Spring Break and March 14th-20th, 2010

As you enjoy your spring break, don't forget about the project. It is due on Tuesday, March 16th. I've already given lots of advice here at the site as well as in class. All I will say now is to give us more rather than less. By that I mean, don't just assume that because your paper is five+ pages long it will get a great score. It depends upon the kind of information you have found and the kind of justification you have given for the target. Five double-spaced pages sounds about right only if you are not counting the material you should give at the end. For example, there should be a page of references as well as one page from each of three different sources you referenced. (Those might be a copy of a page from the census, the first page of an article, or something from a helpful website; we do this to make sure that you haven't simply made up your sources.) Beyond those things, you could also create a couple of charts, tables, and diagrams. Just keep in mind that the more support and justification we see for the target market you selected then the better your score will be.

If you are frustrated because you have not been able to find as much information about your target market as you "need" to then keep in mind that MP2 is just a draft. Yes, we grade it because we want groups to take it seriously and get as much done at this point as possible. But, another way to look at it is that you have several more weeks to keep looking for information. You can include the additional information in your final paper (MP4, the one the client sees) and get a better score. That's one of the reasons why we weight MP4 much heavier than the other parts. By the end of the course we expect for you to have found more information, incorporate the feedback from us, and explain/describe your ideas better than you do in MP2.

On Tuesday after the break we will finish talking about Packaging and then begin a series of lectures on Sales Promotion, a part of promotion that has taken a lot of power and money away from advertising in the last 20 years. A lot of what I will be saying in the lectures is NOT in the book so it is important that you get the notes and the best place to get all of the notes is in class. If you are behind on your reading, I suggest you spend some of your time during the break getting caught up. You should have already read Ch. 7-10 and now you should read Ch. 11.