Marketing a Product
In the next two weeks you will be creating an entire add campaign for a product of your choice targeting a specific audience..
Answer the following questions:
1. Who would your audience be for this product?
2. What would you do to market this product - create an add page - or write a "story" for a TV commercial.
3. What time of day or evening would this commercial air if it were on TV?
4. Where else might you market this product?
5. How would this marketing campaign appeal to this particular audience?
Homework:
Either working alone, or together with a partner, choose a product that you think you might enjoy, or be successful at marketing. You must think of something obscure, that is, a product that is not well known. Write a proposal answering the
same questions that you answered in the classroom activity.
We will have a class discussion of what kind of rhetoric you might use to convince an audience to buy your product - we already used the idea of dialogue similar to a skit, now, think about what kind of tactics might be used in the dialogue of your participants??
In pairs, practice writing each kind of rhetoric when you consider selling, either Vanilla Coke, Gunk, or Spring Water - share a few with the class. I suggest you save this piece of paper to use when you write your ad for the product you have chose, and, you may want to take notes of what classmates have written.
Now share with your partner the identity of the product on which you have chosen to center your Ad Campaign . Then, discuss the following: Which kinds of rhetoric could be use to sell your product; What the graphics might look like in both an ad for TV and an ad for a magazine; and, If the audience you have chosen is appropriate. Choose a slogan for your product if one is appropriate. I will be coming around to observe your discussions.
Homework:
Write an elaborate description of your product, an even more elaborate description of your audience, and a detailed discussion of why this product will appeal to this audience. Write as if you were convincing a major television station or
magazine editor to allow you to fill their ad time.
Next, set the stage for your ad - in great detail describe the setting (every single item on your set needs to be mentioned), the colors involved, the lighting, the music (if any) Also include exactly which rhetorical strategies you plan to
use and the dialogue your characters will be speaking. Bring a hard copy of this to class on Wednesday. Bringing this copy to class on Wednesday is an important part of your grade - it will not count if someone brings it for you.