Chapter 4: Rhetoric: The Art of Influence
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Client/Customer Case Study Case studies recount how you help your users. One approach is dramatization. For example, BooneOakley, an advertising agency in North Carolina, humorously explains why it’s different (Figure 4.19). The agency shares the story of Billy, a typical marketing director who goes to the typical advertising agencies in New York and gets typical work—only to be fired, then untypically killed. Figure 4.19: BooneOakley, located in North Carolina, dramatizes why it’s different through the story of a marketing director.
The Story of a Slippery Slope The BooneOakley video website employs the logical fallacy of sliding down the slippery slope to hilarious effect. See it at www.youtube.com/watch?v=Elo7WeIydh8
A different approach is to present actual customer stories. A series of iPhone videos, for instance, showcases real users explaining how the iPhone saved the day. In one, a pilot recalls how he looked up the weather on the iPhone to help his flight avoid a three-hour delay (Figure 4.20).
Excerpted from Clout: The Art and Science of Influential Web Content by Colleen Jones. Copyright © 2011. Used with permission of Pearson Education, Inc. and New Riders.