Love hate relationship with advertising? How to make it work!
I have a love -hate relationship with Advertising. In his book, The (un)Common Sense of Advertising, Sanjay Tiwari recognizes this and writes that people ” love its gloss and sparkle, the imageries, the aspirations of a better life, the indulgence with the self, the feel-good factor, the way it touches their senses and inner emotions.” Where is the hate, then? “Yet they hate it for its power to influence, for making them want more and spend more, for making them impulsively buy things that they may later have second thoughts on, and for its intrusion in their private space and favourite pastimes.”
Me, I hate advertising that is IN my face. I hate a long sales pages, I always scan I can’t stand the hype, the noise, the manipulation. On the other hand, from an online point of view I am thrilled when an ad on my page helps me monetize my site or project.
So how do I come to terms and find peace with advertising on my site?
1. I look for products or services that I think will be useful and helpful to others.
2. I find ads that look nice on my page and don’t make me cringe.
3. I find new , fun and unobtrosive ways to advertise. Like the Peel Away Ad on this page.
Check out the little flap at the top right and corner. It is a Peel Away ad and when clicked reveals the ad underneath it. The peek-a-boo affect is appealing , easy on the eye and does not intrude on the space of my blog. So, if you are interested in having a peel away add on your site, just click on the flap above! Enjoy
Two cool tools to unleash your creativity!
Great tool for student projects or online business portfolios
Students could use it for project work, book reports, personal portfolios
Friends could use it to create posters for birthdays, group trips and other memories
Internet Marketers could use it to market themselves and their latest products.
Here is a sample page made from Glogster.com
Simple Truths Videos
leadership
Simple Truths videos are a lovely collection of visual slideshows with quotations or inspirational sentences. I have used many of them with my students as a lead in- or follow up to a topic. For lower levels we begin by reading them out loud, discussing each quote and copying favorites into our notebooks. High levels have lengthly ,discussions about the content , visual and overall message. Here is a video that I used as a teaser for a theme on leadership! Enjoy!
Story of Stuff: An excellent documentary to use with English students!
Story of stuff
The 20 minute video, called Story of Stuff may be exactly what you are looking for. While it has not been produced for English Language Learners, it can easily be used and adapted for your target audience.
What is the story of stuff?
The story of stuff is a web-based documentary about the life-cycle of goods and services. It presents a critical vision of the materials economy. It “exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. The documentary is divided into 7 chapters: Introduction, Extraction, Production, Distribution, Consumption, Disposal, and Another Way.
How I used the video Story of Stuff with my students.
I used the story of stuff with college level students studying Marine Sciences. We had finished a unit of study on ocean currents, and pollution and the Story of Stuff fit right in. The SOS website offers resources which in include a glossary of terms . I also created several worksheets which engaged the students in while watching and follow up activities. You can see my worksheets below. We focused on vocabulary, presentation skills and the language of expressing an opinion. How did I know that my students enjoyed this lesson? First of all, they didnt yawn once! Second of all, they asked for the link to share it, this English content, with their friends. That say’s it all, doesn’t it? I mean, they are sending something that their English teacher taught them in class. How cool is that?
See a sample of the movie here: