3. SCC Advertising Program Headline (6 marks) Create one headline for an article about the SCC Advertising Program, targeted to local graduating high school students. You must provide:
a) The headline
b) An explanation of the information missing from the instructions
c) A detailed justification for your headline choice based on course concepts
“Turning Your Creativity Into Your Career: Why Windsor Students Are Choosing The SCC Advertising Program with a 90% Employment Rate”
For this headline for the advertising program at St. Clair College, I knew that I would have to consider what key information I was not given in the question instructions. The first thing that I took into consideration was what specific program feature I would need to emphasise to make this headline the most impactful. I have determined that for our advertising program this would likely be the employment outcomes that our program has to offer. Obviously in the year of 2026, people (especially in Windsor) are concerned about whether or not their education will actually help to land them a job should they complete it. This can be further emphasised by the fact that in Windsor according to CBC the unemployment rate is currently sitting at 8.1% and is one of the highest in all of Canada. Therefore, many students who are coming from high school to college are concerned about actually having a stable career after they finish their program. It is also important to note that for a large number of students their parents are also going to be invested emotionally or potentially financially into whether or not their child ends up with a stable career after they finish their post-secondary education. Knowing this, I visited the actual website for the advertising program which clearly stated that this program had a 90% employment rate. I understand that numbers within headlines are something that are easily digestible and would help potential applicants to easily recall why the advertising program stood out to them after reading through this article. I also took into consideration that these students would be coming to Windsor for their education as this is where St. Clair College is located. Another important motivation for taking this program that I considered would be the skills that many of these students would have. While I know that I could likely outline many different hard and soft skills that they could have, I think that creativity is the skill that is best for such a broad target audience as many of the students who would even be considering advertising as a viable career option in the first place are possessing creativity to some degree. Therefore, the information which I had to consider before even trying to come up with a headline in regard to this type of an article was the actual motivations of students and what differentiates this program from others in terms of job outcomes.
After having actually written the headline itself, I truly believe that it is compelling and strong enough to actually be effective. The first reasoning behind this is the fact that my headline is working to signal relevance to high school students who are looking into pursuing a post secondary education in Windsor. This was done by including the fact that this was for students in Windsor who possess creativity as this is showing students or their parents who see this headline before they even click on the article that it is relevant to them if they are looking to attend a school in Windsor that would allow them to turn a skill they already have into a viable career opportunity. Relevance really helps to increase the effectiveness of this headline and likelihood of people clicking on it as generally speaking people (especially those in highschool) will not choose to click on an article about post secondary education if they do not feel that it actually relates to them in any sort of way. A headline like mine being so relevant is also ensuring that I am matching the user intent of someone who could already be in search of this information like as mentioned a potential student or their parents. This brings me to my next justification for why this headline works, which is the fact that it is clearly able to communicate that there is going to be valuable content in the article. I did this by stating that this program could help students to turn their creativity into a career and by informing them of the 90% employment rate that the program holds. By doing this I made sure to emphasise what I originally identified that most students care about with the rising unemployment rates which is turning their skills and things they are naturally passionate about into actual stable career paths. This also makes this headline in alignment with being useful and ultra specific which are two of the four U’s we discussed in class which can help make a headline like mine resonate better with audiences so that they actually choose to click on the article. By appealing to students specificity bias and relevance bias through all this, I am also making sure to provide clarity through stating exactly what people can expect from this article in regard to the advertising program at SCC, who it is for and why it matters and could benefit their careers in the future. Overall, knowing the motivations and what differentiates this program (which was not in the question instructions) was able to help me to develop this clear, specific, useful and ultimately effective headline for an article about the SCC advertising program.
RESOURCES:
1.CBC/Radio Canada. (2026, February 6). Windsor’s unemployment rate climbed in January, ties for 6th in Canada | CBC News. CBCnews. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/windsor-unemployment-rate-january-9.7077331#:~:text=Windsor’s%20unemployment%20rate%20to%208.1,the%20first%20month%20of%202026.&text=The%20numbers%20released%20on%20Friday%20are%20seasonally%20adjusted.
2. Home – join the St. Clair Advertising Program. (n.d.-c). https://jointhestclairadvertisingprogram.com/
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