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Advertising Copywriting and Production
English 24308 (Wednesday Period W)
Spring 1999
The (Global) Marketplace in the Age of Advertising
Dr. Nancy Barta-Smith
Slippery Rock University
Office: 312 Q SWC; MWF 10:20-11:30; W 4-5, 8:30-9:00 and by appointment
Phone: x2360; nancy.barta-smith@sru.edu
Sample our Goods!
Thoughts on the Future of Advertising
PageMaker Slogan, Product Name, Logo
TEXTBOOK:
Advertising Concept and Copy , Felton, George. Prentice Hall, 1994
A Brief Description of Advertising Copywriting and Production:
Advertising Copy writing and Production is a course in which you will practice the marketing research strategies, ad copy writing, creative analysis and editing necessary to produce strong advertising copy and page design. Advertising Writing and Production includes a broad range of practical, creative and analytical skills.
Although advertisers need to communicate effectively, doing so is generally not simply a matter of getting to the point quickly and succinctly. Nor is creativity in advertising the result of individual talent. In workplace writing of all types, collaboration is the key to getting work done and originality is collective.
My Goals for You as Students in My Advertising Copy Writing Class
5) You will maintain awareness of traditional liberal arts' concerns regarding advertising, such as ethics and equity
6) You will develop a portfolio of ads both representative of the your best work and useful in future job searches.
Advertising Agency Groups (AAG):
You will be grouped with other students to form an advertising agency,
which you will give a name. Your individual campaigns will be the "client accounts"
of this agency. I will work with you to create a file in Microsoft word containing
information for your group's location on the web. During and at the end of the semester, each
agency will present reports orally to its "accounts executive" (the class and instructor) regarding
the campaigns of its clients. You will present and illustrate key points from our reading to the class, such as concepts and principles, layout and graphic design and/or research and marketing strategies. These presentations are part of your class participation and will reinforce your learning and should not require extra preparation beyond reading the text and doing daily work assigned, which you will simply be prepared to present orally when called upon. Your agency is your "base group."
Marketing on the web is increasingly something youshould be prepared for when you graduate,
so I hope to introduce you to it a bit by giving your group a web presence. A web page is nothing
but a normal word processing file. You should not be concerned that you need computer science
training to understand how webpages work. I will be the one putting your agency pages on the
server. You will receive instructions regarding the information you must put on your page.
Advertising copy writers work in groups called creative teams and with research personnel and accounts managers and other departments. Collaboration is a way of life in the world of work. Within your agency, you will be part of a two-person creative team (writers and graphic designers) as you develop your individual advertising campaign. This person has a special obligation to you as a peer reviewer of your work. You should have evidence of the person’s feedback when you hand in your individual campaign—either in the form of hardcopy of email. Each member of the creative team will create and produce one print and/or radio advertising campaign by the end of the course containing several ads. You will hand this in as your final portfolio along with a memo to the accounts manager indicating what you have learned in doing the campaign. Working collaboratively, but producing individual work, will help you to learn to work responsibly with others to prioritize and budget time and to manage several sets of deadlines over the semester, a situation you will encounter lifelong in your professional work.
Assignments and Assessment:
Base Group Activities
Ad Analysis Case Studies. We will spend roughly the first half of the course doing weekly analyses of existing ads while reading about ad strategies and design techniques in Felton. You will be asked to introduce the main ideas from some of the chapters and use your ad to talk about the ideas we are discussing that period. You will each hand in one ad weekly with a copy platform and/or creative brief covering elements of advertising we have discussed so far, in order to prepare you to create your own campaign. The goal is always to collect interesting and provocative or controversial ads with a wide range of recognizable features from a copywriter's perspective. Work with your group to find ads representing as many of the concepts discussed for that week as you can and to ensure you do not duplicate each other’s ads.
You will analyze ads using the same two types of information you will use to prepare your campaign--a copy platform outlining the market strategy behind the ad and an explanation regarding what kinds of audience needs it is targeted to fill--and a creative brief describing the technical features evident in the executed ad. By midterm we will have considered most of the following: selling
points, market strategy, headlines, voice, detail, thesis, organization and structure, style, body copy, illustration, typography, layout, and "creative tools." These are, of course, the same elements of copywriting you will need to use in creating ads and the major headings found in your book.
Ad analysis is also a way to consider ethics and equity in advertising, an
especially important goal when advertising is taught within the context of the liberal arts. Be alert to ways in which an ad succeeds or fails to take what you consider to be an enlightened or progressive stand regarding advertising. Where does it challenge or reinforce stereotypical attitudes? You should also try to come up with a new technique or idea to suggest or a way to extend the campaign to another ad if you possibly can. 30 Points.
Great Ad Campaigns Summary: There is a great story behind every ad campaign. In the process of creating your agency’s bibliography (see below) you may well come across some of them. In an effort to be sure that you read some of the articles you find thoroughly, you are each to write up a report on what you have been able to find out about a significant advertising campaign. If possible, see if you can locate some of the ads or pictures of them to include. You will share what you have found with the class and put a copy of the summary in your midterm portfolio. You may also link it to your webpage. 15 Points
Midterm Portfolio: These assignments will be complete at midterm and represent the culmination of our analysis activities. You will hand in a portfolio of revised ad analyses for your ads and your Great Ads Article Summary (see below) with a progress report to the "accounts manager" that reflects on your attainment of course goals and requirements, at midterm.
2. Agency Web Page 25 Points. Although our book notes that television ads are now more like small film productions, and so are not often the work of copy writers alone, TV ads probably are what most comes to mind when you think of advertising. The powerful visual images, movement, narrative possibilities, and sounds available in television and on the web highlight the importance of creating even print ads with rich narrative and synergistic effects that draw on sensory and linguistic responses at once. In creating your web page, try to create an interesting page. It should have at least 5 links to resources on advertising on the web, as well a link to an annotated bibliography of current web and library articles on some aspect of advertising. You will decide with your agency how to divide responsibilities for the page and bibliography up but each agency’s bibliography should be organized thematically around some aspect of advertising. The page should also list the creative teams at the agency as well as basic information about its principle clients and advertising specialty areas.
Creative Team Activities
Final/Creative Team Ad Campaign Portfolio. 50 Points.
Your "creative team" member will serve as a creative partner to help test and develop your ideas. At the end of the semester, each team will report orally to its "accounts executive" (and the class) regarding the campaigns of its clients. You may choose to link your campaign to your creative team page.
During the second half of the course you will produce a campaign of at least four ads of your own as a member of a creative team for our agency. You may choose or create some product, project, organization, etc. to which you have a strong allegiance and develop a campaign to market it to the class or some segment of the class, or choose a wider market. You should make a habit of looking at professional advertising journals such as Advertising Age to see what ideas are being discussed in the profession. Choose your product early, in order to call, surf, e-mail, or otherwise collect as much information as possible about the market, market segment, competing products, consumer benefits, etc. for your product. You must show evidence of this research in your campaign portfolio. Developing a marketing survey tool based on this information, such as a set of questions for a focus group regarding attitudes toward your product and its competition. This tool will demonstrate that you understand issues of marketing in general and the special problems for your product or service.
If you are already familiar with the "product," you should still find out more. If you choose to market to the class, you will have ready access to classmates to determine what portion of them represent a current and/or potential market.
You should develop a copy platform for your whole campaign using a single market strategy or theme. Four executions of the ad will demonstrate a variety of copy writing creative tools. Each ad
you create should be accompanied by a creative brief in which you discuss your ad using
the concepts and vocabulary of advertising writing used in our textbook. This brief will serve as additional evidence of your reading and assimilation of our textbook, beyond the presentations of key ideas you contribute as we read the chapters.
Note: In-class work will help move you along in this project. We will devote class time to working on your ad campaign during the second half of the semester.
A Word about Attendance, Participation, and Plagiarism:
Attendance and Participation: Missing class without a medical or other valid excuse may result in a reduced grade. Missing more than two classes (the equivalent of two weeks) can result in failing the course. Attendance and participation are especially important for two reasons:
1) Professional writing frequently requires collaboration and that reality will be reflected in our assignments. I will make every effort to keep our class actively student centered as well, since recent research shows that you will learn more, and use what you learn more effectively, if you engage your learning in applying it. You will rarely be asked to remember information as information once you leave the university.
For a classroom to be student centered, you have to be present and active. I will work to facilitate and orchestrate, but you will "play the music." Remember that your participation in all daily work and all activities is necessary for passing the course.
2) Advertising copy writers can expect to work with technology while preparing their work. Class sessions will help you work interdependently and share problems and solutions in the production as well as conception of ads. In class you will be assured of using common programs employed by all members of the class and you will be able to share your special areas of expertise with others.
Periodically we will talk about how actively we are engaged in our discussions and what can be done to ensure the full participation of all. Please do not hesitate to let me know whenever you encounter an obstacle to your full participation.
Plagiarism: Please avoid even the appearance of using another's work without giving credit.
Conferences:
I invite you to conference with me during and outside of class throughout the semester and to have members of the class and tutors at the writing center read your work. In addition, there may be assigned conference times for you to meet with me to discuss your projects and interaction.
