Looking at advertising

Preparation and Planning

The activities detailed in this lesson plan could span an additional lesson, depending on the amount of time you would like to dedicate to the topic area. Further extension suggestions for areas of investigation have been provided in the accompanying Teacher Notes for Episode 1.

This lesson is supported by Army and RAF recruitment advertisements that provide stimulus which will quickly help students to appreciate the impact of television advertising. Ensure you have access to interactive whiteboard facilities or a laptop so that these resources can be utilised.

Student Worksheets are also provided for this lesson and it is suggested in some instances that students work in small groups. Ensure that you photocopy enough Student Worksheets so that each student has access to a copy of their own or a shared copy.

Episode 3 asks students to create their own poster or magazine advertisement. You might like to arrange access to an ICT suite or to art and design materials to allow students to create a layout for their advertisements.

About the MOD Topic

Recruitment is as important for the Ministry of Defence (MOD) and the Armed Forces as it is for any major organisation. The success of the organisation, and consequently the ongoing safety of the UK, is dependent on recruiting and retaining a highly skilled and committed staff base.

Recruitment campaigns are a major area of investment for the MOD. These might manifest via face to face interactions between MOD staff and civilians, online or in high visibility campaigns on television, in magazines and on posters nationwide.

A recent initiative to link a major recruitment campaign to the recent Army Mount Everest Expedition has been hailed as the most effective recruitment campaign the Army has ever run. Planning the expedition took the climbers three years, and the marketing team was with them almost every step of the way. A series of five TV advertisements were produced, (one of which comprises part of the supporting stimulus to this lesson) linked to press coverage and websites.

Billed as the world's first reality advertising campaign, the TV ads and other publicity took the form of dramatic reports from the mountain. The implied message was that there is a lot more to life in the Army than parade ground bluster followed by Iraq and Afghanistan deployment and that soldiers need to be adventurous in spirit.

There were some 30,000 recruitment enquiries directly linked to the campaign by the beginning of June 2006. There were over a million visits to the website, and many downloaded the expedition's podcasts. The expedition was at the top of the pod charts for several weeks.

The following news article provides further background information for Video 1: Everest Climb Advertisement assignment:
http://tinyurl.com/36gdbm

Further Opportunities for Learning

Students can storyboard a recruitment advertisement for television. The advertisement should be aimed at other young people their age, and designed to persuade them to enrol at their school.

If students responded positively to Episode 3: Creating a recruitment advertisement, they can be encouraged to further extend the opportunities presented by this activity in the following ways: a. Create a poster / advertisement utilising any ICT facilities available to them e.g. Photoshop, Digital Photography etc. b. Script an advertisement for a radio campaign to support the poster they have created. Facilities permitting, students can record their script and compose a soundtrack to complement the advertisement.

You may like to extend their learning by asking students to write an advertisement to promote a school event / local initiative using the techniques they have learnt.

Students might like to write a transcript of one of their favourite advertisements and to analyse this advert in detail, using the guidelines worked to in this lesson.

Use the 'Analysing Persuasive Text' lesson to get the students to compare and contrast World War 1 and 2 recruitment adverts (i.e. the Kitchener 'Britons Wants You' poster) with modern campaigns.

Advertising as a term covers many different fields. While the field examined in this lesson is that of recruitment, the techniques which students learn could be applied to different fields. For example, the promotion of a commercial, non military product, such as a brand of trainers or to a recruitment or fundraising exercise for a charitable organisation.

Ask students to look at the two News Articles, 'Teamwork is secret of Malaku success' and 'Harry launches expedition for injured sailors and marines'. Ask students to consider how the articles differ in purpose to the adverts which they have examined throughout the course of the lesson. How will these articles help to raise the profile of the MOD? Do students think they would help to drive recruitment in the same way as the Army on Everest advert campaign?

Student worksheet answers

Download the teachers notes PDF to access the answers for this lesson.