It's over. It's finally over.

This post may be slightly (very) belated, but after such a heavy brief I couldn't bring myself to write about it immediately without intense feelings of trauma and stress. Okay that may be an over-exaggeration, however I definitely needed to time away from thinking about it.

After two weeks and what feels like the longest brief in the history of advertising courses, I can say that the Debate Brief is finally over. It has been one hell of a ride and I have learned so much, made great friends and I am really really happy with myself, my group and just generally how things have panned out.

As I said in my previous post, my group were arguing the side of DevoPlus which essentially means Scotland wanted more powers to control their own taxes and raise what they spend and blah blah blah. The approach we initially took was to vote No to independence and remain part of the UK - like in real life - but we quickly realised that the only way anything would change would be through a Yes vote. We scrambled down several paths to try and come to a conclusive campaign that we could run with and ended up with the '#ProgressTheYes' campaign.
The main ethos for this campaign was that we, as an organisation, were 'For the people, not the politicians'. We would ask voters to send in or upload 'selfies' of themselves to an app with a reason for why they were ultimately deciding to vote yes. These would then also be uploaded to a dedicated Twitter account with the hashtag '#ProgressTheYes'. Running alongside this would be a mobile photo booth which travels around Scottish towns and cities, allowing more members of the public to get involved. These photos would also be uploaded online. Prior to the campaign going live we would release teaser posters to an already well established Twitter account. These would generate interest, willing people to get involved.
Scamp photos to be uploaded shortly.


The second part of the brief was to take part in a debate - as the name Debate Brief would obviously suggest. When it actually came to the debate, it wasn't structured in the way that I had imagined. It felt much more as if each team would take it in turns to be 'attacked' by the opposing teams than an actual debate with structured, back and forth arguments. I personally don't feel that my team did particularly well in this section, we definitely tried our best but under stressful conditions such as that we may have just lost our train of thought and it's as if all of our knowledge just fell from our heads. The fact that my team were debating a somewhat unclear middle ground also made it difficult to argue a strong and convincing point.

I am pleased with how I performed throughout this brief, from talking to my team mates in the days afterwards I believe that they were also pleased with my deputy-leadership skills and gave me good peer assessment feedback. I look forward to receiving my overall grade in the next week.