4. Second-Year Course Headline (4 marks) Create one headline promoting second-year digital courses in this program, targeted to first-year students. You must provide: 

a) Provide the headline 

Level up your game with second-year Digital Courses

b) Explain your reasoning clearly using class content

The reasoning behind this comes from where a lot of my classmates and I felt in the first year. We felt as though we were learning a lot, but still didn’t really know how or what to do in terms of things like Google Ads, email marketing, and SEO. This headline encourages the first year that in the second year, your knowledge will turn into employable skills, and that you will actually find your niche within the umbrella of advertising. My headline intends to be inspirational and informative to the first-year students, encouraging them that it will pick up at some point, and you will find yourself gaining new skills. In class and on the powerpoints, one of the ways to write a better headline was to help the reader see a future for themselves. This headline is meant to invoke that feeling of thinking about the future and what you can do to have a better career in the long run.

1. SCC Advertising Program Headline (6 marks) Create one headline for an article about the SCC Advertising Program, targeted to local graduating high school students. You must provide: 

a) The headline 

6 or 7 reasons to join the St CLair College Advertising Program.

b) An explanation of the information missing from the instructions 

The information missing from the instructions is a few things. While we know the audience, we don’t necessarily know what the intent or the goal is. Is it to increase applicants? Is it to build awareness about the program? Is it to tell the audience what is unique about the program? We don’t really know which is what makes crafting a headline difficult. If we had the content within the article, it would be much easier to craft a headline related to that content. For example, if the article intends to increase applicants to the advertising program, we could make a headline about the percentage of graduates who work in the advertising industry. Since we don’t know that, we have to keep it general.

c) A detailed justification for your headline choice based on course concepts 

The first thing I did when crafting the headline was to include the program name, obviously, if we don’t have that, nobody will know what we are talking about. It links the name of the program to build awareness and to set a tone for the rest of the content. Secondly, we talked about the use of an odd number and how human brains like odd numbers; in this headline, I did a little bit of a play on it. This article is targeted towards local graduating high school students, or another way we can classify them is as members of Gen Z. The use of the 6 7 will hit home with Gen Z and catch their attention. I think it also communicates that advertising and our program aren’t dying and that we keep up with current trends within culture, social trends, and the state of the world. In fact, we are probably some of the most culturally and socially aware people because the job demands that of us. 

1. Headline Intent vs Outcome (4 Marks) Choose one headline you created in Part B, Q#1 Part B and answer the following: 

a) What is the primary intent of this headline? (e.g. curiosity, urgency, clarity, relevance, emotional pull) 

b) What action or response is the headline designed to trigger? 

c) Explain why this intent is appropriate for the target audience you selected

The headline I have chosen is Headline 2: 8 Fantasy Football Booms and Busts, the last 2 will shock you. The intent of this headline is to build curiosity in the reader, but also to get people excited for the next season of football, maybe their team has a high pick, or maybe they now want their team to avoid picking someone. The strategy behind this is that there is no fantasy football or football of any kind happening right now. The intended action is for them to click on my headline and read the article. The intent and the intended action are relevant for this audience because football fans are bored right now, and there is nothing for them to really get excited about, especially if they aren’t fans of another sport. This headline and article are giving them content right now, specifically because there is a lack of content, which means you don’t get lost in a sea of headlines and content, making the limited content that there is more relevant.

1. Headline Variation (12 marks) Using the article from Part A, Question #1, you are to create three (3) different headlines. Each headline must emphasize a different headline element discussed in class. (3X4=12 Marks) For each headline: 

a) Include the Headline 

b) Explain your reasoning 

c) Reference specific class concept

HEADLINE 1 – NFL Combine, 8 players who will boom and bust in Fantasy Football.

This headline is short and to the point; it tells you everything that you need to determine whether you want to read this article. I laid it out roughly the same way I saw headlines displayed, which is 4-6 words, then the next line, and due to the rules of the F pattern, you would see NFL Combine at the top left, then right below that on the next line, you would see Fantasy Football. I did this to target the same audience as the original headline and article. That audience is fantasy footballers who are bored right now and have no football to watch; the combine is the perfect event to watch right about at this time. In addition to that headline entices you to read because it gives the idea that you will have an edge ahead of next season on the other players in your league. In class, we talked about reflecting on what the most important point is that your content is making. For this that point is which athletes to avoid and which athletes to draft. In fantasy football terms, we call this a boom or a bust. Using language like this is important for communicating well with your audience. In class, we and on the powerpoints it was said to talk like our audience but not to fake it. Secondly, why would a reader care to know that? Some fantasy football leagues pay a lot of money if you win them; it’s an avenue of sports betting, and some people make quite a bit of money off of this. A reader who is in our target audience would want to know what our article says because it could give them an edge when it comes to drafting a team, and that could make them money. 

HEADLINE 2 – 8 Fantasy Football Booms and Busts, the last 2 will shock you.

This headline utilizes two odd numbers, 8 and 2. This makes you think, “Why only 8?” and makes you wonder about why the last two are so shocking. Again, this headline is meant to capture the attention of NFL fantasy football players and sports betters. In this headline, I use the odd numbers to get people thinking about what they are missing out on, which plays into the FOMO trigger of content marketing, thinking, what am I going to miss out on if I don’t read this article. In this case, they are afraid of losing money on sports betting and losing their fantasy football leagues. What is different about this one is that I put “the last two will shock you.” This headline is less misleading and more truthful about the contents of the article than the original. This is because the last two are lumped together and do not have their own section within the article; with this headline, it makes that seem more intentional and more truthful because the last two are now, instead of being weaker, more in focus in the article.

HEADLINE 3 – Why Everyone is talking about these 8  NFL draft picks.
This headline is more of an open-ended question; in the headline, we create a question that people didn’t know they had, and in the article, we answer that question. That question is the hook to get people’s attention and get them wondering why, and which picks people are talking about. That is how we get them to the page, then once they are on the page, there is in depth analysis of the players and how they did at the combine vs where they could end up in the draft, which happens to be the answer to their question. This headline implements the strategy of using curiosity gaps to get readers to wonder about your content, which encourages them to click the link and read your article.

1. Click Motivation (8 marks) This must be a different headline than Question #1

a) Provide a different headline you recently clicked on.

Bills offered superb Keon Coleman escape route involving 25-TD WR

b) Include the exact headline and a screenshot 

Bills offered superb Keon Coleman escape route involving 25-TD WR

c) Explain why you clicked it, not why you liked it 

I clicked the headline because I saw the words “Bills, Keon Coleman, escape”. Simply put, I despise Keon Coleman; he’s a clown, and he won’t take his job seriously. My hatred of Keon Coleman, coupled with the hope that he would be released or traded, is why I clicked the link and read the article. 

d) Tie your reasoning directly to course concepts 

In class, we discussed a few things. The F pattern again comes to mind because of the way that it is laid out on Yahoo. The first words according to the F pattern that you read are as follows: Bills, Coleman, Escape. Based on the Target audience of this article (Bills Fans), most, if not all, are calling for Coleman to be let go. 

The second thing that ties into the course concept is the use of an odd number, but this sort of combos with NFL knowledge because my first thought was “no wide receiver scored 25 touchdowns this season. Therefore, I was naturally curious, thinking “who is it?” Davante Adams was the touchdown leader in the regular season with 14, so this has to be false or misleading, which it was. The 25 touchdowns are over the course of Michael Pittman Jr.’s career. Sort of misleading, but still technically true. 

Another thing we talked about in class was fear. For Buffalo Bills fans, they are afraid that we will not win a Super Bowl, even with the best quarterback in football, and the reason for that is that we do not have a good wide receiver. When we see this headline, the hope is that we don’t have to fear not having a good receiver for Josh Allen anymore, and we don’t have to fear another crushing playoff loss.

1. Accuracy & Representation (4 marks) Was the headline in Question #1 an accurate representation of the article content? 

a) Explain your reasoning clearly 

Yes, the article was an accurate representation of the headline. It contained the most notable performances and insights from the NFL combine, which includes good and bad performances. This article, based on my sights, is mainly for fantasy footballers. It did include what to know about the best and contrastingly worst performances at the combine. It did not, however, have full details on all 8 that they claimed they had. For each athlete, they had a detailed summary of this athletes performance at the combine. At the end, where I was expecting to see the 7th and 8th notable performances, they lumped two tight ends into the same section. This felt lazy and like they were embellishing the number in the headline. 

b) Reference course discussion on misleading vs effective headlines
I think that overall, this headline was effective, although the number 8 was a little sloppy in my opinion. In class, we discussed how you can’t mess with numbers (ie, lie), although it wasn’t technically a lie, you can write for a specific number or choose another way to phrase it. This headline was effective, though even with the sloppy number for a few reasons, the use of an odd number, the use of the F pattern, and captivating words within the headline, which we discussed a lot in class.

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.