Monday, September 12, 2005
Today was the best Media Copywriting class yet. Not only did we almost fill all 80 minutes, but quality interaction finally developed. It even seemed the students enjoyed themselves at times!
We started with all the students announcing what product they would use for their campaign. Gaming devices were popular -- we'll have people designing ads for the X-Box 360, PlayStation and EA Sports. Alcohol will represent as well, with intriguing campaigns from Anheuser-Busch, Keystone and Admiral Nelson Spiced Rum expected. Gnarlysurf will be pleased one student will promote Fanta. There are some novel entries too: Prince tennis racquets (not to be confused with the entertainer), the Syracuse University football team and Milton-Bradley board games.
After about a half-hour of lecture, I asked them to name the consumer drives and appeals included in advertising, things like comfort, convenience, curiosity, egotism, hero worship, kindness/generosity/unselfishness and, everyone's favorite, love and sex. Then I went down each one and asked them to give examples of products or brands appealing to each. For instance, what commercials use and love and sex in the appeal? Diamonds, Tag body spray, beer, condoms, erectile dysfunction medication, etc. Of course, most of those are heavier on sex than love. Along the way, the clear lesson was that many advertisements use multiple appeals. Then one student raised his hand and asked: Wouldn't it benefit advertisers to use as many different appeals as possible? I replied, with ill-concealed enthusiasm: Absolutely! I was thrilled with such a great observation made without any prompting. I'm still smiling just thinking about it. I'm a dork, OK?
We closed the class with about 15 minutes work in Adobe InDesign. Simple stuff like opening a new page, creating and sizing a box, typing and altering copy. Some already knew it, and the others took to it quickly. I let them go about five minutes early, but remained happy to have used so much time productively.
I know not every class will go this well. There will be ones that will run short, where the interaction won't flow, where my lectures will prove boring. But classes like today are ones I can tuck in the back of my memory to cheer me up in the future.
posted by Tim 7:37 PM
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