1. Headline Resonance (6 marks) 

Find one (1) headline you recently encountered that you felt was effective. 

a) Provide the exact headline 

NFL Scouting Combine Fantasy Football Risers and Fallers: What to know about 8 draft prospects

b) Explain why it resonated with you 

This headline resonated with me for several reasons. First of all, there is no football happening right now. Football fans, we’re in the off-season and are bored. So the use of “NFL” right at the beginning is a perfect way to attract the interest of any NFL fans, simply because there isn’t a lot happening right now, so we aren’t getting bombarded with football news anymore, making the use of the word “NFL” more meaningful to us. There are also no fantasy football leagues right now, so the use of Fantasy Football also is also incredibly meaningful to this article’s target audience, and if it isn’t interesting to you, you are not the target audience for this article or headline.

c) Tie your explanation directly to specific headline elements discussed in class

One of the first things that I identified is that the way Yahoo is laid out, there are 3 articles side by side, so naturally, you only get a few words in before the next line. This is incredibly effective because the way it is laid out corresponds to what we learned about the F pattern in class. The F pattern states that youstart at the top and read a few words, then skip down to the next line. So the first words on the first and second lines are “NFL” and “Fantasy Football”. As I previously stated about the target audience of this article, those two words are the biggest triggers to get clicks and reads.

Another element we discussed in class is the use of odd numbers within headlines. We learned in class that using odd numbers in your headline is another great way to pique interest and increase clicks. In this article, they specify “8” draft prospects. Why 8? In class, we learned that as humans, we are naturally curious creatures and that “numbers are like candy for us.” When you use an odd number, people can’t help but wonder, even if it’s subconsciously, “why that number”. They feel as though they are missing something important and that reading this article could ensure they don’t miss anything. This also ties back to another trigger we talked about in class, which is fear.

In class, we looked at the Trump Emails and the most common theme was fear. Humans are plagued with fear, even if it isn’t serious fear. People are always afraid of missing out; we call this FOMO, or fear of missing out. When people are afraid, naturally, they want a solution to not be afraid anymore. Maybe this article could give them that answer, so they click it and read it.