Corporate Communication Project
The Corporate Communication Project asks students to examine and respond to a real world corporate crisis—the grounding of several JetBlue airplanes due to ice storms in February 2007. After analyzing the situation through several texts, students will write a press release and business letter from the company that addresses the crisis.
project prompt and summary
Students will read articles about JetBlue's crisis and visit the page of The JetBlue Customer Bill of Rights, JetBlue's official response. After reading and analyzing this material, students will write a press release to the general public and a letter to JetBlue customers. After completing these documents, students will analyze the official JetBlue communication in comparison to their own rhetorical strategies.
deliverables
Step 1: Press Release. Following the models provided, students will write a press release from JetBlue to the general public addressing the crisis. Students must decide the tone, content, vocabularly and rhetorical strategy that will be both commercially and ethically effective. The press release should be between 250-500 words and follow the standards of clarity, conciseness, correctness, audience awareness, and professionalism discussed in the course. The rough draft for peer editing is due Monday, July 2.
Step 2: Business Letter. Based on the principles outlined in the Thomson Handbook, students will write a business letter from JetBlue to the customers affected by the crisis. As with the press release, students must decide the tone, content, vocabularly and rhetorical strategy that will be both commercially and ethically effective. The letter will be a single page and follow the conventions of the genre as well as the standards of clarity, conciseness, correctness, audience awareness, and professionalism discussed in the course. The rough draft for peer editing is due Friday, July 6.
Step 3: JetBlue Text Analysis: After completing their own documents, students will analyze JetBlue's official letter to customers (attached below) to determine how its rhetorical strategy compares with their own. Students should first contrast the difference between the two documents and then discuss the different effects that each will have on an audience. Finally, students should determine which documents would be more effective and how they would revise their own work after seeing this document. The Analysis is due along with the final project on Wednesday, July 11.
Instructors' Note: Obviously, because press releases and business letters are provided, the temptation exists to borrow heavily from these documents while writing your own. However, the project requires you to produce an original document as a learning experience, so the instructors will be watching for blatant similarities between the official and student versions of these texts.
grading
The Corporate Communication Project is worth 20% of your course grade. The breakdown for each of its components is as follows: Step 1: Press Release (30%); Step 2: Business Letter (30%); Step 3: Analysis (40%);
grading criteria
The Corporate Communication Project will be graded based on its rhetorical effectiveness, professionalism, and ethical consideration. The instructor will grade based on the following criteria:
- The project responds appropriately to its various audiences.
- The project demonstrates awareness of the specific context and addresses it appropriately.
- The project follows the principles of professional, clear, correct, concise writing as elaborated in the course.
- The project follows genre and length conventions.
- The project shows a careful consideration of the professional ethical implications of their writing.
- The analysis provides insightful examination of the differences between documents, using specifics to discuss the rheorical and ethical effectiveness of each.
- The project is ready to function in the appropriate professional environment.
revision
You will have opportunities to revise your work throughout the process and will be permitted to revise once again after receiving your grade on the project, subject to these restrictions: 1) Your revision should be substantial (a few fixes alone are not enough to raise a grade); 2) you turn in your completed revision within one week of the date it was returned to you with a grade; 3) you include submission notes that specify precisely what you did to improve your work.