Project 2

Project 2

Throughout the advertising world there are millions of commercials, posters, and billboards that try and use rhetorical strategy to persuade. Walking around somewhere like a college campus, there are always flyers and posters everywhere for students to read. When going on our class walking tour of the Ohio University campus, the Baker Center stood out as a place where I could make a great promotional piece for students on campus.

When college students read something like a brochure or flyer it usually has a message of telling the reader to go to an event or place. The makers of the brochure or flyer try to have something that would appeal to college students. I chose to make an informational brochure about the Baker Center. My audience target for this brochure is college students. I chose college students as my audience for a Baker Center brochure because the Center is mainly for the students with tons of resources available, and they should be able to take advantage of that. The Baker Center is a building that is central on campus where students use the escalators to get from the lower and upper parts of campus. I stuck to this genre as the brochure being informational by just giving the hard facts. Throughout my brochure I try to use rhetorical strategies to try and keep the reader interested.

The brochure that I created for the Baker Center has one column of history about the “old” Baker Center that used to be located on the North Green of campus. It says in the brochure what was consisted in the building like a game room, dining room, and administrative offices. The rest of the brochure focuses on the “new” Baker Center and it’s amenities. This includes student services that Baker offers, entertainment and leisure, and the different dining services that are located in the building. I also put pictures next to these amenities because this type of information in the brochure would appeal to students more that this is a “cool” place to hang out. I did not put any information about things that might sound too educational because this would disinterest the audience. Most students in college don’t want to hear about more educational opportunities because they already know what they want to do. They likely wouldn’t pay attention to any brochures or flyers talking about those opportunities. Other strategies I used to try and appeal my readers is by comparing the two different Baker Centers and appealing to their logic, credibility and their emotions.

Comparing the information about the old Baker Center versus the new one was important to appeal my audience. I put the history about the old Baker Center so students could see how different and similar they are. Both Centers have some sort of fun game room. There’s billiards in the new one, and an 8 lane-bowling room in the old one. They both have a place to eat; however the new Baker Center has more options. By comparing and contrasting these two in the brochure, students can see differences visually in the pictures too. There’s more of an updated, high-tech version to the new Baker than the old one. Students are drawn to more new places than the old ones. The Baker building seems more modern and clean. For example, if you put two iPods in front of a student, where one is the newest version and the other made a couple years ago, the student would more likely pick the latest version. Looking at the brochure there’s color on the side where the new Baker is, and black and white on the side were the old one is. The color in the brochure is of the font and pictures, so it stands out to the audience. They would be drawn looking more at the new side. When making the brochure I definitely appealed to students’ logic by giving the correct facts about the Baker Center. The facts are bulleted under each category so it’s not confusing. I also tried to address the audience’s creditability. When first making the brochure I had originally made the font really fun to have it stand out, but when finished making it, I decided it didn’t need to have that font. I realized I should put a more simple, sophisticated font. This is because the fun font would have appealed to more of a younger crowd. Finally, I really appealed to the readers’ emotions in that I’m a college student myself, so I can relate to the brochure too. Since I’m a student, when making this I put things in there that I would want to see that other students would most likely want to see too. Like leaving out information about educational opportunities. I wouldn’t want to read a brochure about that. So I tried to use the majority opinions of what other students think.

The rhetorical strategies used in my brochure capture the reader really well. I used many different ways to try and get catch the attention of a college student. In making this brochure you really have to aim towards one group of audience. It’s really hard persuading a variety of different types of readers. Those people in the advertising promoting their product or commercial really have to aim towards a specific group of people to get good results.