Real Material: Create an ad on Idea Bounty

Hello,

I had a great idea for an activity that is sure to get your business and marketing English students highly engaged and motivated. Go to www.ideabounty.com.

Idea Bounty is a crowdsourcing platform where anyone(!) can submit ideas for new advertising and marketing campaigns. Every month, there are several new briefs from different companies, mostly multinationals. The format can range the full gambit from TV commercial scripts and print ads to web campaigns and guerilla marketing campaigns.

To get started, you will need to register on the site to obtain the briefs. This is free to do. Once you download the brief, you can assign it as a classroom activity for students to do in small groups or individually. Use the activity to highlight marketing language. I might also suggest looking at different ad sites to view print copy.

At the end, get students to submit their entries by the deadline. They can have a chance to win several thousand US dollars. (It's an open international competition.) If they don't win, they may still qualify for certificates showing how well they ranked - silver and bronze. (I received 2 bronze awards for the Peperami campaign in 2009 and came 46th out of 1100 entrants. It was a lot of fun.)

Enjoy the lesson!

Cheers,
Maurice
Voice One Oy
www.voiceone.fi

The Dangers and Opportunities of Google Sidewiki

There has been a lot of buzz in the advertising and marketing community lately over the launch of the Google Sidewiki in September 2009. This new free Google toolbar app allows anyone to leave comments on websites that other Sidewiki users can later read. Thus, in one fell swoop, Sidewiki creates a whole new era of company transparency and consumer feedback, both positive and negative. Companies will not have ownership over their website's Sidewiki information which means they will need to do an even better job at managing their customer relationships. 

Advertising Age was one of the first media outlets to warn companies about this powerful new social media tool. The article is available here:

http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=139768

You can find the discussion activity here:


Dangers and Opportunities of Google Sidewiki    

You can see a short introductory video here:



Enjoy the discussion!

Cheers,
Maurice
www.voiceone.fi

Classic TV Ads to discuss Advertising

Requirements: A laptop (& projector) to show the videoclips in class.

This is one activity which I love to use in my Business English classes. Since the commercials are short, often entertaining, and use fairly simple language, you can use them with pre-intermediate to advanced.

It has been a hit with every class I have used it in. Everyone loves to see how different the ads were in the 1950s. Since most companies have meeting rooms with projectors nowadays, I usually show it from there--but I've shown them direct from my laptop as well.

First, you need to download the classic TV commercials from the Prelinger Archive.

Get the videos here:
http://www.archive.org/details/prelinger_commercials

It's free to use (big plus) and may be downloaded and shown in public for educational purposes. Choose an assortment -- the Newport cigarette ads are particularly entertaining.

Next, download the PDF activity. I think it's fairly self-explanatory. You should explain to the students what they should look for with each point.

Get the PDF here:
28.08.2009 Classic TV Commercials

Enjoy the lesson!

Cheers,
Maurice
www.voiceone.fi