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Addressing an Audience on Many Fronts: Solving a Food-Related Problem with a Multimedia Campaign
Required Texts:
- Michael Pollan. “Unhappy Meals,” New York Times Magazine
- Douglas Holt. Got Milk? (handout)
- Sewell Chan. “New Targets in the Fat Fight: Soda and Juice,” The New York Times and “Choosing Healthy Beverages” NYC Health
- Andrea Lunsford, Michael Brody, Lisa Ede, Beverly Moss, Carole Clark Papper, Keith Walters, Everyone’s an Author, TBA
Genre Description:
A campaign may take many forms, depending on its context: marketing campaigns, public service announcements, or public action initiatives offer multiple “multimodal” genres of persuasive rhetoric with the intention of drawing awareness to an issue, and solving a problem. For our purposes, we will treat this genre as an umbrella category containing several subgenres. In creating your campaign, you will write a proposal, and produce two additional genres of your choice that will support your campaign (e.g. a website, podcast, Op-Ed, t-shirt, pamphlet, letter to the editor, poster, petition, advertisement, etc). You will also present your campaign-in-progress to the class in a multimedia presentation, and turn in your final campaign materials with a cover letter explaining your choices of genre.
Rhetorical Situation:
Consider what types of problems exist in our cultural understanding, consumption, and packaging of food and food-related profudcts. Identify a problem that exists with food in our culture – be it a local issue within your community like the need for a public produce garden, or a national issue like the dangers of genetically modified food products or the problems caused by commercialization of the meat industry. Then, you will need to do research to justify your choice, and plan how you will successfully promote your campaign to the public – or a more specific audience of stakeholders who have the ability to enact your solution.
Your Task:
The campaign should come together as a coherent whole, in which you present your creative solution to a problem that you lay out, with a research-based justification for both the existence of the problem and the feasibility of your proposed solution. Your campaign will also propose the ways in which you will appeal to the audience(s) you have chosen, and why you believe this approach will be successful. You have many choices in this assignment—choice of food-related problem (the rhetorical situation you will respond to), choice of supporting genres, and choice of what kinds of research to employ. You will need to do EXTENSIVE research, so plan ahead and divide the work efficiently in your groups! To make the workload more manageable, you will turn in several components of the campaign in drafts, and will be required to check in frequently with me about your progress, either in writing or in person. Here is a brief description of the components of the campaign:
The written proposal may have a structure of your choice, but it should include the following components:
- An Introduction
- Definition of the Problem (why the issue regarding food in our culture is problematic, insufficient, misleading, not competitive, etc)
- Explanation of the Proposed Solution (including a description of your solution, why you argue it will be successful, and what your campaign to publicize this solution will consist of. In short, how you will reach your audience and why.)
- Conclusion, or Wrap-Up
The additional two genres of your choice should be persuasive forms of rhetoric that will help you launch your campaign. Some recommended examples of supplemental genres include:
- Letter (to the editor, or other public audience)
- Article or Op-Ed
- Poster
- Pamphlet
- Podcast
- Website
- Instagram Campaign
- Web Advertisement
- Public Service Announcement
- T-shirt (or other merchandise)
- song/jingle
- press release
- Video or Televised Speech (like a Ted Talk, etc)
The Oral Multimedia Presentation should do the following:
- Pitch the campaign to your peers as if they were investors, who can support you or withhold support based on your presentation
- Present the components of the proposal (justification of problem, explication and justification of solution), as well as perhaps preview the other components of the campaign
- Demonstrate the research you have done to arrive at these conclusions, and show how it informs your writing so far
- Entertain and captivate your audience with visual and/or multimedia elements, using visual aids, powerpoint, video, or other visual rhetoric to make a compelling point
You will also watch and evaluate your fellow peers’ presentations, and suggest how they may develop their rhetorical position or augment the features of their proposal.
Each group will turn in one campaign (proposal, additional genre, presentation) and will be evaluated solely as a group. You will have the opportunity to turn in an individual reflection piece that explains how you worked together as a group, and how your ideas about persuasive rhetoric have evolved, but the campaign should speak for itself. Particularly in the presentation, you should feel free to make use of both visual/multimedia and written components—be creative, and use each form in a way you think will be most effective!
Preliminary Writing and Due Dates:
DATE Campaign & Research Plan
As a group, in a 2-3 page plan for your campaign, you will propose your topic and problem-solution to me, and elaborate on how you will go about conducting research and completing the different components of this project. (Please attach a detailed timeline for research and writing with divisions of responsibility among group members and internal deadlines so that you can keep up with the work.) I will approve, reject, or suggest you modify your plan. Plans must be approved by me as soon as possible, so you may turn this plan as soon as your are ready to begin reserach.
DATE Working Draft of Campaign Proposal, with Additional Two Genres (in progress)
Bring/email 4 copies of your marketing proposal working draft (at least 4-5 pages), as well as any drafts you may have of your additional genre (ex: if shooting an advertisement, you could bring a script; if a t-shirt, a design sketch).
DATE Oral Presentation Plan
In at least three paragraphs, explain what you plan to do in your multimedia presentation, and how you intend to effectively appeal to your audience. How is this genre of presentation different than appealing to your audience in writing?
DATE Subjects/Questions for Further Inquiry
To maximize your efficiency during your last in-class library visit, jot down notes about what you still need to follow-up on in your research. Could be questions, queries, bullet points, search terms (< 1 page is fine).
DATE Oral Presentations
See above description. Should be no shorter than 10 minutes, no longer than 15. Should include at least one form of multimedia or visual rhetoric.
DATE Final Draft Group Campaign Due
Including the Final Draft of the Campaign Proposal and Two Additional Genres to Support the Campaign, with a 1-2 page cover letter explaining your choices of genre and the overall effect you intend your campaign to have on a particular audience (either the public, a city government, a special interest group, etc).
DATE Individual Self-Reflection Due (1 per person)
In a 1-2 page letter to me, consider your own contributions to the group, and how your own view of persuasive rhetoric and genre awareness has developed over the course of the project. How did you approach the research and revision processes in a group? What can you take from this experience and apply to future individual writing projects?
Assignment Evaluation Expectations:
- A well-researched, unified and original idea for solving a food-related problem in our culture is clearly communicated in a coherent and compelling campaign.
- A persuasive perspective is justified and explained in the proposal, and translated into effective supporting multimodal genres.
- Use of several genres is innovative and effective in appealing to the desired audience. Different genres complement each other in creating a multifaceted campaign.
- Several sources are used (and properly cited) to effectively support the voices of the authors and add credibility to the campaign.
- The group presentation is clear and compelling, presenting a convincing argument for the significance and feasibility of the proposed campaign.
Evaluation Breakdown:
Group Campaign Proposal Final Draft: 45%
Additional Multimodal Genres Final Drafts: 15%
Oral Presentation: 15%
Preliminary Writing: 10%
Self-Reflection on Genre Translations: 15%