Full draft (of rationale and ad) posted to blog by the start of class, Wednesday, November 29
Final draft (of rationale and ad) posted to blog by the start of class, Monday, December 4

In this assignment, you will use what you have learned about rhetorical situations (purpose, stance, audience, genre, and media/design), attention to language, and the use of fallacies to (1) write a rationale and then (2) design a print ad that is targeted to a particular audience.

Imagine you work for an advertising agency, and your client is the American Literacy Council. The purpose of this organization is to promote literacy (defined here as the ability to read, write, speak, and listen) in the United States. Your job is to create a print advertisement (one you would see in a newspaper or magazine or on a website) that promotes to a target audience (that you choose based on your research) the benefits of improved literacy. The ad should (1) inform the audience of a particular aspect of the literacy crisis in the United States and (2) attempt to persuade the audience that that aspect of the crisis can be improved if guidelines or recommendations that you provide (again, based on your research) are followed. Your rationale should convince the American Literacy Council to hire your agency to create its new campaign.

RATIONALE:
To convince the American Literacy Council to run your ad, you must write a one- to two-page rationale that discusses literacy and provides the reasoning behind your ad design. Your rationale should contain the following.

  1. A discussion of literacy in the United States: Who is literate, how is literacy achieved, and how can literacy levels be improved?
  2. A description of the target audience for your advertisement: Who is the audience? Why did you choose this audience?
  3. An explanation of the purpose of your advertisement. What problem is it trying to solve? What is your ad trying to persuade the audience to do? How does it go about attempting to persuade the audience? Why do you think your ad will be effective?
  4. A proposal for one specific publication in which your ad should be placed and an explanation for why it should go there (you’ll need to research potentially appropriate publications and provide the name of a magazine, newspaper, or website).

ADVERTISEMENT:
Your print ad must contain both visual text (photos, images, graphics) and word-based text. The visual text(s) must be original (photographs or art created/designed by you); you may not use images/photos taken from the web.

Given the audience for this project, your advertisement and rationale can have no grammar, punctuation, or style errors, and every sentence should be efficient, with a clear function (that is, a function you could explain if you had to).

You can create the advertisement by hand or in Microsoft Word or with any other software you are comfortable using (Adobe, PowerPoint, PageMaker).

STEPS TO FOLLOW:
1) Research literacy in America.
2) Research literacy in a particular group and/or a particular kind of literacy (for example, reading, writing, bilingualism, dyslexia, adult illiteracy, urban male illiteracy).
3) Research publications in which you might want your ad to appear.
4) Choose a target audience and a publication/website that reaches that audience.
5) Write your rationale for your ad. No more than 1,000 words.
6) Create a draft of your ad by hand (a mock-up).
7) Create a digital draft of the ad.
8) Revise the rationale and advertisement based on peer input.
9) Work on sentences and proofread the rationale and the ad. (Because of this genre and the audience, there can be NO errors in the ad or in the rationale.)
10) Post the rationale and the ad to your blog.