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Dimpal Patel Mrs. Eaker ENGL 1101-017 13 November 2013 Multi- Genre Project: Rationale I chose the Clint Bowyer 5-hour energy drink commercial. In this commercial race car driver Clint Bowyer and a professional golf player Jim Furyk are signing autographs. The golf player asks Clint Bowyer if NASCAR drivers are really athletes. Clint Bowyer then goes to prove all he can do as an athlete. He then states that he does all this with the help of 5-hour energy drinks. The essential message of this ad is to promote and get people to purchase 5-hour energy drinks. The target audiences are NASCAR fans and golf fans. I liked this ad because of the original comment that Jim Furyk makes about NASCAR drivers really being athletes. It has always annoyed me when people say NASCAR drivers are not athletes because they are. These drivers endure a lot more than most athletes. This includes things from extremely hot temperatures inside the car to the complexity of the car and figuring out the turns. For my first genre I decided to do a magazine article. Instead of having two athletes talking about athleticism I used Clint Bowyer in a different aspect. I used him as a center piece to base my article on. I changed the message to try to persuade people to buy this product directly instead of indirectly like the ad did. I also added an extra incentive if you buy the 5-hour energy drink. Right now if you buy 5-hour energy a portion of the profit goes to the Life Beyond Breast Cancer organization. This might make some people who would not try energy drinks on a regular basis try it because they know it will benefit a good cause.

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The typical content of a magazine article is being informative such as in Times magazines. Some magazine article try to persuade people to buy certain items. These may include magazine articles in Country Sampler or Mother Earth Magazine. Some magazine article may help you to solve a problem like in Natural Health magazines. Some articles are written entertain you like in Peoples magazines. Some articles do more than one of those things at the same time. The structure of a magazine article depends on which magazine you are reading. It does not have to build to an important point. Some magazines scatter important points throughout the article. Depending on what kind of article you are reading some may be bias and only give one point of view. Like for instance if you are reading a magazine article in the Washington Times you might only be getting the view of the federal government. They may be bias about whats really going on so they dont sound bad to the people reading the article. The format of magazine articles are always grammatically correct. They usually contain a very catchy message. Usually there are multiple images within one article. Magazine articles usually have a title in bold. They usually contain a subtitle underneath the main title. Magazine articles have a page number and the authors name. Authors will often times try to add as much color as they can to make the article stand out from the other articles in the magazine. Also magazines have a slightly larger text to make them easier to read. Depending on what kind of article you are reading the language can be loosely worded with brief statements or strongly worded with strong ideas. If you are reading a sports magazine the articles in it will have loosely worded brief statements. If you are reading a politics magazine the articles in it will be strongly worded with strong ideas. Some magazine articles are filled with humor and sarcasm others may have a more serious approach. It all depends on what type of

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magazine you are reading. The sentences in magazine articles are always longer. Magazine articles are always written in complete sentences. In the commercial they used spoken text but in my article I used written text. I decided to make my 5-hour energy drink article to be in a sports illustrated magazine. I did this because I changed my target audience to specifically men. golf fans. These sports fans are more likely to read this article and buy this product. In the magazine I chose to put it in a sports illustrated magazine because mostly men read this magazine. I chose to change the audience because more people are likely to be general sports fans than just NASCAR and article I made sure to mention sports in general and also target NASCAR fans by mentioning Clint Bowyer at the end. In my article I had the title 5-hour energy in big, bold, red letters. I used two images one of Clint Bowyer with his sponsor 5-hour energy in the background. In the second picture I used a picture of their new raspberry 5-hour energy. Now when customers buy this product part of the money goes to the Life Beyond Breast Cancer organization. I used a larger sized text to make my article easier to read. I wrote it to make it sound very persuasive by asking questions and then answering them, making it seem like 5-hour energy was the only answer. I made sure to only talk about positive things about 5-hour energy. I made sure to include some quick facts about the drink. For my second genre I chose to do a short story. I wanted to appeal to a different aspect of 5-hour energy drinks. I wanted to go back to the main purpose of 5-hour energy drinks and that is to provide energy. My short story does this very well by presenting a character who lacks energy to go to class. The typical content for a short story tells a story of one characters situation. Often times the main character has to overcome an obstacle. Short stories are given one situation and one

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outcome. They typically only involve a few characters. They do not give a lot of details about the characters. Most short stories are only told from one characters point of view. In short stories authors dive right in to the problem and not much background information is given. The structure of a short story always has an exposition, rising action, a climax and a resolution. Usually they contain no more than 10,000 words. Short stories always have a distinct setting in which the story will take place. The format always has lots of pictures, usually at least one per page. No more than a few sentences are on a page. The font is larger than normal to make it an easy read. The language is loosely worded. The messages are not typically very serious. Sometimes authors will use humor to get a point across. Humor also makes the message seem casual and not very aggressive. I think this is a good tactic because then readers dont know that they are being subconsciously persuaded into buying or learning something (depending on what kind of short story it is). The sentence structure in short stories are composed of short complete sentences. They involve a lot of dialogue between the characters whenever necessary. The vocabulary used in these sentences are not very difficult to understand. I changed my target audience from adults to high school teenagers. I feel that adults already have their minds set on how they feel about energy drinks but teenagers dont. Teenagers are in that in between age where they are trying new things. They dont know exactly what they should take and are experimenting with different materials. This is the perfect time to get them hooked on 5-hour energy drinks. High school teenagers are not old enough to think about consequences they are just looking for a quick fix and that is exactly what 5-hour energy is. Teenagers are more likely to read short stories because they are lazy and short stories are an easy

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read. Teenagers spread trends fast, so if one teenager starts drinking 5-hour energy drinks eventually they all will. I feel like high school teenagers are a big target market so more drinks will be bought if we appeal to them. In my short story I gave a typical high school teenager scenario. The main character is stressed out and tired of school especially getting up early. I go through and describe her day at school. Finally her friend Mary comes up with a solution for her tiredness problem. The magic solution is 5-hour energy drinks. I made sure that I made a very relatable situation to all teenagers by incorporating a typical high school day. I totally changed the format of the message from talking about sports to talking about school. I used a lot of dialogue between the main character and her friend Mary. I used dialogue to emphasize the good qualities of 5-hour energy. I will have a picture on each page that relates to the story. I made sure that my sentences were short and concise. For my third genre I decided to do graphs/ charts. It is very important to know where the graph/ chart will be placed. If the graph/ chart was going to be placed in a magazine then it would have to be written formally but if it was going on an advertisement then its formatting would not matter as much. I wanted to show how satisfactory 5-hour energy drinks were. The best way to convince people to buy a product is to show them compelling facts. That is exactly what graphs and charts do. It is easy to skew data in order to make it work in your favor. The content for graphs/ charts are usually a representation of data. The data represented can be from a variety of topics, such as polling results or consumer reports. One graph/ chart represents the results of research from one topic. The structure of graphs/ charts are usually bias. The presenter of the chart wants the readers to feel a certain way about a product or topic so they skew the data so it will show

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favorable results. People use structure and organization to influence how the charts are read and what the reader focuses on. The format for graphs/ charts usually are a few words in the titles of the graphs/ charts. They always have a visual representation of data. This may be in the form of a pie chart, line graph, or bar graph. The graph or chart is usually color coded to make it easier to interpret the results. The titles of the graph/ chart are usually in bold and centered. The size of the font depends on the place where the graph/ chart will be read. The language of graphs/ charts include percentages and numerical data. There is hardly any other language used. The sentences are very short and fragmented. Sentences are only used to describe the data within the graph/ chart. I changed my target audience to people who are health conscious. Usually older people ages thirty- five and up refuse to drink energy drinks because they are worried about the risks. I wanted to appeal to those people who think all energy drinks are bad for you. I feel that the only way to do this is by presenting the data in a pie chart. People will be able to see how much 5hour energy drinks help. For the people who extremely health conscious I will show how 5-hour energy is healthier than other energy drinks. I will use pie charts to make 5-hour energy more favorable than all other energy drinks. My pie charts will be placed into an advertisement promoting 5-hour energy. I included a short description under each chart in a large font. I decided to include three different pie charts that showed different statistics. On my first pie chart I showed that 5-hour energy lasts longer than any other energy drink. My second pie chart showed doctors opinions on which energy drink they thought was healthiest, and they agreed that 5-hour energy was the healthiest. For my third pie chart I compared the taste of 5-hour energy to other energy drinks. The answer was

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clear most customers preferred the taste of 5-hour energy. I titled each chart so consumers would know what they are reading. I made all the font large so it would be easy to read. I put all the numbers in percentages. I labeled each percentage so the readers would know what they stood for. I made sure all the data I presented made 5-hour energy sound appealing and better than the other energy drinks. I made up a lot of convincing data to get customers to buy 5-hour energy. Each genre taught me a lot. I didnt even know that so many genres existed. Before this project I thought genres only related music. I learned that each genre has specific content, structure, format, language, and sentences. It helps to differentiate between genres if all these details are looked at. Two genres may look similar but when they are broken down by these five categories it is clear how they are different. The content describes exactly what kind of material is in the genre. The structure is the way the genre sounds like whether it is bias. The format describes the text and images that may be involved with a genre. The language describes the way a genre is presented, whether it is supposed to be humorous or sarcastic. Lastly, the sentences which is the way the text is written on a page like whether it is fragmented or complete and short or long. Each genre has to be analyzed separately by each part. If we know how to analyze different genres then we are able to appreciate them more. It is important to learn and analyze genres because it prevents us from making uninformed assumptions. For example, we may think all car stickers are the same but really there is a big difference between the messages of decals and bumper stickers. Through our knowledge of genres we can interpret the true meaning behind them. It is important to be informed about genres because we encounter them every day. Basically they effect everything we do because everything is a genre. Genres are found in our day to day lives from what we do in college or work to what we do with our leisure time.

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Each genre I used was different. They each taught me how things can be interpreted differently depending on which genre its supposed to be in. Through creating a magazine article I learned that they are supposed to be like a review of an article. Through my short story I learned the different parts that go into making a short story such as it has to have an exposition, climax, and resolution. I learned that in a short story you dont give much background information instead you jump right in to the problem. I already knew a lot about graphs/ charts but I didnt realize they could be classified as their own genre. I didnt realize that charts were formatted differently depending on where they will be presented. Overall this multi- genre project taught me about analyzing not only genres but also commercials. Commercials can be viewed in many ways and interpreted differently by different people. This project really opened my mind to looking at things from a different perspective.