Intention Effect

When I was in middle school I used to have my profile picture as a cute image of a character, but for a while I have solely had photos of me as my profile picture. I don't change profile pictures often--I usually have maybe one or two a year at max because I get rather attached to them.

My current profile picture is a matching profile picture with my boyfriend, so it has a deep significance to me so I was a bit reluctant to have to change it. At first I didn't want to actually change my profile picture, but when I was asking around to see effects on people, it just wasn't the same effect as I would've gotten if I had actually changed it, so I decided I would actually change it in order to get the best reaction.

I decided to change my profile picture to a "poster" advertising one of my clubs, KPDC (kpop dance club) and our open dance classes. We're a new club and I thought we could also benefit from the extra publicity while seeing what their reaction is as well :P 

I used to have a personal rule at one point that I wouldn't ever make my profile picture into something for advertising, but it has become more and more common as I see my friends constantly updating theirs to advertise their events, so I thought I could try it for this assignment.

Intention

My intention is to make people more curious about what KPDC is and see if people respond to it and will be interested in what I am showing. Hopefully I will be able to make people know more about us. If possible they would also come to our open dance classes :D

Of course the only people who this poster will apply to is CMU students, so I'm expecting mostly people from my university to like/comment. I'm curious who aside from CMU dancers and my close friends will respond to this profile picture. Because it's an advertisement, I'm expecting less likes compared to my photos, but perhaps other officers or passionate members from the club will.

Also, maybe people will be curious why I changed it and wonder if something happened between me and my boyfriend? But likely not since most people already know I'm an active officer of the club, and most of my friends as of high school and college know that I love to dance so it's not surprising that I'd be part of a club like this. 

Process

I took a poster that my club recently made (by Alice Zhang) and resized it into a square so that no words would get cut off. It's actually interesting to note that profile pictures are usually in a square or circle shape. The original poster was meant to fit a sheet of paper, so I had to squish all the letters to fit within the bounds of a profile picture.

(Unfortunately, I noticed a bit after posting it that part of it was slightly off-center and it really bothered me but it was too late to repost...)

Product

The poster itself looked pretty cool in my opinion. As a thumbnail the words aren't too visible, but it has a cool effect.

Effect

I posted my profile picture at 6:30pm. The time one posts a profile picture actually makes a difference. Marketers specifically analyze the time and date that they spread their advertisements in order to get the maximum effect. I just picked a random time that was convenient for me, but 6:30pm is roughly the time students finish classes and club activities and should be at home browsing...

Sure enough I quickly got comments from my high school friends. I suppose college students work later at night.

We were in a small dance performance for our Japanese class before I graduated...it really helped us get in touch again. Similarly my best friend Jia struck a conversation with me about kpop dance club and gave me recommendations for what we could do to improve.

I also had an unexpected freak out from one of the club officers about me posting it so soon because we weren't teaching lessons this week, so he thought people could misunderstand and go to the classes this week, but I quickly clarified that by updating my description...

I also got a couple of troll comments from friends who weren't from CMU xD

Reflection

In the end, as I expected, I got significantly less likes. I feel like had I been more popular or had the club I was advertising for been a sorority or something, I could have more supporters but instead KPDC is still too small for people to know. The few friends who did like my photo were close friends who danced with me or just people who were kind of half trolling me, or people who were part of KPDC. I think in the end my goal did succeed a bit because someone messaged me about the lessons on Tuesday, so I know I reached at least one person :)

I did get some messages from a friend of mine who told me more about her own college's kpop dance club, which also helped me with how I aspire my club to be like in the future. Overall, I think that my profile picture wasn't very impactful, in fact, it was intended and was expected to be less impactful, which it was. People naturally avoid advertising and marketing tactics, and naturally my profile picture was less liked than my others, which usually generate 100-150 likes within the first day, whereas this picture only gathered around 11 likes, though it did generate some small conversation in the comments section, but it's hard to tell who actually appreciated this marketing.