended another lecture earlier this week that had the same point about energy and persona. In a job interview your personality and enthusiasm matters a lot before your professional skills. Overall the lecture was awesome. I don't necessarily agree with everything he said like successfulness means you're a good person to be around with. But I liked the lecture because it was different than the others. We didn't get too many conrete tips about personal branding but that's why I checked what Forbes had to say about the matter.

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Avilia clearly wasn't used to having presentations in English so he had to read from paper quite often which was unfortunate. Also the lecture could be improved by having a better structure. However he was good clear speaker so it wasn't difficult to understand. Avilia succeeded in his mission of being a better person than what he was before he entered our auditorium so congratulations to him learning to be a better speaker. Also I wanna take this opportunity to congratulate myself for finishing this week's blog post. Next week our hot topic should be social media marketing. Joonas out.