Though our population continues to grow every year, the hesitancies of attending a small school are still present when incoming high schoolers are making their decisions. Keith Scalia’s AICE English Language class was tasked with creating an effective recruitment campaign for Marco Island Academy while utilizing rhetorical strategies in a printed and video advertisement. They were given a week and a half to complete the assignment, which was then presented the day prior to Enrollment Night to face judgement, where it would be used to recruit potential students.

Classmates critiqued each submission based on their effective use of rhetorical components: Logos (logic), Ethos (credibility), and Pathos (appeal to emotion). “To boil down everything unique that MIA has compared to every other school, in 45 seconds, was something we all struggled with,” said Sean Sorrick. The junior continued, “Using rhetoric was a creative way to experiment with some of the aspects we will be using in effective writing.”

Challenges faced by the students initiated a thought process for something that would normally seem like an easy to accomplish task. Teagan Havemeier, also an 11th grader, said, “I think everyone has a message, but it’s definitely difficult to try and portray that; the way you have it pictured in your mind. It’s amazing how much thought goes into every little aspect of an advertisement.”

Now The Wave asks you to help us determine which of the advertisements was the most effective. Watch each ad and choose the one you think is the most influential in convincing prospective students to attend MIA. The advertisements can be found at www.themiawave.org, under the Multimedia, Student Life, Video, and What’s Happening at MIA categories.

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