October 5-11, 2008

Your focus, at least for the early part of the week, should be on MP2. It is due on Tuesday, October 7th. I've already given lots of advice here at the site as well as in class. All I will say now is to give us more rather than less. By that I mean, don't just assume that because your paper is five+ pages long it will get a great score. It depends upon the kind of information you have found and the kind of justification you have given for the target. Five double-spaced pages sounds about right only if you are not counting the material you should give at the end. For example, there should be a page of references as well as one page from each of three different sources you referenced. (Those might be a copy of a page from the census, a first page of an article, or something from a helpful website; we do this to make sure that you haven't simply made up your sources.) Beyond those things, you could also provide charts, tables, and diagrams. Just keep in mind that the more support and justification we see for the target market you selected then the better your score will probably be.

If you are frustrated because you have not been able to find as much information about your target market as you "need" to then keep in mind that MP2 is just a draft. Yes, we grade it because we want groups to take it seriously and get as much done at this point as they can. But, another way to look at it is that you have several more weeks to keep looking for information. You can include the additional information in your final paper (MP4, the one the client sees) and get a better score. That's one of the reasons why we weight MP4 much heavier than the other parts. By the end of the course we expect for you to have found more information, incorporate the feedback from us, and explain/describe your ideas better than you do now.

On Tuesday we will begin a series of lectures on Sales Promotion, a part of promotion that has taken much power and money away from advertising in the last 20 years. BTW, a lot of what I will be saying in the lecture is NOT in the book so it is important that you get the notes and the best place to get all of the notes is in class. After you have turned in MP2, get caught up on your reading. By now you should have read Ch. 9, 10, 11, and 14. As for the review questions in the Lecture Guide, I think you should be able to answer up to about #31 of the lecture questions and #22 of the book questions.