This activity teaches the students how advertisers work and lets them try tasks as if they were in the industry. As a teacher, you should pick a business to advertise, such as an ice cream shop. The goal is for students to create advertising to persuade the class to purchase food from this restaurant. You should talk about different advertising techniques by showing examples from the past years and the current ads. Show ads for food and restaurants and discuss which ads look appealing. Give students different ideas on what an ad might look like. Allow students to search the net to find ads for restaurants. Give students a few days to create an ad. Show the ads in class and vote for the best ad.
The goal of this activity is to show the students how advertisers use different techniques to persuade consumers to buy products. There are eight advertising techniques, according to Anne Arundel County Public Schools website. They are "bandwagon," "testimonial," "transfer," "repetition," "emotional words," "name-calling," "faulty cause and effect," and "compare and contrast." Show examples of each technique. For practice, display several ads and ask students to name the technique used for each ad. For the activity, ask each student to pick an advertising technique and create an ad for a business using that technique. This activity can be done in groups.
You should discuss the language that advertisers use in ads and commercials. Give examples of the words and phrases. For example, use empty words that appear significant but mean nothing, such as "virtual," "acts," "looks like." The product may "look like" or "work like" something else, but in reality it often doesn't. Give examples of ads that use vague or incomplete phrases to catch consumers' attention, such as "the end of meatloaf boredom," or "Scott makes it better for you." Show TV commercials and magazine ads that use testimonials by celebrities who don't use the product or commercials with scientific claims to make the product appear superior, such as "Certs contain a sparkling drop of Retsyn." To practice, give students copies of ads and encourage them to describe the product or service using the advertising language.
Talk about TV ads in class. Show commercials and discuss who they are targeted at, why are they targeted at that demographic and how successful the ads are. Identify which ads students like and dislike, and discuss why. Discuss the techniques used in these commercials. Give students a choice of products or services to create a 30-second commercial. Students can be divided into groups for this activity or do it on their own by enlisting their family and friends to act in the commercial.