Creating Persuasive and Effective Visuals

Session One

Introduce the assignment.

• Explain that students will be creating visuals, e.g., posters, flyers, ads, collages, to persuade a designated audience to take action on a particular issue or topic.
• Discuss the main communicative purpose of advertising, whether in newspapers, or on radio, television or the Internet. Elicit the idea that advertisements try to persuade people to do something; e.g., buy a specific brand of cola, convince people not to drink and drive, or persuade people to donate money to a cause. Indicate that the class is going to learn about persuasive techniques and to examine the qualities of effective visual forms of advertising.

Introduce techniques of persuasion.

• Distribute to each student a copy of Persuasion Techniques in Advertising. Review the concept of techniques––ways to achieve the desired results. You may wish to ask individual students to read aloud the descriptions of each technique. As they go through each one, ask students if they can think of examples of ads that use these forms of persuasion.

Identify persuasive techniques.

• Invite students to examine the posters you assembled or the advertisements they brought to class. Ask them to identify the persuasive techniques illustrated in the examples; e.g., buzzwords, bandwagon. Invite students to comment on the effectiveness of the persuasive techniques. You may wish to have students use sticky notes to label the techniques. Ask students if they can identify any additional techniques not described in Persuasion Techniques in Advertising. To address ICT outcomes, students can paste digital images of advertisements and posters into an electronic document and label the images using callout features of their software (see Identifying Persuasion Techniques Example).
• You may wish to ask students to find examples of effective ads that employ one or more of the persuasive techniques listed in Persuasion Techniques in Advertising.

Introduce ad analysis.

• Distribute one or two copies of Advertising Analysis to each student. Discuss and list qualities/criteria for effective advertisements; e.g., captivating, persuasive, informative. Using the collection of various ads and posters, ask students to note the techniques used to make the ads effective. Invite students to suggest an ad for group analysis. As a class, discuss the techniques used for the qualities/criteria and the reasons why these techniques are effective.