Room 10 Advertising Agency

The Superbowl aired earlier this month, and part of the draw isn't the football, but the commercials. Advertisers pay dearly for the opportunity; a 30-second spot cost about $4 million. While most of the ads are entertaining, they're still trying to get viewers to do or believe something.

Fifth-graders learned about three advertising tactics to be aware of: exaggeration, generalization, and scare tactics. They suggested TV commercials they liked, and we analyzed the ways in which they tried to convince us to buy their product. For example, the Old Spice Moms commercial uses exaggeration (and led to a discussion on brand repositioning), while the Pepsi One Direction/Drew Brees commercial uses celebrity endorsement as a generalization tactic (and covers two major demographics in one spot).

Then they created their own ads using at least one of these tactics:

Common Core standards addressed:  RL.5.6 - Describe how a narrator’s or speaker’s point of view influences how events are described. / RL.5.7 - Analyze how visual and multimedia elements contribute to the meaning, tone, or beauty of a text / RI.5.8 - Explain how an author uses reasons and evidence to support particular points in a text..