CivieBlog

For a long time now I've been fascinated with viral marketing campaigns and the way advertisers use these to promote their products. What's really interesting about them is the advertisers ability to come up with really novel and original ideas to capture our attention and make us want to share with others. My Fame Star is a great example of this and one that we can use to create lesson materials.
What it does, is enable you to upload a photograph and then create a story around it.


It then converts this story into a small video report. Here's an example I created called 'How my past caught up with me.' (You'll have to watch a short advertisement first)

Example: Click here if the video doesn't play

How to use it with students

• Create a video about yourself or a fictional character and ask your students to watch it and make notes about your life story.

• Get your students to create their own stories then put them in pairs to listen to each others' story and make notes of the variations / differences.

• Use it as a prompt for students to write a newspaper story. You could get the students to watch the video clip and then convert the story into a newspaper clipping. You could add some realism to this by asking your students to use the Newspaper clip generator from one of my previous postings (Animated EFL ESL Writing Prompts)

• Ask students if they can think of any real celebrities whose story is similar to this. Get them to tell the class or write the story of a similar celebrity.

• Discuss the use of 'viral marketing' sites like these as advertising.

• Do they think it's useful?
• Do they know of other viral marketing examples?
• Does it have an influence on their impressions of the company / product?

Have a look at an article I wrote here to find a out a bit more about viral marketing

What I like about it

• It can really personalise the lesson and materials
• It's fun and free (despite the advertising)
• It's easy to use
• Great stimulation for the imagination
• It has an embed code so you can embed the video into a blog or wiki
  

What I'm not so sure about

• Shame about the advertising, but I guess everyone has to make a living
• If you email it to someone the default is to accept promotions of the company's products (I deselected it)
• Sometimes the embed code doesn't work so well but can be improved with a bit of code editing.
  

Well I hope you and your students enjoy this and by all means post links or comment about any other ideas or materials you create with this tool.

Related links:

• Animated EFL ESL Writing Prompts
• Create an English Cartoon
• Animating vocabulary
• Make you own animated movies
• Picture phrases

Best

Nik Peachey