Persuasion: Campaign Plan

Link to the campaign plan here.

This artifact is the written campaign plan I wrote for my Communication 339 Persuasion class. The assignment called for students to create a persuasive message explain the topic, exigence, and goals, audience segment, promotion, and activation. My topic was about the importance of taking care of your mental health for college students. The communication knowledge I used was the use of the Elaboration Likelihood Model through the central route and the persuasion appeals of repetition and a heuristic.

The items of persuasion knowledge I used in my presentation were the Elaboration Likelihood Model in the central route and persuasive appeals. The Elaboration Likelihood Model consists of two routes of persuasion which depends on the receivers’ motivation to look into briefly scan a message in a persuasive topic. These two routes are the peripheral and central route. The peripheral route the receiver pays little attention and has a small amount of processing. I chose central route considers evidence weight and is consistent with the target audience’s values and motives. I showed this in my campaign plan in the topic and exigence section where I gave statistics and later in my audience segments where it explained why mental health care is important. Persuasive appeals are techniques used to persuade the audience. I applied the appeal of a heuristic which was “For when life happens.” A heuristic is coding for favorable audience inferences. My knowledge of this heuristic allowed me to come up with “For when life happens,” in the radio ad because I may have overwhelmed people with information and audience can at quickly remember the heuristic. The next appeal I used was a repetition with that heuristic which helps persuade my audience because greater familiarity makes the message more attractive and truthful.

All in all, my campaign plan showed thoughtful application of knowledge with the use of the Elaboration Likelihood Model through the central route and the persuasion appeals of repetition and a heuristic.