HD Words is going to be the smallest company exhibiting at Cornwall Careers Show on 14th & 15th October this year. The Show is for young people, mostly aged 14-18, but up to 25 in some cases, to investigate and explore career options. There will be exhibitors from creative and practical trades, technology and healthcare. I will be in the Creative section, apparently, but we have discussed the pen being mightier than the sword, so whether I should go nearer the army is perhaps worth considering.
The organisers were keen to have HD Words on board, to introduce more academic subjects to the young people, and I have been racking my brains to come up with hands-on activities which will capture their interest. Copywriting as such might be a bit narrow, so I’ve expanded my brief to include words in general, and a bit of marketing.
So far we have:
I swallowed a thesaurus A simple sentence, e.g. ‘I left the house’, is the starting point for more elaborate sentence. My imagination has provided, ‘I stormed out of the house and slammed the door’, or, ‘I crept from the window, and slipped, shadow-like, across the darkened garden.’ Who knows where their imaginations will take them.
Matching pairs I have a bunch of well-known catchphrases and taglines, and some logos for them to match up. There are some classics – ‘Have a break, have a …’, and ‘Exceedingly good cakes’, as well as more modern ones.
Punctuation challenge I have a couple of sentences which can be punctuated in different ways to mean different things, for instance the classic question of how many people are there in the photo described below:
I had a photo taken with my parents Superman and Wonderwoman.
Are there 3 or 5? I.e. one comma or two with your sentence?
Media channels I have a series of groups of people, for instance teens, young families and brides, plus a selection of media channels. I’ll invite the stand visitors to consider which channels match best with which groups – for instance, TV advertising in the middle of kids TV programmes is a great way to sell your product to kids. Lots of groups use social media, but it’s probably the case that older people are more likely to be listening to the radio than surfing the web. I also have a bunch of buzz words. Brides might favour ‘unique’, ‘one of a kind’ items for their wedding. Young families would be more interested in ‘durable’, ‘value for money’, and ‘washable’, in all probability. It’ll be interesting to see where the discussions lead here.
I also have a bunch of photos for the back wall, showing spelling mistakes and bloopers. For instance this wonderful not-a-bus-stop!
I’m making a collection of great spelling or grammar mistakes, if anyone has any they’d like to share with me. Email them to hdwords@gmail.com, please. I’m not trying to embarrass anyone, but just give some illustration to the point that thinking about your words is worth doing.
(Here’s another blooper for you. Enjoy!)
