Download How To Teach A Great Unit on Advertising

2. Exploring & explaining advertising
Every day students are exposed to advertising but will very rarely have thought about
how advertisers are attempting to manipulate them. To begin to explore advertising
then, they need to see some examples of advertising in action and think about the
persuasive techniques going on.
1. Persuasive word graph: Advertisers consistently use a certain set of
words that make a persuasive impact on consumers. Here are the 16
most persuasive words used in advertising: Discover, Easy, Good, Save,
Guaranteed, Proven, Money, Safe, New, Results, Own, Free, Freedom,
Health, Best, Investment. Attached is a handout labelled ‘Persuasive Word
Graph’ - give each student a copy along with a newspaper (a tabloid
newspaper works best). Ask them to flick through the newspaper and
keep a record of how many instances of each type of word they find.
2. Attention / Interest / Desire / Action: There’s a lot we could
tell students about strategies advertisers use, but it can be most useful to
focus on AIDA - the most common strategy used by advertisers. Attached
are two handouts: AIDA - Print; and AIDA - Non-Print. Students can
analyse several print and non-print ads, identifying the aspects that capture
attention, maintain interest, create desire and point the consumer towards
an action. A very clear television commercial example to start with, is any
Harvey Norman ad. There’s a number on Youtube, such as this one here:
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmeqI8pcsMI
3. Ad rank: Once students have an understanding of AIDA they can
evaluate which advertisements are best in each category of AIDA. Ask
students to create a table such as the one below - and to evaluate and
justify which ad is best:
Ad 1
Ad 2
Ad 3
Ad 4
Attention
Interest
Desire
Action
You can use this collection of four ads as a resource:
• http://www.youtube.com/playlist?
list=PL38231084523FF2C4&feature=plcp
4. How has advertising changed: A very engaging way of getting
students to think about the target audience for advertising is to look at
A Ticking Mind Resource!
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how certain ads have changed over the last century. Coke advertisments
are an excellent example of this. The following website has a
comprehensive archive of Coke ads. Ask students to look at the very first
ad and the very last – how has the target audience changed?
• http://www.crookedbrains.net/2008/02/coca-colas-ads-spread-overcentury.html
5. Sloganizer: The sloganizer is just a fun activity to do with students.You
simply type in a product name and a slogan is generated. If you do it
together as a class, students will see over 10 or so examples that a
pattern in the language that slogans use emerges:
• http://www.sloganizer.net/en/
6. Ad Mongo: This is an interactive advertising game created and
maintained by the Federal US Government. The game has high production
values, many levels and is genuinely entertaining. This will appeal to year 7
& 8 students:
• http://www.admongo.gov/admongo.html
• http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/cool/
A Ticking Mind Resource!
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