COMMERCIAL SCRIPTS

Your assignment is to write a thirty second television commercial script. Your client is Mississippi State University-Meridian. Broad messages don’t work. You’ll need to identify one central point (cost, class size, travel distance, university prestige, career advancement, etc.) you’re selling to your viewers and stick to it. Television scripts are often formatted as two column scripts. The column on the left is audio (what the viewer is hearing), the column on the right is video (what the viewer is seeing). Format your script in this style. Make proper use of tag lines, repetition. Pay attention to length. Thirty seconds means thirty seconds. Also, don’t forget to include a ‘call to action’ in your script.

Commercial advertising is primarily designed to sell a product. Television commercials are not like other media. A reader browsing a website has plenty of time to absorb information and can reread copy that is interesting or informative. TV commercials happen in real time. Most local spots run thirty seconds. That’s all the time you have to tell the viewer what they need to know.

It’s also important to remember that small businesses running local ads don’t have big budgets. They can’t afford to waste time on clever visuals or dialog. They must introduce their business quickly and give viewers a reason to go to the store.

Tips for commercial script writing:

– Determine what you are trying to sell. If you can’t be clear, your commercial won’t be. In 30 seconds you have time to make a single point that is understood immediately. Brainstorm about your product. List its features. Turn these features into benefits for the consumer. Now, put your finger on the strongest single benefit that distinguishes your product, its unique selling proposition. That is your central message. Example: Burger King’s “Have it Your Way”.

– Repetition works! Productive advertising uses repetition in order to solidify the product’s central message in the minds of viewers. Three is the magic number. Repeating the central message at least three times is highly effective with viewer recall.

– You have to reach your audience through two senses, sight and sound. A commercial has to be visually and audibly engaging. The visual choices have to flow out of the message you are selling.

– Make it entertaining with an easy to remember tag line. Humor can add a lot to a spot, but it has to flow out of the message.

– Keep it truthful. Don’t over promise. Maybe some of us buy the “lose weight while you sleep” diet supplements, but you can’t expect any repeat business if your product or service doesn’t deliver as intended.

– Include a call to action. Be clear about what you want your viewers to do: pick up the phone, visit your website, buy your book or DVD.

– Don’t waste time on street addresses and phone numbers unless they’re memorable. Viewers won’t remember a long string of random numbers, but they may remember ‘across from MSU-Meridian’ or 1-800-BURGERS

General Information

You will be asked to read a set of scholarly articles that will supplement the assigned textbook chapters. This handout describes your discussion question (DQ) assignment for these articles.

• Write two DQs per article.

• As you read each article, take notes. Underline important points and jot down ideas or questions

that come to mind while reading it; this will help you write DQs more easily.

• D Qs should neither be too specific (“What does the fourth word on p. 27 mean?”) nor too general

(“Was this a good article? Why or why not?”). Try to strike a balance between the specific and

general. Try to ask thought-provoking questions that make connections to other areas of study and

other realms of life—what you saw on the news, read in the paper or a magazine, etc. Note that

questions that could be asked of any article are not good questions (e.g., What were the

weaknesses of the methodology?). Your questions should center around content that pertains

specifically to the assigned article.

• Be sure to point the reader to the specific content of the article that your question addresses.

• Avoid questions with “yes/no” or “either/or” answers. Good DQs are open-ended. Also avoid

leading questions. See below for examples of good DQs.

• Go for controversy! Try to pose questions that would easily engage the class in discussion.

Example Discussion Questions

1. What negative consequences could result if parents followed Bem’s suggestion to raise androgynous

boys and girls? How might peers respond to boys with stereotypically feminine characteristics and girls

with stereotypically masculine characteristics? What are the positive consequences of raising

androgynous boys and girls? Where does one draw the line between a healthy de-emphasis on gender

and a healthy acknowledgment of gender in raising children?

2. Josephs, Markus, and Tafarodi argue that individuation (distinguishing the self from others on the

basis of talents or accomplishments) does not serve as a significant source of esteem for American

women (because of gender-role socialization). How accurately does their argument describe women in

the U.S.? Explain your response. How do women in the U.S. compare, in terms of how individualistic

they are, to men and women in Asian cultures? How does the pressure that women feel in our society to

be appropriately “feminine” interact with the individualistic norms that all Americans experience?

The matrix of bone tissue is a combination of a calcium salt and collagen. Pick one of the following experiments to conduct and provide us with

1. A prediction of the outcome of your experiment
2. A description how you conducted the experiment.
3. Photographic evidence (either a photo or a video) of your result
4. An explanation of what happened.

Because there are two components to the matrix, you can remove one but not the other. To conduct this, find a thin chicken bone (like a rib or a wishbone) and either

• soak it in vinegar for several days OR

• heat the bone at 450 degrees for one hour

When you are done with the procedure, get your camera and have someone record you as you put the bone in the sink and try to snap it. Make sure you explain why your bone did what it did by telling us which component of the matrix was lost. Also tell us if your prediction was correct or not.

If you are reluctant to perform an experiment with chemicals, then use a bone (either discarded from a meal lick in chicken or ham, or see if you can look at a dog bone in a petstore or a butcher’s shop), photograph it and label it. Upload the photo (.jpg images only, please!) Then, in the text of the post explain the following:

What bone it compares to in the human body (like a femur, tibia, radius, etc)

Which end of the bone is proximal and which is distal (or if its a large section of a bone, which of the two ends you have)

If you have a bone in cross section, label the compact bone, the medullarycavity and any bone marrow if it is present.

ALLof these points must be addresses to receive full credit.

PLEASE RESPOND TO THIS, I MUST COMPLETE A PEER REVIEW ON THE BELOW. Thanks

Please demonstrate critical thinking abilities. No fewer than 250 words for post. Do not summarize the post and/or course concept(s), but perhaps comment on concepts directly applicable to your workplace.

For this response, should outside sources be used to support the content within the postings, proper in-text citations and correctly formatted references should be prepared consistent with the APA (6th edition). The list of references should be physically positioned at the end of the postings. NOTE* please do not plagiarized.

Tesla was founded by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning in July 2003 (Kumparak, Burns, & Escher, 2015 para. 2). They were initially out to just build an all-electric car. The first Tesla automobile was a chassis designed and built by Lotus for Tesla and an all-electric drivetrain installed by Tesla called the Tesla Roadster. Now they have 3 models: Model S, Model X, and Model 3. The model S has a sub model the P85D which is one of the top 20 fastest production cars in the world. Tesla has been successful in the EV car market for the following reasons.

1. Factor conditions: Battery technology. Tesla partnered with Panasonic to create their battery pack, but most of the technology and innovation is created at Tesla (Zach, 2015 para. 3).
2. Demand conditions: The demand for all-electric vehicles is still relative low, but as more automakers enter the market the better the electric vehicle is accepted. The newest of Tesla’s models the Model 3 presold 150,000 units on its first night (Kumparak, Burns, & Escher, 2015 para. 34).
3. Related and supporting industries: “Tesla unveils a new business arm in April 2014 that focuses on ending our dependence on grid power and switching instead to solar energy. The first Tesla Energy product is ‘Powerwall Home Battery’, a massive battery for storing solar energy at home” (Kumparak, Burns, & Escher, 2015 para. 27).
4. Firm strategy, structure, and rivalry: There are not any cars currently that can compete with the Model S or Model X, but the Model 3 is a compact relatively low cost car. It’s largest current competitor is the Chevy Bolt, but Chevy was targeting 30,000 sales in it’s first year while Tesla was targeting 500,000 (Zach, 2015 para. 5).

Porter states “when the national environment pressures companies to innovate and invest, companies both gain a competitive advantage and upgrade those advantages over time” (Porter, 1990 page 80). That is exactly what Tesla has done with not only their electric cars, but now their home energy division.

References

Kumparak, G., Burns, M., & Escher, A. (2015, July 28). A brief history of Telsa. Tech crunch Retrieved from https://techcrunch.com/gallery/a-brief-history-of-…

Porter, M. E. (1990, March-April). The competitive advantage of nations. Harvard business review, 68(2), 73-93.

Zach. (2015, April 29). Tesla’s competitive advantage – 5 big ones. EV obsession Retrieved from https://evobsession.com/tesla-competitive-advantag…