Esperanto-USA
Esperanto: The International Language that Works!
SearchUser loginRecent blog posts
|
Help needed designing a new Ad This is a request for help designing an ad. Esperanto-USA recently bought an ad in a magazine, "The American Prospect". The results were somewhat disappointing. I think we got between 50 and 100 hits due to the ad, and at least one request for information. Having our ad in a mainstream magazine is good marketing for us; however, we would hope for better results. We would therefore now like to design an ad aimed specifically at language instructors. This is part of our overall plan to try to discover the best possible avenue for advertising. In particular, we plan to purchase an ad in "Language" magazine. The advertising kit gives the precise format of the ad. We plan to spend between $500 and $1000 on this ad. I and the other members of the ELNA-informado komitato don't have any particular skill in writing or desgining an ad. Therefore we are making an open call for volunteers to help us with this. The last ad was quite attractive, and was designed by Hoss Firooznia. Please -- if you have any ideas for this ad, can suggest verbiage, or can design and entire ad, please place a comment here or contact me: read at robertlread.net.
E-USA: Esperanto-USA |
Pictures from Esperantujo
We support...
|
||||||
Ad for language instructors
im not at all sure whether this will be of any help or not but here goes... as a language instructor and esperantist, it has been my experience that you will will get the following reactions from other language instructors:
1) they tend to view esperanto as a threat to their livelihood. "if everyone starts learning esperanto there will be no use for the school to employ me". and so, language instructors can be very hostile to the whole idea.
2) another type, however, can very supportive of the whole notion and see it as a way to promote language study and diversity as well as cultural / world awareness.
or
3) they will just think your either completely nuts, or a hopeless idealist. other than that they will see you as taking away from the "real" issue of promoting language learning, not to mention your colossal waste of time.
i have been around language instructors since i entered undergrad in 1989. from then until now i have been around language instructors from all language groups and backgrounds at 2 major universities and a community college. i tried on many occasions to stir up some interest in esperanto and i succeeded exactly one time, and that was with an office mate and good friend from brazil who i convinced to go with me to NASK twice. my american colleagues all reacted in one of the 3 above mentioned ways.
so, i think you ought to be prepared for a rather hostile crowd while attempting to attract those whose profession is language instruction. certainly many in this field are progressive thinkers, but there are just as many who are very conservative.
i have always felt that we might have more luck, especially in the US, if the movement tried to appeal more to a more left-leaning crowd. the idealism of a common second language and the whole interna ideo would be very appealing to the general Pagan community. and the ideas of linguistic/cultural equality, diversity and inclusion, i believe, (not to mention the international travel) would be very appealing to the Gay and Lesbian community.
at any rate, this has been my personal experience as a language instructor who has tried to get other language instructors interested in our beautiful language and family.
I'm sure you're correct...
However, I don't mind spending some moeny to combat the hostility of language instructors to Esperanto. I suspect an ad that is informative and stresses that Esperanto tends to lead to a lifetime of lanugage study might slightly shift the overall attitude. If so, it is well worth it.
I'm going to try do design something using Lee's suggestion as a starting point.
-- Robert L. Read
read &t robertlread point net
Austin, TX, USA
"ESPERANTO FUNKCIAS!"
I don't know how much copy you're looking for. Will it be a quarter, half, or full page ad? Color? Maybe it would include a photo of some young folk having fun together at an IJK, like that really great photo that turns up in the Esperanto-USA home page now and then. I can probably do graphic layout too but having the tools and understanding fonts and colors doesn't mean I have any talent for graphic arts. Anyway, here's some copy I came up with off the top of my head.
---
Your students have a natural drive to communicate. You can boost their confidence and enthusiasm for foreign language by first teaching them a language without unnecessary complexity.
A pilot doesn't begin flight training in a jumbo jet with hundreds of switches, knobs, levers and buttons everywhere. That would be too confusing! Instead, they start out in a simple plane with clearly-defined controls. Then, when they know "how to learn to fly", they can learn to pilot more complex aircraft in a relatively short time.
Likewise, your students can avoid confusion by learning a language with a straithgforward structure. Anyone can become fluent in Esperanto in a surprisingly short time. Then, having grasped "how to learn a language" (and Esperanto's pan-European vocabulary) they'll be able to absorb difficult languages much more rapidly. Such students often surpass their peers who have struggled from the very start memorizing arbitrary exceptions and irregularities.
Esperanto isn't just a language, it's also a language teaching aid. It was designed to streamline the language-learning process.
Esperanto works!
---
Of course there would be a URL and maybe the ELNA phone number in there somewhere too.
About the ad specs...
From the "media kit" linked to above, its $1050 for a 1/4 page ad, $520 for an 1/8 page ad. The size is 3.75 inches wide by 7.5 inches high.
Your text appeals to me; but then I am already convinced, so I don't trust my own judgement.
Thank you! I think this is a good starting point.
-- Robert L. Read
read &t robertlread point net
Austin, TX, USA
What's in it for them!
Pardon my crocodiling, I'm just a beginner.
To me, it seems that E-USA / ELNA's greatest talent is in NOT creating interest in Esperanto. Consider: less than 700 members in a country of 300 million? And nearly a century to try to get it right!
Far, far too much emphasis in E-USA's (and other E-associations) PR is in presenting over and over again the Zamenhofian dream of a universal common language. To be blunt, no one gives a s*** about that, and the few that do, are already members.
Whatever you do, you must:
1. Consider your audience - what interests them, what motivates them, what do THEY want?
2. Show them how you can help them.
The bald truth is NO ONE wants to help you! That's why advertising moguls spend billions of dollars telling me their products will help me be happier, have more fun, get rich, get laid, etc.
On our new site, I have a page "Why Esperanto?, where I try to show that Esperanto is fun and useful and link to pages that prove it.
Two things I was careful NOT to say: on the page I never mention the fact that's constructed or that many dream that someday everyone in the world can speak it.
Perhaps that can help.
esperante,
Jon (ĝon)
Nur ripozu. Via apartigo de Dio estas la plej malfacila afero en l' mond'.
--Hafiz
I am asking for an audience-specific ad...
I understand that ad must be targeted to the audience; that I why I am specifically asking for help with it, based on the particular magazine in question, and not re-using the very nice ad that Hoss created for our previous attempt.
I certainly think we should not mention Zamenhof in a magazine aimed at language instruction professionals. I'm hoping someone will propose some good text for this purpose; if they don't do so in a few more weeks, I will have to write the ad myself. I know some of you cringe at that thought.
The fact that we have 700 members out of a potential pool of 300 million is indeed embarassing. However, it is possible not so much that our message has been wrong, but that it has been non-existent. We have spent essentially no money advertising in the last five years.
Personally, I don't think we should aim our ads at getting people to become members. In Austin, there are at least 20 good Esperanto speakers, and I think 3 of them are members of Esperanto-USA. If we can just start to become relevant, (by doing a good job placing ads, for instance), our membership could climb dramatically just based on that relevance.
-- Robert L. Read
read &t robertlread point net
Austin, TX, USA
Idealismo kaj reklamado
Jon, you're right that good advertising should target an audience and be designed to give them something they want. Your “Why Esperanto” page does a great job in this regard. Congratulations on that, by the way!
That said, I'm not sure it's wise to so quickly dismiss the appeal of idealism.
In my experience, there are a lot of people out there who respond to the idea of the language problem in general, and to Esperanto in particular as a democratic communications tool that can solve that problem.
And no, the people who care about such things are not already members, by and large. The vast majority of people who would be responsive to such advertising have either never heard of Esperanto, or they have some really bizarre misconceptions about it.
It's hard to believe that E-USA (or any other Esperanto group) has even begun to tap this large pool of potential interest, because no Esperanto group has the resources to do much advertising at all.
I agree that we need to emphasize the practical, immediate benefits of the language. But at the same time, I think it's a mistake to ignore the history of the language and the Interna Ideo.
People are invariably going to ask: “Where did the language come from?” and “Why was it created?” (In my experience, these are the very first questions they ask!) If we hide these details away, we give the impression that there's something negative about them — when in fact, these are two of Esperanto's greatest strengths.
Hoss,
Hoss,
I'm certainly not suggesting that it's origins are a drawback or something to be kept secret. And I myself have some hope in the dream of shared language. And of course, targeting a language journal is very different than targeting a political magazine; I suggest that the focus be on Esperanto's ease of learning and it's utility as a primer language for learning other languages more rapidly.
Yes, idealism attracts idealists, who are a distinct minority in any population. The last ad was targeted to a political readership which one would expect to be chock-full of idealists. But if idealists are minority, idealists who want to go through the work of learning a language are a further minority, and those who are willing to do that with a language they can't use immediately with anyone else they presently know, a much, much greater minority.
What's 5% of 5% of 5%? ( About 1 in 10,000. And those figs are optimistic, my friend.)
Millions of people are drawn to idealistic thinking, but only thousands of them to idealistic action.
I have no experience in advertising, but I do have experience in corporate training, and one thing I've learned is that you must expect anything you say to be misunderstood or interpreted wildly differently than what you meant. And correcting the misunderstandings takes time, time that you don't have in an ad.
When you're chatting up E-o with a friend and mention it's a constructed language, if he says, "Huh? Like Klingon?", you might have an hour to set hiim straight. In a magazine ad you might expect to have a reader's attention for 15-30 seconds, if that.
In an ad, you cannot correct misunderstanding, and you absolutely cannot afford to risk misunderstandings. It's not essential for anyone to learn what Esperanto's history was or what it's dreams are. That belongs to the past and future. In an ad, you must address IMMEDIATE BENEFITS. Everything else is irrelevant.
People who feel that they might BENEFIT from studying Esperanto will come to the Website, learn about it's unique and wonderful history, and the idealism and dreams that fuel it. But that, for most people, is something that comes after it piques their interest because it may be beneficial to them. The Interna Ideo, along with the community of Esperantio, will help them expand the idea of "benefit" to the world.
-----------
Nur ripozu. Via apartigo de Dio estas la plej malfacila afero en la mond'.
--Hafiz
Absolutely
Agreed, Jon. If you check out the previous ad, I think you'll find that you're preaching to the choir. We didn't target idealists; we targeted people who like cheap travel.
I'm in agreement...and still looking for wording.
Yes, I want an ad that describes immediate benefits. If you have an idea, please post it.
-- Robert L. Read
read &t robertlread point net
Austin, TX, USA
Many paths...
I've seen a number of small-scale efforts to explore why people learn Esperanto. Someday, it might be worth someone to do a large-scale survey. But even with only limited, anecdotal results, it quickly becomes clear that people learn Esperanto for all kinds of reasons. Some people learn Esperanto for idealistic reasons, some learn purely for its idiosyncratic weirdness -- and some learn for nearly every reason in between.
Similarly, I think advertising does not need to be "perfect" -- indeed, it cannot be perfect, since what will work for one kind of person, will fall flat for another.
What is absolutely clear, however, is that people won't learn Esperanto if they don't know what it is or how to get started. Just getting the idea out there is worth a lot.
So far, I think we've been mostly going after low-hanging fruit: the people who would love to learn Esperanto if they only knew that it existed. A real PR campaign would be great: one that would aim to communicate the big ideas of Esperanto and shift people's perceptions of it. Maybe someday...
--
Steven BREWER
A few ideas
I'm thinking that for this audience, an emphasis on Eo as a springboard to other languages, as a tool to open children up to new horizons and a wider view of the world, and penpal-ing, and other practical uses might be appropriate.
I'm not a copywriter, but I'll try to send some words that might be useful in the ad soon...
Propaedeutic value of Esperanto
Springboard2Languages
Nur ripozu. Via apartigo de Dio estas la plej malfacila afero en la mond'.
--Hafiz
Excellent.
I think that is the direction we want to go. We some how want to convince people they can learn X more easily by learning Esperanto first. I think this is true, based on my experience, but it is a complex idea to get across in an ad.
-- Robert L. Read
read &t robertlread point net
Austin, TX, USA
recorder analogy
I like the "recorder" analogy--that schools teach children to play recorder not to create a world of recorder players, but to help them learn to play music in general. I don't know who came up with that, but that person deserves commendation. It immediately reached me, because I was reminded of my Yamaha recorder in 4th grade. The recorder analogy might be the most concise argument to persuade language teachers.
As a side point, in many schools, language teachers are not threatened by Esperanto, but rather by English. At my university, the Foreign Language department was demoted to being part of the English department. I think that, in such situations, many language teachers would rather teach Esperanto than have no job at all. However, I would not recommend such a depressing argument to a language professional.