By Alex Bottner

What I learned from my SCA 2.0 Scholarship Application.

I am going to break down the process I went through and what I learned from submitting my SCA 2.0 scholarship entry.

I had no idea how the stock market really worked, so I started researching how to affect stock prices. Bloomberg became a top hit in my Google Chrome homepage and everyday, I would read about what was affecting the stock prices of different companies. Around this time, Kanye West went on TMZ and proclaimed that “slavery was a choice.” I remember there were calls to boycott Yeezy shoes and Adidas, but I wanted to see if this had any impact on Adidas, or if it was just noise. I learned that it had, but what Bloomberg suggested was that Adidas should really be focusing on revamping Reebok, because since they were bought out by Adidas, their sales were slumping. This would be far more beneficial for them than relying on unpredictable celebrities to create “brand heat” for shoes with limited releases.

I tried to think of what Reebok didn’t have that other fitness brands did – a fitness app. What was something Reebok could do that could give them an edge? Get a head start on the future of VR  fitness, and use it to revamp their lost brand identity. I had learned that brand partnerships and investments is one of the main factors that leads to affecting stock prices, so I found a VR fitness startup that I felt Reebok could partner with. Reebok would become the first fitness brand to launch a VR fitness programme, and Blackbox VR in turn would earn credibility and receive help with expanding their VR gyms globally.

I felt confident about my concept, but struggled with how to communicate and pitch it. In my head, I thought that I had come up with a clear concept. As I was sneakily working on this project during my day job, I would write drafts of my script that I was going to play over my presentation video, but had never really rehearsed it out loud. When I read my script out loud tomy boyfriend, I was hit with reality. What had made sense in my head didn’t make nearly as much sense out loud, and certainly not to somebody who didn’t know anything about  the concept. 

He had no idea what the  core message was.I had also inadvertently adopted a similar tone of voice to the articles that I was using as research. My script sounded like a dry stock analysis, and not like a campaign. At this point, I had four pages of script. There was no way this was going to fit into a 2 minute video. I had spent so long working on drafts and drafts of my script, that I hadn’t even gotten to making the actual video or the voiceover. I began finalising my video and when I went to rehearse my new and improved script, it was again too convoluted and wordy. I tore apart my script, tried talking over my video with what came natural to me, and finally my idea started to seem real. I cut down that script from four pages, to two pages, and finally to ten sentences. Each sentence was valuable and got straight to the point. In short, I learned to:  Stop wasting words and make your point.