This is an individual mini-project submission, and is the focal point of applying all the skills and knowledge you have learned in this course so far.  This guide describes the requirements,   submission   deadline,   format,   assessment   perspectives   and   some suggestions on how to get it done.

Video and Submission Summary

Video Content Requirement

You  are to  design  and  construct  a  30-sec  advertisement  of an  educational  public message in which statistics are used primarily and in various ways to educate and convince the audience to agree or favor.   The ad is expected to be aired in prime-time national channels to the public.

A public message could be about health, sports, personal finance, parenthood, mental- health,   legal-awareness,    child’s   education,    climate-change,   saving   water,    etc involving  all  aspects   of  the  well-being  of  a  person.     Think  of  you  being  the government or Ministry or authorities having the need to increase awareness, call to action, take part in some events, register for screening, etc.

While any message will be acceptable, the ones that do well will be contemporary and relevant messages constructed with well-established research or statistical backing. You are not required to perform the research or data collection, but to research on any or all such publications and statistics, and package or re-package the findings in a coherent way suitable for public consumption.

•   The entire video can be structured as 2 portions:

o The first 5 seconds of your final video must show:

    A picture of you, your name, matric ID

    Title of course: AN6008 Applications of Statistics

    Title of video:  Statistics Advertisement Video

This is for identifying you and assigning marks to you.   If your identity cannot be ascertained, then you don’t get the marks.  If you place an avatar picture or GenAI image in place of your picture, then the avatar or GenAI image will get marks, not you.

o Next 30 secs:         Your   advertisement   message.      Statistics   could   be presented  as  explicit  charts,  summary  descriptive,  narrated,  compared, animated, acted out, etc.  Examples (good and not-so-good) could be found in:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNLl0SRWK8IjqhqpZwlr4_8TA pwKD7_Ub

•   Whatever public message you are introducing or promoting, your ad should allow audience  to  “see”  and  understand  the  message  easily.    Although  some  video advertisements seek to be entertaining or funny which is highly appreciated, the primary goal  of your  advertisement  is to use  Statistics  to persuade,  convince, influence and entice your audience to achieve your campaign objective.

•   Using Statistics does not mean applying the most sophisticated theory or showing the most complicated formula;  indeed, successful real-life advertisements deploy powerful convincing statistics in subtle ways that public could easily understand and “get it” .  You should seek to do that.  If additionally, your ad also turns out to be entertaining or funny, that would be a bonus.

•    Statistical descriptives, data, charts, etc should be based on real research findings or  published   results  from  creditable  organizations.     Fabricated  or  blatantly exaggerated numbers would cross the boundary  from mere  emphasis to  faked truths.  You should not create such virtual numbers just to make a (wrong) claim in your advertisement.

•   Choice of “the message” to advertise is open and entirely up to you.  Suggestion here is to pick an idea that would affect or is needed by many people, and well- studied with publications and findings.  An example might be

“exercise is good for people;   20 minutes a day and keep illness out of the way” .

Such idea might also deploy rhetorical reversal techniques, which is also ok.  For example,

“You think spending US$50,000 on a Masters degree is a sunk cost?   Well, turns out it was my BEST investment!”

•   Your audience will be a total newbie to mathematics and statistics, not to mention what programming is.   Your  audience  will be generally well-educated and are more persuaded by sound logic, facts, statistics or psychological persuasion, than street-side selling like “just believe me; it’s definitely way better than trusting others!”  Your audience will also be a bit sceptical, and not sure whether what you say is good means it will be good.  However, because the content message does affect her/him in some personal ways, she/he is indeed keen to hear more from your advertisement.

•   Videos that do not have people in video tend to be less persuasive; and in this course, will score less.  As this is also an academic assessment submission, you will be a key person ifyou appear in the advertisement video.  You may act within the advertisement, or include other people (friends or classmates) to help with “group scenes” or “a lot of background people scenes”.   For marking purposes, more  weight  is  given  to  real  persons   (classmates  or   friends)  acting  in  the advertisements,   than   recorded   cut-and-pasted   video   clips,   than   no   person appearing in video at all.  Other than having relevant statistics content embedded, the level of marks can be very very roughly boosted by:

o You acting, moving, speaking with your voice, presenting, a lot,

o You   and   other   real   persons   appearing    (acting,   moving,   speaking, presenting),

o A larger, more visible you,

On the other end of the spectrum, level of marks can be  damaged in various extents by having:

o partial or entire inclusion of GenAI clips (severe damage to your marks if entire video is made up of GenAI video or joint videos), or GenAI voices,

o partial or entire inclusion of video clips from existing advertisement videos, YouTube videos, or videos from other third-parties, or from other video hosting platforms,

o faked, unreal, unrealistic, imagined or infeasible campaign messages, such as “let’s move to Mars – it is believed that 90% of Mars is covered with water some 30m below the surface” .

o topics that are sensitive in Singapore’s context, such as race, religion and politics.

•   While silent, visual-only advertisement videos sometimes may work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMFuPbUQBPQ

(Blackberry took a shot at Apple;  then Apple made a come-back

commercial to mock Blackberry)

in this assessment, you must be the one presenting the primary voice or narrating. No lip-syncing, voice-over, or use of robotic narration  on behalf of you  as the primary voice.   Such videos, if done, will  deserve very little marks.   You may, however, use technology such as generated voice to help produce second, third or other voices, if necessary, for use in your advertisement.

Assessment Requirement

•   Your video will be graded based on its potential to be actually convincing to a real-life person.   Though the assessment rubrics have been broadly described in the courser outline, some additional assessment perspectives are broadly described here to give you a better idea on what aspects of your advertisement video are being assessed:

o Content and specs:            Does  the  video  fulfil  the  basic  specifications mentioned in this guide?  Eg, is it about 30secs or just 15 secs?  Does it lack the intro 5 secs of identity information?   Is it submitted properly as per submission instruction, or is it asking instructor to do this do that in order to view your video, or requiring instructor to download from your email attachment or URL (which is not acceptable)?

Is it basically an advertisement about a message or idea?   Or is it, instead, more about selling a commercial product or service?

Does it primarily contain statistics or at all?

o Clarity:     Is the video able to explain clearly to the audience?   Does  it communicate, persuade, convince or does it lecture?   Are  the  statistical concepts deployed too complex for public understanding?

o Convincing:          On a reasonable basis, is the video convincing in the use of statistics persuading the audience about what it wants to say?  Does the video show a credible presenter?  Does the presenter inspire confidence?

o Creative:   Does   the  video  show  creativity  in  illustrations,  examples, graphics, advertisement concepts, etc?

o Entertaining:         While  being  serious  in  presenting  the  content  using statistics and the benefits to audience, is the video also enjoyable, or even fun, to watch?

Suggestions on Constructing Your Statistics Advertisement

Before you start to work on your advertisement video, come up first with your message, and your intention.  For example, are you trying to increase awareness or call people into action for taking care of personal mental health?  Are you trying to encourage people to sign up for sponsored activities to boost career and job finding?

For the purpose of this exercise, it is likely easier to choose more topics and messages that involve rich research and publications to facilitate your investigation and summary of these results.  Rich research works, whether in academic or commercial research, are likely due to related products or services being controversial, uncertain or very competitive.  Eg, “extra health insurance is always good for people” – there’re findings that show this could be extra money wasted, but also cases that show otherwise.  Insurance products would be very competitive.  Legacy planning would be a topic whose benefits are quite uncertain and not too apparent.

Take a look at some recent advertisements online or on TV channels, especially those involving messages from government agencies or public services.  Use real-life products, services and ideas as anchors, and check out similar areas to narrow down your advertising content.  Do not use a fake or fabricated campaign (eg “buy more bitcoin”) or slogan (eg “work hard, earn more”) – this will make your investigation into existing research impossible.

What is probably a bad idea for your ad might be, for example, “cuddle your child to sleep to improve your relationship”, or “save a dollar a day to build good habit” .  To the extent you don’t quite see such video advertisements often (or at all) is that such advertisements tend not to work well (waste of money), likely due to the message being too grainy, too niche, or affecting very small number of people with very little benefit or importance.  Instead, you can broaden the topic to enlarge the impact, audience or importance.

Non-existing advertisement does not mean it is always to be avoided.  For example, you can also look into negative news (eg increasing number of vaping students recently), and create a campaign message to advise otherwise (eg “don’t vape – 90% of those who vape shorten their life expectancy by 20 years”).

CAUTION:     There are laws and code-of-conducts in Singapore governing advertisements.  Although our exercise here is not going to be aired, you should adhere to all the laws and code-of-conducts:

https://asas.org.sg/Portals/0/SCAP%202008_1.pdf

as mentioned in above Singapore Code of Advertising Practice guide.

o Basically, do NOT touch on topics about race, religion, ethnicity, and politics.  Immediate failure will be given without recourse.

o Do NOT cast named persons or companies in the negatives.