Auroraflow Pride Month Fundraiser Materials
Rhetorical Context:
​These pieces were made for Auroraflow’s pride month T-shirt fundraiser for El Centro Hispano, a local latinx LGBTQIA+ center in Durham North Carolina. The first of these pieces, a social media post, was made to be posted on the Auroraflow instagram page. The people who followed the Auroraflow page at this point were customers of the small wellness center and while they supported the LGBTQIA+ community, the posts with the most engagement were those centered around services, products and discounts. The second of these pieces, a paper flier, was made to be posted at local community centers and a series of restaurants/bars/coffee shops with community cork boards in the area that my boss was connected to. The downtown Durham community, specifically at the locations where we were allowed to put up the fliers, is very civically minded and focused on activism. Many of the posters there are already advertising products or clothing items.
Rhetorical Decisions:
In both of these pieces, I decided to prioritize different elements of the fundraiser in order to attract different kinds of audience resulting in different claims, datas and warrants used in my argument to buy the t-shirt. In the social media post, I chose to prioritize the shirt itself, marketing it as an item rather than a result of a donation in order to align with a consumer audience who was not necessarily based in activism. My data here is that the shirt is worth buying because it is stylish. To prove that, my warrant is on the second slide where I showcase it in two different outfits that I hope the audience considers stylish. In the flier, I chose to prioritize the donation aspect, making the t-shirt a plus to helping the LGBTQIA+ community in Durham. My data here is that the shirt is worth buying because it helps the LGBTQIA+ community in Durham. To prove that, I explain more about El Centro and feature call to actions based in activism.
Reflection:
I believe that both of these pieces do well targeting different audiences with different psychographics that influence their motivations for buying a shirt and supporting this fundraiser. In conjunction with other marketing efforts, many shirts and stickers were sold and many large donations were made by Auroraflow clients and local businesses. If I were to revise this for the future, I would try to take a more nuanced approach to what audiences would want to see, maybe adding a third slide to the social media post explaining more about El Centro for a pathetic appeal which could really only help to persuade online audiences to buy the shirt.