Description

This assignment is your first persuasive communications assignment in this course. It will serve to

• enhance your persuasive communication skills and techniques. (You will create a video, which will focus on developing your oral communications skills.),
• develop your ability to deliver thoughtful and meaningful discourse through oral presentations; and
• demonstrate your critical thinking skills.

The assignment includes the creation of a short video of you making a short 30-second elevator speech (which you will save to a shared cloud-based storage service). In it you will be attempting to convince someone to invest in your product.

Instructions

1. Review Chapters 3 and 6 of your course textbook. Apply the concepts for creating an impactful message to this assignment. 2. Choose a product for which you would like to secure investors perhaps watching a couple of episodes of the Dragons Den might inspire you! The product can be real or fictional. Be creative. 3. Consider carefully the script you will use in this speech. It must be clean and concise and contain the entirety of your message to this prospective investor. Keep in mind an elevator speech has the following key requirements:

a. A maximum of 30 seconds in length (which is approximately 75 words).

b. Creativity what is your hook to the listener?

• Demonstrates imagination or invention where appropriate.
• Broad and appropriate use of vocabulary. For example, varies use of words by using synonyms.
• Writes articulately.
• Clear and logical development of point of view.
• Varies sentence structure to make the speech more interesting.

c. Direct and to the point the purpose of the pitch should be clear from the outset. d. An understanding of the motivation of the listener (audience does not know you).

e. Addresses a problem or need of the listener and presents a value proposition to the listener.

4. While the written script for the video is important to develop, this is not part of the submission the entire grade is based on what you put in the video. 5. The video recording of your elevator speech should be a maximum 30 seconds in length which is only approximately 75 words. 30 seconds is the average length of an elevator ride, and it will be important to choose your words carefully. Every word will count.

1. Be prepared. Though this is an oral assignment, you have very few words and time to convince potential investors to support your idea. Every second counts, so do not waste them with awkward pauses.
2. Try your best to deliver the speech very accurately and clearly, without having to read it. This will allow you to maintain good eye contact with the camera (which for the purposes of this assignment is your audience).
3. Present effective and positive body language. Do not distract the audience with unnecessary movements, smile into the camera, and maintain strong poise.
4. Practice, practice and practice some more, with a stop watch, so you can be sure you get everything just right, all within the 30-second limit, BEFORE you try recording. But dont try to cram more words by speaking too quickly, either. This will interfere with the listeners engagement.
5. Public speaking is not everybodys strength, and what seems easy when reading aloud in private can sometimes seem impossibly stressful when suddenly there is a camera pointing at you. You can overcome this with practice, patience, and creating a recording environment that is quiet, as soundproof as possible, and where you will not be interrupted.

6. You do not need sophisticated camera equipment to produce the video any device, including most smartphones, capable of recording short video clips, a Snapchat or Instagram can be used to produce a standalone video file. You could even use Zoom by recording a "meeting."

1. You will need to do some investigation of the device you use to determine how to create this video file.
2. You do not have to use the highest-level quality settings on your device, such as HD or 1080p - even low to medium settings will produce perfectly good results for these purposes.
3. Some devices, such as DSLR cameras, allow you to save your video to a memory card; others, such as many smartphones, require you to save to a cloud-based storage space, such as iCloud or OneDrive or DropBox. Either method ought to allow you to subsequently transfer (download) the file to the desktop or laptop computer you use to submit assignments to your course. From there you can edit if necessary and save the file.
4. If it isnt already right from your recording device, you will need to resave the video file to a common file format for the professor to be able to view it and grade it. MP4 is the best format that will work safely.

7. Once you are happy with the video, saved as an MP4, do the following:

1. Upload the file to your favourite cloud storage service, such as iCloud, DropBox, GoogleDrive or OneDrive. Anywhere that lets you share a file, typically by sharing a URL to the location or folder to which you saved the file. Details on how to do this will vary somewhat based on which cloud storage service you choose. Click here to review the written instructions on how to do this using a service called MEGA the process will be very similar with other services.
2. Then, create a simple one-page Word doc, with the title of your video, your name, the date, and the URL of the link to your video file in the cloud. Submit this Word document as your assignment. The instructor will then download this Word document to access the video from the link in this document and can view it for grading.