Untitled. . . (that title seems to work for songwriters when they can't think of a good one)

I agree with the other girls that the last few weeks have been especially educational, not only with information but also with experience. In regards to our group's project, I was surprised by how much energy, creativity, flexibility, and (ultimately) time was required to produce an original health message for our target audience. Of course, if we had a budget to work with, the process may have been a little easier and certainly would have produced a better quality product in the end, but it is clearly a challenging task. I wonder just what end product we could have developed if we had a budget or equipment/software to produce the quality video message we had envisioned. Had things been different, I would have liked to have been able to add our designed logos (i.e., "1N2-which-1RU?", "Ask...") to the actual video messages. I would like to hear feedback from our classmates about the effectiveness of the logos specifically, but I don't the connection between the logos and the video messages was made.

One of the biggest lessons I learned from the experience of Project #2 was the results of testing our messages. Although our hypotheses were pretty accurate, the comments and suggestions made by our target audience "testors" provided perspectives we hadn't considered during the development and production of the messages. I recognize as a Caucasian female that I repeatedly fail to highlight cultural relevance - I am actually quite embarassed by this realization about myself. :( In my opinion, this was the most important comment made by one of our testors. It helped to keep it in perspective for me.

On the other hand, the reason I agreed to serve as the person giving the testimonial was mainly because my own personal experience related closely to that of the target audience. My story required only minor tweaking and tailoring to better fit the specific segment that "got a ring on it." It made sense for me to give the testimony, regardless of my race, because the experience HAD actually happened to me. Maybe it was too scripted? Maybe it didn't come across as genuine-enough? I don't know - but doesn't the audience prefer a TRUE story vs. one that is totally fabricated? It's interesting to think how a viewer can feel a disconnect with the individual in the testimony based on one factor of difference over a feeling of connection due to several factors of similarity. It's a very fascinating, and yet, a very real phenomenon that I cannot ignore.