Sunday, October 30, 2011

Advertising: Working as a collective (Part 1)

You've gotten your eye for advertising trained to be pretty sharp. Or so you think. In the real world, no one every works alone! For this next assignment, you are going to come up with a full advertising campaign as a group. THREE people will make up each group and there will be four different groups. Now, the pressure is on.

The group's performance depends on the reliability of it's members. You all now have a stake in each class member's attendance, work ethic, dependability and creativity. If one of you slacks off, it's up to the others in your group to get the slacker back on track. ALL members of the group will receive the same final grade for your final presentation regardless of individual participation. Don't allow any of your members to get away with not pulling their own weight! It's up to YOU to control your group, not me.

We will handle this campaign in stages. During each stage, your group will present your ideas and concepts, sketches and drawings, working comps and then final campaigns. Each phase of this assignment will be graded! Each person must do part of the presentation. If one person does not, they get a ZERO for the grade for that particular presentation. You can NOT make this zero grade up. I will NOT change it in my grade book! Discuss your presentation before hand and decide which of you will present what information. Plan ahead! For your FINAL presentation, you must all dress up as if you were presenting to real clients. That means dresses (or business-type suits) for ladies and suits (at the very least, dress shirt and tie) for the gentlemen. I am taking this project VERY seriously! Don't test my boundaries on the final presentation. You won't like the results!

Now, I wouldn't put you through all of this without some sort of prize as an incentive. :) The final presentations will be judged by a panel (of my choosing) and it will be decided which group did the best job. The winning group will get a free pass on the next assignment. That means you won't have to do the next assignment AND you'll get an automatic 100 grade. If you choose to complete the next assignment anyway, your grade will be entirely extra credit! 100 extra credit points will go a LONG way to improving your grade!

So, on to the assignment:

This week, your group will start to discuss ideas. You will have today's class and Wednesday's class to come up with them. I want to see ALL of your ideas written down to turn in. (there must be at LEAST 20 different ideas.) First thing on Monday (of next week) your group will present your three BEST ideas to the class and the class will vote on them and tell you which one to choose and work on. DO NOT SKETCH IDEAS AT THIS POINT. Just work on your ideas, written down on paper. Remember, your group has to turn in at least 20 ideas on paper by Monday. Be thinking of catchy tag lines, advertising headlines and body copy. Think of the direction for your ad. Will it be serious? Funny? Who will it appeal to? Adults? 20-somethings? 30-somethings? Men? Women? Single people? Families? First time customers or experienced customers? I want you to put a LOT of effort into thinking about this. That's why you'll be getting TWO class periods to work on ideas as a group. You should ALSO be spending time OUTside of class to work on this as a group. If you don't have good ideas hashed out by next Monday, you'll FAIL this part of the assignment. Am I clear?

Now, you'll need this one vital piece of information:
You are advertising an automobile.

You can choose any car, any car company, but it must actually exist. No made-up companies or cars. You may NOT use any of their existing advertising slogans or messages. You should research your ideas to make sure someone hasn't already used them. If they have, you'll FAIL this part of the assignment. You'll look like you're cheating if I think you've stolen an ad slogan or campain from someone else.

HOMEWORK:
• Come up with a MINIMUM of 20 different (decent) ideas. Write them down to turn in.
• Pick your THREE favorite ideas and develop a presentation for all three.
• You must "sell" these ideas to the class. The class will pick your final direction for you.

Your 20 written ideas and your 3-idea presentations are due on Monday, November 7th. Each group member should present one idea during the presentation.

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