3. Culture - Heia Norge!

The third week was what I would call awesome! And why? We got to be creative again and did a video about this weeks main topic. I'm going to tell more about it later in the post, but let's start with the Mondays lecture.

So on Monday we had a lecture held by Anna Ikonen, with the topic CULTURE. I personally think cultures are extremely fascinating. I believe I'm quite "culturish" myself because of my Finnish-Swedish background and one year of exchange in Norway. Even so, my first thoughts about the topic was: "why should we learn about cultures in this course of digital marketing?" During the lecture I understood the importance of cultural differences also in business life. The most important thing that I'm going to remember is to learn about new cultures, with all it's manners and beliefs, before participating in an international meeting. With respecting others, I believe that also I can be respected.

Culture globe. Copyright: Amyglenn.com

Anna told a lot of examples of Poland and their manners and beliefs. It was really interesting and actually fun hearing about. But one thing bothers me when it comes to stereotypes and cultural thoughts about Finns. First of all, apparently, people think Finns doesn't say "please". I always say thank you and please. That's how I've been raised, and that's what all my friends think they do also (at least those who I have talked to about this). Secondly Finland seems to be a closed and unsocial country. Also those claims are wrong if you ask me. Yes, here are persons who like more to be with themselves, doesn't like to be very social or doesn't like other people at all. But what country doesn't have those? The most people I meet daily are friendly and social. But these are after all my own opinions. No people should be generalized based on old stereotypes. 

Anyway we got two tasks this week, one individual regarding the blogs and one group task. The individual task was to create your own cultural baggage. You can see mine below, it was actually fun doing this one. Not all the statements about me is really Finnish culture (or what other may think is Finnish), maybe little Norwegian or Swedish too? I'm independent, I say thank you, family is my everything, I may seem quiet but when you get to know me... ;)

My version of the cultural baggage.

The group task was to choose a culture and make a presentation of it. For our group it felt natural to choose Norway, because of my knowledge of the country. As I mentioned earlier we made a video again, please watch it and let me know what you think?!

We had a lot of fun making the video of this week also. At first we started to make a handbook of all the things we wanted to tell about, and then we just started filming. We made this video in two days, on Tuesday 10 am to 4 pm and on Wednesday from 9 am to 6 pm. Although it took a long time, it didn't feel bad. Hope you like the short "documentary"!

The second lecture, also on Monday, was held by our first guest lecturer Lynn-Marie Sederlöf-Airisto. She told us about international marketing. She told about her own experience but also about:
1. How to target your customer - your target may be nothing like you
2. Social media - many platforms that are changing all the time, you need to be where your customers are, make choices
3. Running a global campaign - define target audience and message, create content
4. Tools - Google Analytics, heatmaps & scrollmaps.

Why did I found this lecture interesting? Because I have absolutely no idea what I wan't to do after I graduate. I know that within this branch there's tons of opportunities, but what to do? This international marketing actually sounded very nice, so maybe I dig more into it. For example Lynn's career sounded exciting.

Short summarize of Thursday: Presentations! We heard many interesting presentations about different countries and their cultures. The funniest thing was that no one chose the same culture! We heard about Latvia, Albania, Spain, Luxembourg... I can't remember all of them but we also showed our video about Norway.

Then some thoughts about the blogs in the end:

1. Blogs are personal. In my opinion they can't be compared with one another.
2. Short and rich content are much more interesting to read than loooooong and nonsense.
3. This is new for almost everyone in the course, it takes time to be the best :)

This week was also a doggie week! We got great support from Linda's puppy Ruu and my dog Martta. Love it! Until next week :)

1. Ruu 2. Martta

PS. Check out our group's Twitter account @FTS13laurea! I will found out later how to get the gadget to work...