9-10 Teacher Externship Lesson: Sales and Marketing in Broadcasting

CTE Areas of Study: Arts, A/V Technology & Communications and Marketing

Standards & Objectives

Learning objectives: 
  • The goal of this activity is to develop a student’s understanding of the role of demographics in advertising and the careers available in advertising/marketing while practicing the skills necessary to become proficient in the Tennessee Standards for Literacy in Technical Subjects. Teachers can use this activity to develop an understanding of how advertising targets specific audiences and how a sales department operates. Discussions, reading, researching, and writing exercises are coordinated in class to help students learn how media businesses benefit from understanding their audience.
Essential and guiding questions: 

Text 1

  • Given the information in this essay, how would a radio station utilize the information about race?
  • According to the article why is it more effective to market to a particular demographic rather than to an individual?
  • Marketing and advertising are very expensive for businesses. According to the article explain how using demographic information could help increase sales.
  • According to this article, how is data gathered and where would businesses be able to access the information most useful to their companies?

Text 2

  • Discuss the use of Facebook among different age groups and how this might impact the advertising of three different products.
  • Cite evidence from the text that supports or refutes the statement: “Social media is becoming more integrated into our lives.”
  • Using the graphs, discuss the amount of time that people spend on social media and explain why age might be a factor in usage. Locate two graphs where you fall into that demographic and explain how accurate that information is or is not according to your specific categories.
  • Explain what the author means by this quote, “Social media is a blur of tweets, shares and content. No longer is it used by the young and the restless. It is global and embedded in every corner of the web.”
  • According to the article, why does the author believe that Google+ will surpass Facebook in popularity?

Unit Variations

Blooms taxonomy level: 
Understanding
Differentiation suggestions: 

Scaffolding and support for students with special needs, English language learners, and struggling readers: 

  • Consider pre-teaching synonyms of difficult vocabulary words. Lower-level readers and ELL students can still be challenged without being overloaded with difficulty. This strategy can also be used to differentiate for stronger readers by introducing new, and more challenging, vocabulary. Struggling readers would also benefit from visual aids to illustrate many of the ideas presented. Pictures, diagrams, and charts alongside the text will go far to aid students as they dissect the articles.