Analysis of All the Business Communications - Lab Report Example

TITLE by Name of author Name of class Name of Professor Name of school Location of school Date Date Mode (e.g. advertisement, payment request and donor collection) Type Brief summary of content Style (e.g. humorous, friendly, apologetic) Effective (yes/no) Why/why not effective Day 1 Billboard (DHL: Always the right way) Advertisement Small ball goes through a maze from point A-B through the shortest route, and then starts all over again. Friendly Yes Drives the message home by illustration and repetition Radio (Melanoma Spreads) Advertisement Talks about effect of melanoma and how it’s to cure with early detection Informative Yes Gives real facts about the disease and easily enlightens those who don’t know the disease itself. Television (Toyota Corolla: Lifetime of good times) Advertisement Toyota uses its new sedan to mirror the aspirations of its target audience. It comes off as just not a car but a part of the target market future. Friendly Yes Starts off as a boy meets girl story, going through what they could possibly want in future with the new Toyota corolla placing itself as part of this future Day 2 Mail Payment reminder A reminder to pay my electricity bill in time Serious No Use of technical terms and abbreviations Email (Diabetes Australia) Donation request Request to donate towards diabetes research initiatives. Friendly Yes Informative and gives a clear message of the cause of the donations Television (Save the Children) Donation Request Advert asks people to donate money to be used by the NGO to help Africa’s hungry children Sympathetic No The advert misinforms the public instead of educating it and uses development porn to solicit for donor funds Day 3 Print (Australia By Boat? No Advantage) People smuggling campaign Campaign describes the danger of travelling by boat into Australia warning people that there will not be guaranteed asylum for them. Warning No Message is deficient on factors that influence would be migrants’ decisions. Billboard (Coca Cola: Share a Coke) Advertisement Advertisement asks individuals to text friends name to a number and their friends name appears on the digital billboard as ‘share a Coke with……’ Fun Yes The advert allows the target audience to be part of the advertisement. McDonald’s (Free Wi-Fi) Advertisement Using French fries to depict the shape of a Wi-Fi network, McDonald’s has been able to communicate its free Wi-Fi in its stores without the need to use words. Friendly Yes It does not require a lot of words as the message through the diagram speaks for itself. Well Constructed Communications After careful analysis of all the business communications recorded, I have come to a conclusion that the DHL: Always the Right Way advertisement and the McDonald’s free Wi-Fi advertisement. A business communication should meet various standards if the message communicated is supposed to strike a chord with the target audience (Guffey & Loewy 2013). This is exactly what DHL did in their billboard advertisement. The words ‘Always the Right Way’ resonates well with the ad’s plot i.e. the 3D graphic of the small red ball going through the maze within the shortest possible time via the shortest route. The target audience thus gets a clear message of what DHL can do. The second business communication, McDonald’s free Wi-Fi advertisement also meets certain advertising standards that help it communicate its message without using a lot of words. By using French fries to create a Wi-Fi symbol, the advertisement becomes part of the company and at the same time the symbol immediately communicates its free Wi-Fi message. Poorly Constructed Communications Among the group of recorded communications, the two poorly constructed are ‘Save the Children’ campaign and the ‘Australia by Boat? No Advantage’. These two failed to communicate effectively their message to the target audience. In analyzing the ‘Save the Children’ television donation request, it is clear that it did not take into account the sociological effects it would have on the public. By using nutritionally emaciated children is in a way trying to take advantage of people’s empathetic nature to get them to dig deep in their pockets to donate. Although it might get people donating, it is the wrong way to do it. It also creates a theme of a ‘helpless poor Africa’ that needs rescuing, a paternalistic narrative that people have long moved from. In the ‘Australia by Boat? No Advantage’ advertisement, the communication does very little to influence the decision making process of its target audience – would-be migrants. This is because it is not backed up by possible appropriate channels for legal migration that would in the end deter people smuggling. Basically, there is insufficient information that would help in reshaping decisions of possible migrants. The image also does very little to show people that it is a campaign against smuggling people as one could easily mistake it to be a fishing campaign since the picture does not support the words effectively. Improvement Methods These two poorly constructed communications could be made better and help them communicate the message to their target audience. First off, the ‘Save the children’ campaign could be best communicated to the target audience in a way that they are educated about the progress that has been made in Africa and that more needs to be done. This can be done not necessarily using pictures and clips of children dying of hunger. Its communication could have been handled better with intercultural considerations (Newman, Ober & Ober 2013). The reason behind this reasoning is the fact that this campaign would not resonate well with Africans who might take it that the advert is portraying them as helpless because it doesn’t talk about progress made to reduce the situations. By incorporating these methods, the ‘Saving the Children’ campaign will help communicate the message much better to all donors. The second communication campaign, ‘Australia by Boat? No Advantage’ could also be made much better. Looking at the print advertisement, it becomes difficult decoding the message by the receiver. Decoding of information is a very important step of the communication process without which the message would not make sense to the target audience (Stuart, Sarow & Stuart, L. P. 2007). One is not able to decode the message by just looking at the picture and has to read the print message just to make sense of the whole campaign. The picture should have been made in such a way that it clearly illustrates the message to enable the target audience easily connect it with the written material. Another thing that this campaign needs is a change of communication media because it needs a lot of supporting information that would help deter would-be migrant to change their decision about illegally entering Australia. As such, the message should have been communicated via television so that all the important and required information could be incorporated in it (Krizan, A. 2011). References Guffey, M. E., & Loewy, D. 2013. Essentials of business communication. Mason, OH, South-Western Cengage Learning. Ober, S. 2008. Contemporary business communication. Boston, Mass, Houghton Mifflin. Krizan, A. C. 2011. Business communication. Australia, South-Western Cengage Learning. Newman, A., Ober, S., & Ober, S. 2013. Business communication: in person, in print, online. Mason, OH, South-Western Cengage Learning Stuart, B. E., Sarow, M. S., & Stuart, L. P. 2007. Integrated business communication in a global marketplace. Hoboken, N.J., Wiley. Read More