This activity has 2 parts: an ad analysis and a persuasive letter. Refer to your notes and the textbook for help with the content and message pattern for each document. Please submit the documents as one file. Format each document as required by the description. No document should be over 1 page in length. Both documents can be submitted as a single file.
Part 1: The daily mail often brings a selection of sales messages. Find a direct-mail package from your mailbox that includes a sales letter. Then answer the following questions to help analyze and learn from the approach used by the communication professionals who prepare these glossy sales messages.
a. Who is the intended audience?
b. What are some of the demographic and psychographic characteristics of the intended audience?
c. What is the purpose of the direct-mail package? Has it been designed to solicit a phone-call response, make a mail-order sale, obtain a charitable contribution, or do something else?
d. What technique was used to encourage you to open the envelope? e. Did the letter writer follow the AIDA model or something similar? If not, explain the letter's organization. f. What emotional appeals and logical arguments does the letter use? g. What selling points and consumer benefits does the letter offer?
h. Did the letter and the rest of the package provide convincing support for the claims made in the letter? If not, what is lacking?
Part 2: The coffee shop across the street from your tiny apartment is your haven away from home--great beverages, healthy snacks, an atmosphere that is convivial but not so lively that you can't focus on your homework, and free wireless. It lacks only one thing: some way to print out your homework and other files when you need hard copies. Your college's libraries and computer labs provide printers, but you live three miles from campus, and it's a long walk or an inconvenient bus ride.
Please compose a 1 page persuasive letter to the owner of the coffee shop, encouraging her to set up a printing service to complement the free wireless access. Propose that the service run at break even prices, just enough to pay for paper, ink cartridges, and the cost of the printer itself. The benefit to the shop would be enticing patrons to spend more time--and therefore more of their coffee and tea money--in the shop. You might also mention that you had to take the bus to campus in order to print this letter, so you bought your afternoon latte somewhere else.
Sample Solution