Last week I gave a brief presentation on John Thompson’s China in one of the small classes I’m teaching this semester. For the second part of class, I gave students this team-based collaborative exercise, which I’ve named Mad Men of the 19th Century:
The year is 1878. You work for the Vanderbilt Exotic Travels Company in Newport, Rhode Island, a company that arranges luxury travel expeditions to foreign lands. The company has launched a new tour: a nine-week expedition to China.
Your team’s task is to choose two images from John Thompson’s photo compendium – one view (a landscape or street scene) and one type (a portrait of an individual) – for a brochure that promotes the tour to China. You team will need to prepare a five to seven minute sales presentation that uses either the five C’s, juxtaposition, or framing to explain why these two photos will convince people to pay $1,489 to join the tour. Teams will deliver their presentations in today’s class.
Your team’s presentation should focus on answering two questions: What sells a product? What will sell this product?
My primary goal for the exercise? Get students to explore the biases contained in what at first glance appears to be an objective visual historical record, through an activity that has more authenticity than an abstract academic essay. Since I thought of this exercise at the last minute, I had low expectations, but it went fairly well. Students did interpret the photographs chosen by their teams in meaningful ways. I did notice that students are generally unfamiliar with tasks that simulate what happens in the workplace — in this case, the use of images to communicate specific messages — which is extremely unfortunate.