Some Things Never Change ;)

The semester is winding down to a close but the work however is not.  The past two weeks have been the busiest weeks here, besides the ESL training when I first arrived here.  I have been attending Kim Bigelow's Media Writing class about 2-3 days a week.  This consists of me going to the class and helping Kim look at the students' news stories, advertising brochures, TV commercial scripts and other writing.  Last month, I showed them the basic skills for photoshop so they could make a brochure.  This past week they had to present their brochures to the class and Kim for one of their final grades.  I have been logging office hours to help the media writing students if they need help with their assignments.  So, last week I was bombarded with about 3/4 of the two classes waiting for me to look for spelling mistakes, grammer mistakes and whatnot.  Some of their concepts were interesting but if they gained anything about advertising they learned that sex sells.  Looking through some of their brochures was like walking down the strip in Las Vegas, seeing all the business cards of scantily clad women in provocative poses littering the street like confetti.  

Ok so the product they were advertising for was swimming pools and yeah, ok everyone likes to see a hot girl in a bikini but come on!  How original is that?   About 90% of the brochures I looked at had a girl in a bikini on the cover.  Not to mention, many of them used the SAME picture.  I was a little frustrated with the lack of creativity to come up with a different concept but it did put a smile on my face when the students presented their work to the class and got nothing but oooohhhhhs and aaaaawwwwwws from their audience.  I mean lets face it, what 20 something year old guy  would ignore an advertisement with a hot girl in a bikini?  Yeah my point exactly... I guess they hit the nail right on the head with this one.