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Context

Before my Summer 2021 Social Media/Marketing Internship at Discover Books, I had used the online design program Canva frequently to create still graphics and page layouts. However, I tried out Canva’s video production features for the first time during my internship and made three explainer videos about different facets of the company for Instagram and Facebook. The other two interns experimented with making Canva videos as well, but I volunteered to create videos more often than they did and became skilled in using the program. One major project that the interns worked on over the summer was promoting Discover Books’ new shopping app, so I made one of my videos for the purpose of demonstrating the features of the app.

Rhetorical Decisions

    Using a video ad to promote the app, particularly on Instagram, was a direct attempt to reach younger populations. Although Millennial and Generation Z individuals are not Discover Books’ main customers, the app itself was mostly designed as an effort to engage those generations with the company. I created the video by modifying one of Canva’s preset slide templates to fit my purposes and the company aesthetic/ethos. The interns were required to use a set of five brand colors and three approved fonts in all of our Canva designs, but I made sure to add contrast to my videos by making the text either significantly darker or significantly lighter than the background on each slide and animating the text in a way that was noticeable but not overly difficult to read. I also added photos and screenshots that I took myself to help the audience to visualize the app’s features and chose to use the logo for the app on the first slide to make it more recognizable for users on Google Play and the App Store.

    In terms of structure, I started by announcing the app’s release and where it was available, and then I went through the process of using the app to make a purchase step-by-step, in addition to including the barcode scanning feature as that process was brand-new (i.e. not available through the company website). I attempted to balance informative and persuasive communication techniques (i.e. logos and pathos) throughout the video by explaining each feature in the second person—something that an audience member could do if they downloaded the app. Discover Books’ previous Facebook analytics showed that most viewers would not watch a video for longer than one minute even if the video had not ended, and I wanted viewers to watch the entire video, so I kept the video’s length to 40 seconds. I chose intriguing music for the background to grab people’s attention if they had their device’s volume turned on, but I did not make sound an integral part of the video so that it could be viewed in noisy spaces or by audience members who were hard of hearing. Finally, I wrote a caption that simply asked whether people had heard about the app to put the focus on the video itself.

Reflection

    This video received the most views of any social media video Discover Books released over the summer. My supervisor chose to boost the post to advertise the app more effectively, and many social media users watched the video all the way through, some of whom were not following Discover Books before. As a part of an initiative to get customers to download the app, the video was successful as the whole media package led to more app downloads. Additionally, my supervisor passed on to me that the company CEO had commented positively on the quality of my video, making me realize that I was not an “insignificant little intern” as I had been thinking of myself--instead, I could make important contributions to the organization through my content creation. The entire video production process boosted my confidence in many of my professional and rhetorical skills—digital design, persuasive writing, multimedia creation, and audience awareness.