English 101
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Fall 2011
Unit 2: Advertisement analysis & Evaluation
Rough Draft #1 & Peer Review : Wednesday 9.28
Rough Draft #2 w/changes based on PR : Friday 9.30
Working Folder Submission Date: Wednesday 10.5
Assignment
For this assignment, you are to assume the role of a contributing member of an RSO (Registered Student Organization) that promotes community and civil service on campus. The president of your organization has asked you and the other RSO members to contribute to the development of a new campus community initiative ad encouraging civil behavior by evaluating effective marketing strategies.
At this point in the campaign’s development, the president would like you to compose a report in which you (1) analyze how another advertiser uses visual and verbal rhetoric to promote community and/or civil service in a particular media source, such as a magazine, a news media outlet, or a television network*, and (2) evaluate how effectively the ad connects with that media’s target audience.
Your task, then, is to select an advertisement that promotes a particular community and/or civil service and to evaluate this advertisement based on your analysis of its use of visual and verbal rhetoric to connect with the target audience.
Thus, you should look for ads that are service oriented. For instance, an ad requesting volunteers to support the American
Red Cross promotes civil service; a local sanitation company ad encouraging individuals to collaborate efforts to recycle promotes community service. Other possible examples of community or civil service might include, but are certainly not limited to, ads for the Armed Forces, ads encouraging volunteers for such programs like Habitat for Humanity, Food Banks, or Animal Shelters, or any ads with a socially conscious message.
Suggested page-length for draft: 5-6 double-spaced pages, 12 pt. font, 1" margins. For further guidelines, see Advertisement
Analysis and Evaluation Guidelines below. Please use your rubric to guide your drafting and revisions
*Television advertisements must be accessible through Youtube or some shareable medium.
Genre
Analytical Business Report
Useful Models
Allyn & Bacon Guide, 271-3 (analysis model)
Allyn & Bacon Guide, 225-30 (analysis model)
Allyn & Bacon Guide, 231-8 (analysis model)
Cole, “Generation X,” Mercury Reader , Unit 2 (example profile)
Hempel with Lehman, “The MySpace Generation,” Mercury Reader , Unit 2 (example profile)
Thomas, “Gibson’s Movie on Jesus Greatest Story Ever Filmed,” Mercury Reader, Unit 2 (example evaluation text)
Readings
Allyn & Bacon Guide Chapter 3, “Thinking Rhetorically about How to Persuade” (especially pp. 58-64)
Chapter 4, “Thinking Rhetorically about Style and Document Design” (especially pp. 75-83)
Chapter 10, “Analyzing Images”
Chapter 14, “Making an Evaluation”
Chapter 17, “Composing and Revising Closed-Form Prose”
Mercury Reader Unit 2, “Elements of Effective Layout”
Unit 2, “Advertising’s Fifteen Basic Appeals”
Unit 2, “Making the Pitch in Print Advertising”
Writer’s Resource pp. 81-85, “Revise for Paragraph Development, Paragraph
Unity, and Coherence” pp. 403-406, “Faulty Parallelism” pp. 417-418, “Active Verbs” pp. 419-423, “Appropriate Language”

pp. 424-432, “Exact Language” pp. 446-459, “Sentence Fragments,” “Comma splices and Run-On
Sentences” pp. 501-514, “Commas”
Working Folder Components
A substantial draft of the Unit 2 report, with a copy of the focal advertisement and written approval of that advertisement
Informal assignments as designated by the instructor
Portfolio Inclusion
Mandatory
Advertisement Analysis and Evaluation Guidelines
A. The completed report should be submitted in a file folder (your working folder) with (1) a copy of the assignment, on which you have placed your initials next to each guideline, thereby indicating that you have read the guidelines, (2) a copy of the focal advertisement in hard copy or via email from Youtube or another shareable medium, and your instructor’s written approval of the advertisement, (3) all informal exercises required by your instructor for this unit, and (4) the peer review that you received, along with any comments from your instructor. Additionally, email or post to Blackboard (as directed by your instructor) a digital version of your report as an RTF file. Label the file with your first initial, your last name, a hyphen, and “Unit 2” (e.g., RSmith-Unit2).
B. The report should describe the ad so that your fellow RSO members can visualize it without seeing it. The ad or a color copy should be submitted with the report if you choose a magazine or newspaper medium. (If the original ad is submitted, it should be neatly mounted on a sheet of paper.) If your ad comes from a news outlet or a TV commercial, submit a functional URL from which the ad/commercial may be found.
C. The report should provide a clear and detailed analysis and evaluation of the advertisement. The report should identify the thesis of the ad and explain how the ad supports that thesis; the report should explain how well the ad persuades its audience to accept this thesis.
D. The report should support the analysis and evaluation with evidence. The support must be clear and logical.
E. The report should have an introduction that provides a thesis statement about the ad’s approach and effectiveness. The introduction should be concise, but it should be written so that the RSO’s members could read only that portion of the text and understand the ad’s approach and your evaluation.
F. The report should be divided into appropriate sections labeled with appropriate headings. Each section should have its own introductory paragraph that makes a claim, and each section’s “body” should support that claim.
G. The report should comprise sentences and paragraphs that logically develop your evaluative argument. The transitions between sentences, paragraphs, and sections should be clear.
H. The report should be free of grammatical, mechanical, and usage errors. Pay particular attention to the following:
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• parallelism language precision, including verbs commas sentence boundaries paragraphing and transitions
Writing Center Locations:
Morris Library, Room 236 (453-1231)
Trueblood, Lower-Level Learning Resource Center (453-2927)
*For information about Writing Center hours, call the above phone numbers or consult the following website: www.write.siuc.edu