Portico MLA
Business Papers
Website
Identity
Jane Austen CD Package
Creative Brief
Participants
Karlyn, PJ., and David
Overview
What would you like us to do for you? What is the purpose and scope of the project (heighten credibility, expand services,
sell 2000 widgets, etc.)?
Our top goal is to construct a website that allows Karlyn to create and explore new possibilities in the future. She imagines many possibilities, and the website should have room to grow. She wants the site to take care of all payments, offer membership areas, live video courses, AND pre-packaged multi-session audio and video courses.
As soon as Karlyn creates the first two courses, the site will be ready to go live.
Note: The courses may also be available on DVD.
Overarchingly, She wants to facilitate and encourage an online community of people who enjoy expert-guided tours of music, literature, and art explorations. This curated art, literature, and music experience will expand minds and improve lives.
Karlyn plans to lead an active (and profitable) blog to lead people to products and courses.
Karlyn admires The Society of the Four Arts in Florida. They offer a physical campus with lecture halls, performance venues, museums, libraries, and more. Plus, they provide virtual music, literature, dance, and theater courses as well. Some events are fee-based, and others are free. Karlyn signed up for a class with a leader who started with a 15-minute introduction followed by a facilitated group conversation. Karlyn would love to lead a book club that starts with a presentation and then a discussion.
The Society of the Four Arts offers concerts for $30 to $40 where you can hear them live-streamed or attend live with COVID safety protocols in place. The people who register and attend are not seeking academic credit but are there instead because of their interest. Learning for the joy of learning is lovely, and Karlyn wants to promote more of that.
On a small scale, Karlyn envisions herself being the virtual equivalent of The Society of the Four Arts, but with three arts — music, literature, and visual art. She has less experience with visual art, but she will stretch to add visual arts to the offering. Karlyn's team-taught interdisciplinary honors courses many times. Multidisciplinary approaches are excellent because of exploring a subject as seen through the lenses of various professors. The last team-taught course she taught was with an English professor. The class was called Utopia/Dystopia. We looked at texts and music that explored the themes of utopia and dystopia.
Karlyn has MANY ideas for outstanding classes. Plus, once the system is established, the site could include many other leaders, facilitators, and teachers.
Here's the essence: Karlyn wants to privatize what she's been doing for the last 25 years as a professor. She'd like to teach all the fun classes that she never had time to teach. She's excited to have absolute freedom as to what she does and how she does it. There's not a committee in sight. She can teach outside of her discipline.
Karlyn brings an essential enthusiasm for music and literature to people's lives. She shares the love with students who also love the subjects.
Karlyn says: "I bring stuff alive. I can guide exploration in an intellectual and aesthetically stimulating way without being intimidating."
The KEY: Art makes your life better. Art is restoration. Art repairs the damage of day-to-day life. Art makes your soul grow.
Projects include
Design Logo
Design Business Identity
Design Website to include:
Shop
Allison commissions
Concert Series
House Concerts (Solo, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 people)
Live Classes
Salons (Pre-recorded concerts and pre-prepared classes)
About
Blog
Creative Considerations
What limitations or constraints do you have (budget, schedule, size, paper, etc.)? What elements or colors or other personal preferences must be represented in this project? Where will additional materials that we do not create come from? (writing/photography/illustration etc.) What are examples of projects of this type you have seen that you think are effective? Can you please share some samples?
We need to respect the budget closely. This project has to pencil.
Karlyn has lots of experience with PJ's aesthetic, and it resonates with her. She's a Neo-classicist, and he's a modernist, but still, they connect. Karlyn and PJ like Elements of simplicity. Karlyn likes colorful, but light, not heavy. Her favorite color is yellow. Karlyn says she is happy to turn PJ loose on a clean, simple, light design aesthetic.
Note: Karlyn likes cute things too.
Another Note: Karlyn imagines that the logo will be a column capital with a keyboard.
Resources:
Writing: Karlyn
Photography: Karlyn is working on photography. She knows that a pro will bring value, but she hasn't adequately addressed the budget problem. She wonders: Should I do pro photos or thoughtful amateur photos?
Illustration: Illustration assets will come from Allison Palmer. It's still unclear how we shall incorporate her work.
Product Description
What are the products or services your business provides? What is the product or service that you want to promote? What are its features? How much does it cost? What is it made of, and how is it used? What makes it different, unusual, or unique?
Here are the products:
Pre-packaged courses: Maybe Ten 20-minute sessions. Varied content.
Live Courses: Maybe Bach inventions. Maybe students can perform. Karlyn is thinking of 12 to 20 sessions at 60 to 90 minutes each.
Discussions: These will be 45-60 minute courses. We'll include book clubs too.
Blogs: Karlyn imagines an accessible and spectacular musical blog. For example, she could perform the Chopin Circle of Fifths as a blog — 24 weeks. The combined blogs could one day be a book.
Concerts: Karlyn plans Salons of less than 60 minutes. Content includes solo artists, chamber music, poetry, and more.
Store: We'll offer recordings, stickers, pins, and more.
Note: Pricing will range from $25 to $250.
Competition
What makes your business special among similar businesses? What's your value proposition? Who is your present competition? Who would you like to be competing with? What similar products or services are currently available, and how good are they?
Honestly, there's not much independent coursework available. There are few to no similar businesses. Nobody seems to be charging $250. Two or three professors have independent websites and offer these sorts of things based on their publications. Google the following terms, and you won't find many offerings: Adult continuing education, literature, art, independent, non-college affiliated, no credit, explorations.
Note: This guy does some similar stuff:
robkapilow.com/programs/what-makes-it-great
Target Audience & Market Realities
Who is your current primary audience (gender, age, socioeconomics, employment, geographics)? How much do they know about the product? What are their attitudes toward products or businesses like yours? What motivates them? Who do you want your audience to be?
My customers are going to be people who are interested in music, literature, and art. My audience is seeking a low-stress, flexible way to explore those subjects with a bit of guidance. They can study at home or anywhere.
This project will appeal to people over a vast spectrum of ages. Karlyn guesses that users will be primarily adults, but she'd like to try book club sessions for junior high and older kids. "There are so many fascinating young adult books."
The project certainly appeals to women, but we hope for men as well. Geographically, we'll start around Salt Lake City and expand from there.
How much do people know: Nothing. Portico MLA is a very new concept. The small scale of our offering is innovative.
People are motivated by feelings of deprivation since COVID has limited access to art and music. People are bored and curious. They desire lifelong learning. People desire growth, and they grow when exposed to classical music, literature, and visual art. We'll offer quality continuing education for less money than university courses. Portico MLA will offer formal, guided learning without a bureaucracy or counting credits. We offer learning for the joy of learning. People who like small book shops, museums, concerts, and visual arts will like Portico MLA.
Ideally, we appeal to the curious. Karlyn envisions that college-educated people who miss college will become subscribers.
Karlyn also has a long list of former students. We can connect with them to get the marketing effort started.
User Benefits
How will the user be better off using your product or service? Will he or she save time, effort, or money? If so, how much? How important is this product to the consumer? Are there tradeoffs (higher quality but higher price)?
Karlyn would like to assist people as they "change existence into living." Remember Maslow's hierarchy of needs? The audience has achieved some level of satisfying their needs, and now they wish to enhance their lives. Portico MLA will help people enhance their lives, avoid boredom, and address loneliness.
Karlyn is a guide to where the good stuff is.
Most Important Point (MIP)
What are the top three (or more) ranked benefits of your product or service? If you could choose only one thing the audience remembers from your advertising, what would it be?
We introduce subscribers to the same resources they might find in museums, book stores, and live concerts.
Subscribers will be more intellectual, cultural, and educated.
We guide subscribers to "the good stuff."
Subscribers will learn about new and old (and always amazing) arts, books, and music.
Subscribers will be much more alive.
Michaelangelo: "Every beauty which is seen here below by persons of perception resembles more than anything else that celestial source from which we all have come…
My eyes longing for beautiful things together with my soul longing for salvation have no other power to ascend to heaven than the contemplation of beautiful things."
Saint Paul: "Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable — if anything is excellent or praiseworthy — think about such things."
MIP: Beauty heals. Go where the beauty is.
As humans, we need beauty so we don't throw ourselves in front of a bus.