DEVELOPMENTAL OPPORTUNITIES
COMMUNITY AWARENESS SEMINAR:
LIVING IN LIMBO
Audrey and Natalie attended a seminar conducted by AWARE (Association of Women for Action and Research) called Living in Limbo - Gender and Housing Insecurity in Singapore led by panellists of industry experts, to understand more about the barriers leading to housing insecurity experienced by underprivileged women.
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Learning points:
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Hidden homelessness in Singapore
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Various reasons for why women, especially those from low-income households, fall into and get trapped in the poverty cycle
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Barriers to receiving help
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Age limit
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Difficulties in acquiring documents needed
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Lack of safety net for them to fall back on​
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With the sharing of data and reports, the seminar helped us to understand the overall scene of women with low income and homelessness in Singapore.
Additionally, the panellists shared personal experiences they have working with women with low income, which gave us more insight into the different nuances of their lived experiences.
These sharings helped us greatly in our community mapping phase, as we were able to discern gaps prevalent in the community, allowing us to come up with a problem statement we aimed to solve.
CONSULT WITH THE SAVON PEOPLE
Before the launch of our business, Damien consulted our industry partner, The Savon People, for tips on starting a soap business in Singapore. They gave us many valuable insights regarding shop rental and application of licenses, but we felt that the ones relating to finance was the most applicable to us.
They suggested various ways or venues to cut costs, including sharing where they acquire their ingredients (cheaper than the market price). Another method that they implement is cutting costs on what was not important to their target market. Their target market prefers high quality ingredients over aesthetics, so they save money by purchasing cheaper moulds that may not be as visually appealing.
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Learning points:
The importance of knowing target market preferences
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Knowing what was attractive to our target market enabled us to cut cost on things that were not a priority
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Our target market preferred aesthetics over quality, thus we cut down our costs by sourcing for the cheapest yet most reliable ingredients as per The Savon People's recommendation
MARKETING WEBINAR: TAKE YOUR BRAND TO THE NEXT LEVEL WITH SOCIAL MEDIA
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Natalie attended the “Take Your Brand To The Next Level With Social Media” webinar hosted by Xero.
The webinar provided insights on using social media as marketing, and how to appropriately share information and any promotional material.
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Learning points:
What not to post:
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Factually inaccurate information
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Posts that overlook photo context (Ensure photos carry relevance to text)
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Culturally insensitive posts
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How to effectively make use of apps that boost social media posts:
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Understand that different apps serve different functions, e.g for Instagram and TikTok, one can use:
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Social posting: hootsuite.com
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Graphics: canva.com
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Links: bit.ly
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Subtitles: rev.com
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DIY marketing automation: zapier.com
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Drawing inspiration from the webinar, Natalie used applications like Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, and Adobe Express for our social media posts. A colour palette consisting of 4 colours was also used to help build our brand identity and stick to a standard look that we kept constant for all our posts and collaterals. As visual communication was mentioned as an important factor in brand identity in the webinar, the colours we selected to represent Bubble Blocks were also crucial and our palette ultimately helped us to positively represent our social enterprise to the public.
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Using TikTok was also another technique; though our main source of social media presence was on Instagram, the algorithm of TikTok allowed us to reach a lot more first-time viewers through getting on the For You Page. Thanks to this feature, we received thousands of views on our TikTok videos which also boosted our social media presence.
BRAND MANAGEMENT ONLINE COURSE: ALIGNING BUSINESS, BRAND AND BEHAVIOUR
Sofiya enrolled in a course called Brand Management: Aligning Business, Brand, and Behaviour, provided by the University of London and London Business School.
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How did it help the enterprise?
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Helped Bubble Blocks understand the direction that we needed to take when designing our business and forming our enterprise identity
Learning Points:
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Branding not only encompasses a business’ name and logo, but symbols, slogans and “coined” trademarks​
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A mission statement is important in establishing an enterprise’s space in the market, as it lets a consumer know what causes they are supporting when purchasing or investing in a product
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Aligning Bubble Blocks’ brand and behaviour
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E.g. Brand colours - #FAE6B1, #FFA101, #B3DEE5, #31525B - align with our business approach as a fun-loving enterprise with products and workshops fit for all demographics of people
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The 3E model
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Efficiency
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Effectiveness
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Experience
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PRODUCT DESIGN PODCAST: INTERVIEW WITH DAN WINGER
Tyra listened to podcast by Design Better, “Dan Winger: building the future at LEGO”.
Dan Winger is Senior Innovation Designer at the LEGO Future Lab. He shared about LEGO being a product-driven company, and how he designs them to be addictively engaging and highly-engineered design masterpieces.
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Learning points:
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Paying attention to the needs of customers is very important; constantly evolving around to innovate new ideas for products to remain relevant in industry
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“Stories shape products” - building franchises/themes around products enables customers to feel more connected
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Market research/feedback from third parties/industry partners can holistically give information on microtrends that can be leveraged
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This podcast taught Tyra how themes can integrate new elements into our bar soaps to be more exciting. Looking out for growing trends among the market can help with enhancing products to be more marketable, which can open doors to new opportunities. For instance, naming soaps after Hollywood stars or children shows can bolster a sense of familiarity with customers, which makes them feel more connected and inclined to purchase.