MKT 376

Assignment: Sample Brief

Sample Brief Here’s what you’ll learn You will practice your formatting and message packaging skills. Visual communication techniques are emphasized. Non-graded assignment During an in-week exercise your groupmates will assess and coach your message packaging skills (Please see: D2L Lecture Videos—Sample Brief Assignment, and, Assessing Sample Brief. Here’s what you’ll do Apply the techniques you acquired in Week 2. You will create a Sample Brief that demonstrates design and formatting skills. You will create: • Masthead • Motivation Sentence • Subheads

• Spacing • Table

You will write content only for: • Masthead • Motivation Sentence Other text can be nonsense You can use any character to create space-holder text (See examples, below).

Assignment: Sample Brief

TO: Ms. Barbara Sikora, Administrative Assistant FROM: D. Joel Whalen, Ph.D., Associate Professor DATE: January 12, 2010 RE: Request for Space Suit Your recent technology purchases delivered important, new, quality and efficiency advances. Please consider this request: a space suit I can wear during lectures. It’s cool—I sweat The rate of perspiration I achieve during a lecture is aµazing. Frequently, student s stop listening to the content of µy lesson, because the Mississippi River of swe at running down µy face distracts theµ. Soµe of the parts of µy body that sweat in clude: l Face l Top of head l Back

l Feet l Hands l Chest and stoµach

A spacesuit, as you know, coµes with a portable air conditioning unit. The inside re µains at a cool, constant teµperature. A fan circulates air. A cooling liquid is pu µped about the extreµities like hands and legs.

Houston communication You know that I have not had an original thought since 1953 and that I’µ totally d ependent on µy partner, Tina M. Ricca, for constant coaching. A space suit’s telec oµµunications systeµ will allow Tina to send µe instructions during the lecture t hrough speakers in the helµet. She will also be able to µonitor the lecture and cu t off µy µicrophone when I begin to raµble on¾a frequent probleµ. Teaching tool belt The space suit I propose to wear during class has been developed by NASA specifi cally to bring the benefits of space-age technology to sweaty little professors. Anticipating the teachers’ needs, the suit has a built in chalk dispenser in the glo ves, and a pointer that extends froµ the right forefinger.

Masthead l Bold l Underlined

Motivation Sentence l No “I” “me” “my” l Write from reader’s perspective l Pitch benefits l Use: “you” “your” “you’re”

Subhead l Bold l Upper & lower case l Double space above l Single space below

Bullets l Short bullets in columns l Bullet 65% of line height

Copy (text) l Greeked-in (symbol font)

General l 12 pt. Serif typeface l 1” margins minimum

Bullets l Flush left l Text is indented

Simple Writing l 1 preposition or conjunction per sentence l 1 idea per paragraph

Assignment: Sample Brief

Assignment: Sample Brief