Put Down the Remote and Pick Up a Book

Aly, Emily, Caitlin, and Jenell wrote a really solid A-level proposal. I am posting it on here for those of you that have yet to complete your proposal. It is a good example because they clearly outline their rhetorical situation (42% of college graduates don't read a book after they graduate), pick an appropriate medium (series of ads for public transportation) and why. They take it a step further by rewriting the Dentyne gum ads.

Additionally, this group has a clear outline of how they are going to work together. Each member has a role.

It is also clear that they have done some preliminary research, which is nice to see. I love the title of the campaign as well, "Put Down the Remote and Pick Up a Book."


Proposal for Group Put Down the Remote and Pick Up a Book
Aly, Emily, Caitlin, Jenell

Our Group wants to promote traditional literacy. We see the importance in people in their 20s reading books for fun. According to research done by the Jenkins Group, 42% of college graduates don’t read a book after graduation. Our group wants to help change that by starting reading patterns in college age people. We want to promote that reading can be fun and relaxing. Our subway ads will highlight just that.
We want to do a series of advertisements that could be place in the subway or on a bus. Our inspiration came from the Dentyne Ads on the subway, that highlight making face time and getting off of your computer. Attached are four of these ads to give some idea of the direction we’re going in with the project. Our vision would be to take the cute innocence of these ads and incorporate our campaign of literacy. We would do a set of four advertisements.
The first advertisement would highlight the importance of reading the book as opposed to watching the movie. It would have someone with the book next to a particularly sad movie adaptation more interested in the book than the flashy movie ad next to her. The caption would read “The Obvious Choice.” Along the bottom a list of books that have been turned into movies would be listed, giving the person looking at the ad a choice to make the obvious choice.
The second advertisement would highlight the warmth and comfort of a book. It would have a person or a group of people cuddled up inside reading a book with a cup of hot chocolate in each person’s hand. The caption would read “Hot Chocolate’s Favorite Accessory” and along the bottom would be a list of classic books like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Little Women; classic children’s books that are comforting and fun to read.
The third advertisement would highlight something that almost every 20 something in Boston spends time doing, sitting on the T and commuting to work. It will have someone sitting on a T reading a book. The caption will read “Avoid Awkward Eye Contact.” Along the bottom will be a list of short exciting top seller books.
The fourth and final advertisment would highlight spending time in a bookstore. In a world where we waste time surfing the net and chatting online, we want to remark on the importance of spending time in a bookstore. This ad will have the caption “Excellent Waste of Time.” It will have a person in one of the old bookstores in Boston scanning the shelves and looking for the perfect book. At the bottom would be some little known favorites that the group picks out at the bookstore.
In order to make this project happen, we will need to research the Dentyne ads very closely. We will have to research book titles that we can place under each ad. We will have to have four photo shoots and enough models to make them all look professional and designed well enough for the subway. It is then going to take time on everyone’s part to put these ads together on the computer and have them printed up for the presentation. After the presentation our group will make it our job to somehow get our advertisement out in the public sphere. That is going to take a lot of research and phone calls on the part of everyone in the group.
This project is going to demand participation from all of the members of the group. Research is being done by Caitlin and Aly. They are going to be researching our target and looking into how to rewrite an ad. Jenell is going to be doing a lot with the creative side of the project. She’ll be looking into ads and figuring out how we want to place our ads and the people in the ads. Emily will be working on organizing and gathering all of the information together. Everyone will be in one of the ads. For the ads with groups we will each be responsible for finding people who we feel will look best in the ads, remain serious, and understand our mission and purpose. During the actual producing of the ads our whole group will be responsible to be present and helpful in any way needed.
Our group is very excited about this project and hopes to create an ad campaign that we can be proud of. Because this is a class where we are expected to go a step beyond, we hope to find a way to take our ads out into the public sphere, whether it be through the library system or through local reading advocacy groups. We want our ads to really reach students, promoting reading and learning outside of the school setting.