Communication Paper about how to make an Advertisement more effective

Comm 1 PAPER ASSIGNMENT # 2 – Effectiveness of Persuasion Tactics in Advertising

IMPORTANT: See next page for key info about format requirements, policies, grading criteria, and getting help!

You will be analyzing the persuasion tactics used in an advertisement. Your TA will provide you with two

advertisements (TV and/or print), and you will choose ONE ad to analyze for your paper. You must write your paper

on one of the specific ads that your TA assigns to you.

OVERVIEW

Your goal is to build a sophisticated argument about the potential effectiveness of the ad for the audience(s) targeted,

given the concepts we have covered in this class as well as outside empirical research. In your paper, you must:

1) Identify and analyze THREE important persuasive features in the ad that you think would help determine the

degree to which the ad is effective for the particular target audience(s) (which means, of course, that you will

also need to identify who you think is/are the target audience(s) and why).

2) Use outside research: In addition to supporting your arguments with clearly defined course concepts and concrete

examples from the ad, you must find and discuss the findings of at least TWO published empirical studies to

support your arguments about the effectiveness (or not) of some of the particular features in this ad.

SPECIFICS

For the introduction and target audience: Identify which ad you are analyzing, and be sure to provide a thesis

statement(s) about what you plan to discuss and what is the larger point(s) of your paper (keep the intro brief!). A

separate paragraph is also usually necessary to make a case for the target audience(s).

For each separate persuasive feature: Define your term(s) (including citing sources in APA style) and provide

evidence that it is indeed being used in the ad. Discuss how that feature would help or hurt (or both) the effectiveness

of the ad for a given audience. All three features must be concepts/terms discussed in lecture or course readings.

The persuasion-related features, such as source qualities (e.g., credibility, similarity) or message strategies (e.g., fear

appeal, use of a particular kind of evidence) usually work best. However, you may also choose features that come

from other course topics, such as perception (e.g., attention-getting features like salience; or factors that influence

impression formation) or something you find applicable from interpersonal, small group, organizational, or mass

comm (but NOT language or nonverbal topics that could have been discussed in Paper #1).

For the empirical studies: Each study must examine in some way the specific feature(s) of the ad that you’ve chosen

to analyze (e.g., a particular source or message characteristic). Your two studies may both address the same feature,

or they may each address a different feature. The studies must be complete studies reported in academic journals

(not findings summarized in a textbook; not news reports of studies, etc.).

For each study, describe what the study was about, what the study did (e.g., its basic procedure as an experiment or

survey, etc.) and what its main findings were. The exercise that you do for section (Summarizing Published Studies) is

practice for this part of the paper, so use it to help you figure out what to summarize. After describing the study,

apply the study’s findings to the ad you analyzed (e.g., do the findings suggest that the particular use of the feature in

the ad would be effective or ineffective? Why/how?). Be sure also to attach to the back of your paper a print-out

of the “abstract” page of each research article that you used (this is usually the first page and includes the title,

authors, and abstract).

TIPS FOR SUCCESS:

1) Choose your features & studies wisely. You have a lot of choices, so choose the features for which you can make the most interesting/insightful analysis that advances your thesis. For your studies, you need to be able to summarize your studies

clearly and succinctly, so make you find ones that make sense to you. Your application of the studies and where in your paper you

discuss each of them will depend on the findings and how closely you can relate those findings to your arguments about the ad’s

features and its effectiveness! For example, suppose you find a study whose results show that humor is persuasive under certain

conditions. You can use that study to argue for or against (or maybe even both) your ad’s effective use of humor, depending on

how closely your ad’s humor aligns with the type of humor or conditions used in the study, etc.

2) Aim for a fairly complex conclusion: The persuasiveness of an ad is not just whether or not an audience might be influenced, but how and for whom. Are certain segments of an audience likely to be more influenced than others? Does one

feature of the ad increase persuasion while another feature might hinder it? Ultimately, you’ll need to draw some conclusions as to what kinds of influence (or not) you think the ad might have, and these conclusions should be based on the

support/arguments/evidence you have provided/built throughout the paper for the various features.

PAPER ASSIGNMENT #2 CONTINUED…

Requirements and Policies

TURNING IN PAPERS: You are required to submit on GauchoSpace, by the due date and time, an electronic version of your paper (saved as a WORD .doc or .docx file). See the submission instructions on GS at the Paper #2 submission location under the

Week 9 tab. Emailed versions of papers are NOT acceptable. Late papers are penalized 5 points off per day (slightly fewer if

late but still same day as due date). Always keep a file/copy of your paper for your records, and remember that it is your

responsibility to upload a proper version of your paper so that your TA receives your paper.

FORMAT: Your paper should be 5-6 pages in length, not counting title and references pages (please number your pages and do not exceed 6), and must be typed, using Times 12pt, double-spaced, with one-inch margins. Note that many word processing

programs use different default formatting, so be sure to change your settings! Your paper should also have proper spelling,

grammar, and punctuation. Your title page should include a title (of course), your perm #, TA’s name/section, etc. (see GS for

formatting and file naming instructions). Do not identify your paper with your name (just perm #). Do not use a running head nor

include your name anywhere in your paper--the TAs do blind grading (which means they grade papers without knowing whose

paper is whose).

APA STYLE: All source material (e.g., lecture, textbook, academic journal articles, online sources, etc.) must be appropriately cited using APA style (whether directly quoting or paraphrasing). Be sure to use APA (not MLA!) style, both in the text of your

paper, as well as in the References list at the end of your paper. See “Using APA Style” on GauchoSpace for examples.

ACADEMIC HONESTY: Plagiarism will result minimally in a zero grade, so be sure to properly cite your sources. In addition, do NOT “borrow” from another student’s paper, new or old. Even if you change some specific words, YOU ARE

PLAGIARIZING and will receive a zero. I strongly suggest you DO NOT EVEN READ someone else’s paper, as it is

difficult to write your own ideas in an original way once you have seen how someone else has written theirs. You must also be

sure to write your paper on one of the exact advertisements that your TA assigns to you. If you write about the wrong ad, we

can only assume that you have plagiarized from another paper, and you will mostly likely get a zero.

Grading Criteria

Grading is based on how well your paper shows the following: Depth of analysis in using course concepts, effectiveness at

articulating and supporting arguments and thesis, accurate and thorough understanding of course material, clarity and authority in

writing style and organization, and excellent execution of the assignment. We evaluate these qualities by comparing your paper to

others, not to some “ideal” objective we have in mind for the paper. This is because each TA may have a different ideal in mind,

so it is the actual set of papers submitted that tells us what level of excellence is achievable. After years of experience with Comm

1 papers, I can tell you that we usually see a very high level of achievement indeed, so it is a mistake to think that if you just “do

what the assignment asks” you will get a good grade. Doing the assignment is the minimum, and usually results in an “average”

grade (i.e., in the “C+” range). To lift your grade above average, you will need to show sophistication in your thinking and apply

and integrate course concepts with clarity, depth, and insight--this is what the high achieving papers tend to do.

Getting Help on Your Paper(s)

A good paper begins with good thinking, then a good outline, and THEN good writing. An even better paper goes through

several revisions before being turned in. Be sure you give yourself time on your own to think, outline, write, and then revise your

paper. To encourage you to do this, you get points in section for having outlines ready, and (for Paper #2) for completing an

exercise on finding and summarizing empirical studies.

Your TA will devote time in section to helping you understand and do well on the assignment, so it is important to attend section

to get this vital information. You are also encouraged to see your TA or Prof Mullin at office hours. When you come, it is a good

idea to have with you your outline or some notes you’ve made about which potential issues you are considering using. You may

also get writing help from Campus Learning Assistance Services (CLAS), although please note that CLAS tutors, while helpful

with general writing skills, usually do not know the specific course material nor our level of our expectations for these papers.

RE rough drafts: You may bring a rough draft to your TA’s or Prof Mullin’s office hours, and you may ask questions about

any part of your draft or outline. But you must choose only a few sentences of your actual draft to have us go over with you in

detail for writing style and/or content issues. We will not read the entire draft and give you comments. This is because a) any

general comments we make would be misleading to you (i.e., you’d think you’re “on the right track” or just need just a few

changes, but then might still end up with a lower grade than expected), and b) making more detailed comments throughout the

paper would be editing your paper for you, which is not fair to other students, and is YOUR job anyway. So, ASK about ANY

part of your outline or draft, but choose a small portion for detailed writing help. Then you can take what you have learned from

how we tore apart the one paragraph and edit/fix the rest of your paper on your own. 