Course Project: Paper and Video Assignment Instructions
Overview
This course is all about communicating to a diverse group of employees, also known as internal publics, an internal audience, to positively shape and reshape their perceptions of an organization. Perceptions are best shaped by a story/narrative designed to involve and animate a specific target. The strategic goal of employee communication is to create a positive understanding of an organization.
Instructions
Your Challenge:
You will choose an organization to be the focus of your final project. Around your choice, you will create a story, a narrative that—through the communication tactics, especially the digital ones, that you have learned about in your other Strategic Communication courses—will dive deep into the psyche of the employees of an organization and give them reason to positively think, act, perceive, etc., establishing an emotional connection with the organization. The ideal organization is one that you are familiar with or one where you would like to work.
Course Project: Paper and Video
This Course Project Assignment consists of 2 parts, both due at the same time.
Paper: Write a 4–6-page paper in current APA format explaining how the story/narrative you have created drives an internal integrated marketing communication campaign that touches the organization and produces the desired effect. It will engage your employees/interns/volunteers/associates, producing more of the desired activities. The sections and format you are to use for this paper follow:
Introduction
Briefly summarize the effect you desire, the nature of your choice and target, and the story that provides the foundation for your creative.
Environment
Describe the context in which you are attempting to achieve employee motivation, peace, attitude change, buy–in, etc. What are the characteristics and “hot” buttons you can work with in attempting to communicate and persuade? What are the elements that the target has to overcome, within themselves or in the greater environment surrounding them, in order to be persuaded to go in your direction?
Story–Summary
An effective internal communications campaign is built in large part through touching members of the organization, through involving them in some kind of story with them and the product/organization/service at its center. Remember: An image is largely engineered through the communication of a story through appropriate channels, purposively and deeply touching a specified internal community (target).
In this section, describe the story that will be the foundation of your creative message. How do you want it to touch your target? With what effect? Now, step us through the elements of the story you have created. Include detailed descriptions of the beginning, middle, and end of the story as an underlying narrative.
Conclusion
A course that is worth the investment leaves you with something you can later use. What is the takeaway for you, personally, from this assignment? What have you learned that you can use in your career or, for that matter, your life?
The written portions of the assignments below are to be written with standard 1″ margins and 12 pt. Times New Roman font and must be double-spaced. Title page Included.
- Length of assignment: 4 to 6 pages (excluding title page and references)
- Format of assignment: Current APA
- Number of citations: at least 1
- Acceptable sources (textbook or sources with your organization’s information)
Video: Write and create a 30-second or 60-second promotional video, either a conventional promotional video or a video meant to be featured online that helps to produce buy-in from employees of an organization. What matters in this is not so much the production values—which can be rough, as this is not a course in video production—but the coherence of the story and its fit to the target. This is a conceptual and not professional production.
- Length of assignment: 30 to 60 second video
- Format of assignment Kaltura, YouTube, Vimeo with unlisted link, or various video platforms
Video
Describe the promotional video you have created:
How does it begin?
What is the story line in the middle?
How does it end?
What benefit does it promise for the target?
Put yourself in the shoes of its target. Does it work, why or why not?
Note: Your assignment will be checked for originality via the Turnitin plagiarism tool.