It was good to share with the class our ideas for our business and to hear how everyone else was getting along. It also bought home the magnitude of what we were all hoping to achieve; there’s a lot still to be done. I think the main thing that we took away from our presentation is that we need an effective way to demonstrate to potential advertisers what we are capable of. Although we have had a lot of interest in the idea it is important that we can show them something more which is why we are exploring doing a small edition first up which we can show to advertisers to attract business. On top of this we are launching a website which will be another point of reference for businesses before they hopefully decide to invest in us. Finally we are looking at doing a PDF version on CD which we can hand out to interested stakeholders.
All of the above are examples of how we can boost the awareness of our brand which will hopefully lead to profit. They are also examples of prototyping. Having set off at a fair pace, last week’s class gave us a chance to take a step back and address the direction we were taking. I think we may have been guilty of concentrating too much on what the consumer of the magazine requires without taking enough time to consider the needs of the businesses who will actually be financing our venture. Our business won’t work unless we get both sides right so going forward we have agreed to base our decisions around both of their needs.
