I’ve been thinking about some interesting commercial ideas as a way to jump start my creativity. My favorite so far is the Febreeze Zombies commercial. In this one people are led into a room where they smell nothing but Febreeze and when the blindfolds are removed they discover they are in a space filled with rotting flesh! Yeah, I watch a lot of zombie stuff on TV.
Making up fake commercials in my head is a fun trip, but the other way i’ve been staying creatively active is by designing schoolwork that is both relevant to my students and cool enough to capture their attention. This next unit is all about Hurricanes. While it might not seem like a relevant topic for Arizonan’s it is. We are indirectly affected by Hurricanes as a result of the increased rainfall in surrounding regions. Moreover, the state is struck by a tropical depression or storm every three years.
When I talk to students about writing I ask them how they plan to sell what they want to say to the audience. I ask them what is at stake for the reader. When it comes to hurricanes, this is a tough issue to sell, but once they hear the facts, it will change their outlook.
Some Thoughts:
1. Had the law officials in Texas been murdered by a drug cartel, it would be blasted all over the paper. Because so little information has been revealed about the killers, I can promise it was white shooters and perhaps even a group like the Aryan Nation. See, they don’t fit the salable news story, so the story is going to focus more on how these folks were able to be killed vs. who killed them. Now, once people begin to figure this out the story will shift to angst about the Supremecists and a great deal of marginalization, but until then this is being set up as a mystery when it really is not.