Case Study

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When creating a story for a strategic purpose, you must first identify key components of the organizational objectives and perform initial research. In industry, this first stage of development is often proposed to leadership and/or a client in the form of a pitch. In a story pitch, you provide the foundational concepts of the story and seek approval to continue developing the story.

Two foundational concepts are the story message and target audience. Remember that target audiences must be well-defined and specific. Extremely large, vague, or loosely defined audiences will make it difficult to create story components that meet the needs of the entire audience. Target audiences should be defined using a variety of descriptors that clearly delineate members of the target audience from people who are not members of the target audience. The work for this milestone is the first step in creating your storyboard presentation, which will be delivered as the project for this course.

Scenario

You are a communications consultant being asked to create a storyboard presentation for a campaign sponsored by an organization looking to engage their audience in some way. The details for each scenario are vague, allowing you to add your own details if you would like, but you cannot revise or remove what is already listed in the scenario.

Choose one of the following scenarios:

· A non-profit organization focused on saving endangered wildlife wants to raise awareness about the impact of natural disasters on wildlife.

· A non-profit organization that operates a food pantry and kitchen is having difficulty retaining volunteers to work in positions that do not directly work with the people the organization serves (such as stocking shelves and early morning kitchen prep).

· A non-profit organization that works with LGBTQIA+ youth is looking to promote their new 24/7 crisis text line service and recruit volunteers to work as crisis counselors.

· A for-profit organization that manufactures furniture wants to increase the sales of its new line of tables that can extend in multiple directions to accommodate up to 20 people.

· A for-profit organization that provides financial planning services wants to announce its new office in a country outside of the United States.

· A county public health department is concerned that the people living in the county do not trust their information or recommendations because of the negative implications of being a government organization.

Prompt

Create a story pitch for your direct supervisor that provides an overview of the story message and the target audience. The message of the story must discuss both the organization’s objectives (why the organization is creating the story) and what the overall message will be (the ideas intended for the audience to take away from the story). When defining target audience, it is important to choose an audience that will help the organization achieve the goal. It is likely that there will be many different audiences who can help the organization achieve the goal, so it will be up to you to choose one of those audiences to focus on.

Specifically, you must address the following rubric criteria:

· Identify the communication goal of your story and the story’s overarching message.

· Describe the target audience for the story (demographic, geographic, and psychographic details) and the data sources you used to research your target audience.

· Justify how your communication goal and story message relate to the cultural experiences of the audience and how your message could influence them.

· Explain why this story will grab the audience’s attention.

Guidelines for Submission

This assignment must be approximately 500 to 750 words in length and submitted as a Microsoft Word document. At least two supporting resources are required. Resources must be cited in APA format.

Supporting Materials

The following resources may help support your work on the milestone:

Template: Milestone One Story Pitch Template You may use this template for creating your story pitch. You are not required to use or submit this template for grading and can customize it as appropriate for your submission.

Website: U.S. Census Bureau When collecting data to determine your target audience demographics, psychographics, and/or geographics, this may be a useful source for gathering your information. If you are looking at an audience outside the United States, your chosen country or countries’ government census websites should have this data available for your reference.

Website: Pew Research Center This website for the Pew Research Center contains numerous data sets that may be helpful for gathering additional audience data. These data sets include information on social trends, internet and technology, global attitudes, and much more, giving you a deeper insight into your audience beyond standard demographic data.

Shapiro Library Resource: APA Style: Basics As you create visuals, it will be essential to provide credit for all images, videos, and text you use. Review this citation guide to learn how to properly cite text, images, and videos taken from other sources. This guide is intended to help you cite sources in APA style, avoid plagiarism, and search examples of APA style.