Target Audiences, Context, and Mad Men

There's a wealth of texts that we can use in the classroom with students when looking at advertising and the role it plays in relation to communication. As part of a Year 10 unit that examines this topic I settled on using two main texts - carefully-selected excerpts from the reality TV satire Nathan For You (see this blog and this blog) and the historical drama series Mad Men. As it's unlikely that many students will be aware of them it's worth bringing your class up to speed on the context of these TV series before launching into either of them in conjunction with activities. 

Below is a brief bit of context that sets up one particular scene I like to use from Mad Men.

Context

Mad Men is a 2007 TV drama set in 1960. It focuses on an advertising agency called Stirling-Cooper where a Creative Director, Don Draper, must come up with creative ideas to help companies sell their products. Companies decide whether they will hire Stirling-Cooper based on how good Don's ideas are. The show can be confronting for modern audiences because it honestly depicts the attitudes of the time (sexism, cigarette smoking, racism); allowing the audience to see how different the 1960s were to 2007. In this clip, Stirling-Cooper is dealing with a Jewish client for the first time.

Show students the questions below first and then let the clip play through a couple of times so they can watch for the answers. I find that students are much more willing to focus if they know what they're looking for so there's little use in just showing the clip without any of the context above or letting them know the purpose behind it.

The questions focus on comprehension and explanation, and scaffold students towards a point where they will be asked to discuss the concept of a target audience. They are (and I'm sure you could probably add a few of your own):

1. What is the agency's plan to boost awareness for Menken's Store?
2. Why is Miss Menken against the idea of coupons?
3. What has prompted Miss Menken to seek a new image for her store?
4. What kind of target audience is Miss Menken after?
5. Why does she say "the customer is always right?"
6. Give an example of sexism or anti-Semitism (discrimination against Jewish people) from this clip.
7. Find one example of sarcasm in the clip and explain its purpose. 

After the students have thought it through (and formulated some responses) you can then discuss some possible answers:

Potential Answers

1. The agency plans to boost awareness of Menken's through the use of coupons and a TV spot designed to increase their exposure.
2. Miss Menken is against coupons because of the connotations associated with them, IE. That they appeal to people trying to save money, whereas Miss Menken wants to appeal to a more affluent / well-off demographic.
3. Miss Menken's father previously ran the business, however, last year they reported their lowest sales so now she is seeking to revitalise the brand and find new customers.
4. Miss Menken wants a rich, upper class audience for her product, and gives an example of the sort of brand she wants her store to be compared to.
5. The phrase 'the customer is always right' is delivered by Miss Menken to remind Don Draper and his colleagues that she is currently his customer and that he should be listening to her ideas.
6. The reference to 'the village' is an allusion to Jewish people stereotypically living in a more 'backward' or primitive fashion. The phrase 'Your people' is also a reference to Miss Menken's Jewishness. Draper and co. also mention Miss Menken's father, alluding to their preference to work with him rather than her, which demonstrates sexism.
7. Miss Menken is being sarcastic when she says "this place runs on charm", as she obviously believes the opposite. 

Another example of sexism

The rest of the lesson can then be spent on some paragraph writing practice, with a formula of your choice. If I'm working with a mixed ability class who have limited confidence about this sort of thing  then I'll use a fairly open-ended question such as:

Write one paragraph outlining how you would aim to change the target audience for Menken's Store to suit Miss Menken's vision.

Students should aim to start their paragraph with a statement of some sort that re-frames the question so that an unsuspecting reader could follow the paragraph without having read the question. After this point the student is free to explain what their idea is, how they would go about implementing it and making it work, and then finishing up with a confident assessment of why their idea is the best option for Miss Menken.

Writing a paragraph in this way provides scope for students to just get some independent writing done (which can be a struggle at times), plus they can practise their command of rhetoric - which is pertinent in light of the overall topic's focus on persuasion and advocating for ideas. 

Teaching Advertising with Nathan For You

I'm currently in the midst of teaching a unit of work to Year 10 that's centred on advertising and advocacy, which I love because it gives me a chance to look at the role of rhetoric with my students. Before getting to the point where the students tie advertising to a social issue that they wish to advocate for (their assessment task), the time is spent looking at persuasive techniques and helping students work backwards from a final product to examine the purpose of these sort of texts. 

Last year I shared an activity on the three major persuasive modes (ethos, logos, pathos) in conjunction with the brilliant Reality TV satire Nathan For You. 

In today's blog I'll look at another way that Nathan For You can be used to teach some of the finer aspects of advertising but, before I do, I'll just reiterate the persuasive modes. In prior years I've focused on logos, pathos, and ethos. This year I've decided to bring in more explicit discussion of a fourth persuasive mode; kairos - something that is touched on when dealing with target audiences but could always be dealt with in a little more detail.

(Note: There's a fifth persuasive concept called topos but I'll leave that for another day!)

• Ethos: The use of authority or credibility to get someone to trust an opinion.
  
• Kairos: The use of an opportune time and place to achieve maximum persuasiveness with a target audience.
  
• Logos: The use of reason or logic to convince someone of something.
  
• Pathos: The use of emotion to persuade.

The clip above comes with an associated activity focusing on Nathan's wacky idea for rebranding a real estate company. The concept of 'rebranding' is primarily a marketing strategy but it can also be utilised here for English purposes when talking about audience and purpose. The effectiveness of re-positioning a product to suit a hitherto un-targeted audience (as Nathan does in the clip) is dependent on how well an advertiser or company understands kairos. For instance, if you are going to target a particular audience then you need to at least have an awareness of how and when this could best be achieved. The success (or lack thereof) of Nathan's ploy could be seen as indicative of both an understanding of kairos or a lack of understanding of kairos.

For anyone who is familiar with Nathan For You and its humour - fear not, I've edited the clip to avoid any elements which may be inappropriate for the classroom.

Here is the activity sheet that accompanies the video: Nathan For You - Rebranding.

This sheet includes the following questions (I have included possible answers here for ease of delivery but feel free to expand or adapt in whatever fashion you like).

Question 1: "In an oversaturated market it can be hard to stand out in the crowd". What does Nathan mean by this, and what language technique is he using?

• Nathan is referring to the abundance of real estate companies and how difficult it can be to find a point of difference for just one such company.
• Metaphor - "standing out in a crowd"
• Jargon - "oversaturated market" (also a metaphor)

Question 2: What is the benefit in finding an 'unrepresented' audience? What does this mean?

• An 'unrepresented' audience refers to a group of people (or demographic) that hasn't been catered for before. In this case Nathan is referring to people who believe in ghosts - an identifying characteristic that, as far as he knows, has never been the basis for marketing a real estate company before.

Question 3: Annotate the advertisement below; label the kind of persuasion used and point out any symbolism that reinforces Sue's rebranding as 'the Ghost Realtor'.

• The stretching of Sue Stanford's body into a ghost-like shape symbolises her affinity with the spirit world.
• The cross is a well-known symbol of Christianity, and this is also a religious allusion.
• Quote on billboard: "My homes are 100% ghost and demon free" - this is an example of logos.
• The colour palette leans heavily on shadows and the colour blue, which gives the advertisement a sombre, haunted feeling. Note also the shadowy faceless figures that are representative of unidentified beings from 'the other side'.
• The line of Sue Standford's ghostly tail and the underlining of her name both work as vectors that lead the reader's eye from her body to the quote.
• Gaze - Sue Standford's eyes are looking directly into the camera, which builds a connection with the audience. Note also her confident, positive facial expression.

Question 4: What does the psychic add to Sue's new branding?

• The presence of the psychic adds a sense of credibility to her new angle on real estate salesmanship. As an authority on this particular subject he is a perfect example of using ethos to strengthen one's business.

Question 5: What problems are there with the example of re-positioning?

• Students may have a whole range of responses to this question! Chief among the potential problems is the fact that some people just don't believe in ghosts, which essentially means that Nathan's scheme will never appeal to a sizeable portion of the market. 
• Students should have a range of ideas in relation to this question, especially considering how intentionally ridiculous Nathan's idea is.

Teaching: The Demographic Approach

In the words of my city council, "Penrith is here"

English is all about context. We look at the context of authors, the context of their texts, the context of a text's intended audience, the context of our students in responding to said text, and the context of the teacher teaching the text and how it fits into the syllabus. But really, thinking outside of the KLA, isn't everything about context?

"I want to give you $20".

If someone said that to me, then I would want to know why. What is the context? I would want to know who's giving me this money, why they are giving it to me, and what they expect me to either do for it or do with it. 

Then I would accept the $20. Most likely. Well, it depends on the context.

I teach in Western Sydney at Glenmore Park High School; a fantastic comprehensive government school full of great students who will no doubt grow into our proud future. Like all schools, it comes with its own context - both in terms of the immediate community and the wider demographic of Western Sydney - and these are things that bear some examination for a couple of reasons:

• If we know where the child is from, we'll have a better idea of where they're going.
• If we know what their parents expect and want, we'll be able to better cater to the needs of our community.
• If we know the sort of priorities and attitudes that have been passed on to the students from their community, we'll know how to better implement the kind of change that will have a generational effect and foster increased positivity towards education in our demographic.

In my case, Penrith City Council have a wonderful website with data on the city's demographics called Penrith Progression. There are some caveats that need minding when looking at statistics, such as not drawing direct conclusions when data could be correlating with certain observed trends. This simply means that if I see a percentage in the numbers then I should be careful not to say that this automatically proves a hypothesis I may hold. That would be an opinion, rather than a fact. 

I can, however, use the demographic data as a basis for assumptions. I can assume certain things as a means to explore pedagogy. This should be a design process rather than a solution. I can use the information gleaned from Penrith Progression (or any other set of figures related to demographics) to support ideas I want to test out. If these ideas work; hurray! If they don't; look at the data again and perhaps craft a new hypothesis - try something else. Perfection is impossible and pedagogy should therefore be flexible and fluid; constantly shifting and improving to make things better. In short: it's a design process.

For those who teach in Western Sydney, here are Penrith's demographics (as of 2015):

Housing

• 50% of families in Penrith have children, which is equal to the rest of Sydney, however, Penrith has a 25% higher proportion of single-parent families.
• The average personal income for an adult in Penrith is $632 per week - better than Blacktown or Liverpool, but less than Sydney and Camden.
• 10% of Western Sydney's population is concentrated in Penrith.
• 22% of Penrith residents own their house outright, with a further 42% paying off a mortgage. A further 26% rent. This compares as similar to Blacktown and Liverpool, however, it does constitute a drop compared to Penrith in 2005, where 32% of houses were owned outright. There has also been a shift towards increased renting in Penrith (something that has not occurred in Blacktown or Liverpool).

 Education

• In all of Western Sydney, Penrith has the highest proportion of adults who finished school at Year 10 (32%) and the least to complete Year 12 (38% - compared to 50% in both Blacktown and Liverpool). 
• Penrith is a 'leading skills city', with 22% of adults having vocational certificates (trades). In contrast, 10% go to university - which is less than other Western Sydney areas (Liverpool has 17% of their Year 12 students going on to university). 

Other

• People in Penrith are much more likely to go on to work in their hometown. 56% of workers in Penrith also live here, which contrasts with 38% in Liverpool and 44% in Blacktown.
• In the next 15 years, demographic models currently predict that the amount of Penrith citizens under the age of 15 will increase by a whooping 42%.

Some ideas I've assumed from this information were that:

1. Due to such a relatively high proportion of Penrith students staying on in Penrith to work, this may mean that attitudes towards work and education are more likely to be entrenched and generational. 
2. The increase in the number of Penrith-dwelling teenagers in the near future will mean that schools (particularly those in growth areas, like Glenmore Park High School) will continue expanding towards capacity.

You might be wondering what I do with this information. In my personal teaching context, the main idea is that it supports a Positive Behaviour for Learning (PBL) approach that favours the building of positive relationships through extrinsic recognition of desired attitudes and actions. If I want to affect generational change then it becomes important to teach students (especially those who might be at risk of long term disengagement) that school can be a positive experience and that, even if they leave with the sole purpose of picking up a trade, they may therefore pass on positive opinions of schooling to their own children. This may, in turn, then improve the percentage of students primed for university enrollment in the next generation.

It's a long game, but I've always preferred to play the long game. And, at the end of the day, I shouldn't really need an excuse for having a PBL focus in my pedagogy, but it certainly helps to reinforce it if I can see what the data says about my city. I can use this information in my design process for catering to my community better.