Identify an example of a good (i.e., effective) and a bad (i.e., ineffective) persuasion from real life. To be clear, this means you must find both a good persuasion and a bad persuasion (i.e., two different persuasions). These could be print ads you’ve seen, commercials you’ve watched on YouTube, pamphlets you’ve received, billboards you’ve driven past, speeches you’ve heard, or just about anything else. Furthermore, the targets (i.e., the things being promoted) can be just about anything as well. For instance, they could be products, websites, people (e.g., political candidates), policies, companies, charities, behaviors (e.g., exercising, getting cholesterol checked, recycling), etc. The only constraints when choosing your examples are that you must be able to turn in your examples (or pictures of or working links to your examples) along with your assignment and that you identify one good and one bad example. After identifying your good and bad examples, your assignment is to write an analysis of what factors make the good one good (and why) and an analysis of what factors make the bad one bad (and why). You also need to come up with recommendations for how you would improve the bad one. From a consumer psychology perspective, what is it about each appeal that makes it seem particularly effective or ineffective? For the good appeal, make sure you discuss its key strengths. For the bad appeal, make sure you discuss its key limitations AND describe how/why you would design it differently to enhance its impact. Remember, your focus should be on applying and specifically discussing concepts from the lectures when analyzing the appeals—so if there are aspects of the appeal that work (or don’t work) for you that don’t tie directly into issues discussed in class, you should at most only BRIEFLY mention those.
