Eng102 - Composition Essay

ASHUTOSH GUPTA

Roman Colombo

ENGL 102

Composition Essay - 1

During my community service trips throughout high school, I have noticed first-hand the agony of the people living in rural areas due to the lack of clean water, the availability of electricity and poor school facilities. It has discouraged and alienated many. It has forced them to lose hope. Using the power of the youth – who are more connected than ever through the Internet – to tackle the country’s problems, ITC is taking a revolutionary step in problem solving in India.

Classmate is one of the biggest Indian brands of student stationary products. ITC Limited – an Indian conglomerate – entered this industry in 2003 to take advantage of the increasing number of students in the world’s largest democracy. Classmate company recently launched a campaign labeled “Classmate Ideas for India Challenge”. The aim of this campaign is to invite the ever-increasing youth base of India to develop ideas that have the potential to transform India. The campaign plans to reach out to 2.5 million students across 30 cities, 500 schools and 200 colleges across the country. The company is looking for in-depth ideas on a broad variety of topics – ranging from the issue of the supply of clean and drinkable water to the poor to business ideas that would spur economic growth. However, given the background of the company itself, their main aim is to find ideas that help improve the state of education for children in the villages – particularly young girls.

As a citizen of India, I believe ITC’s initiative – to help improve the problems that have plagued our nation since its inception – is a solid step in reestablishing the link between the urban and the rural. Their campaign has effectively conveyed the message and has shown great results in attracting its costumer base “The Youth” through the use of the rhetorical aspects.

To successfully make this campaign effective they have used various techniques and different ways to reach out to people. Initially, Every Classmate notebook’s back cover has a saying that encourages people to contribute to the rural development. “There are still millions who dream of school, ITC is helping some of them realize this dream” Along with just displaying a saying, “Classmate also helps in rural development by stating the fact about the donation that they do “For every four notebooks one buys, ITC contributes 1 rupee to its rural development initiative supports, among other projects, primary education in villages. You can be truly proud that your contribution is a part of it”. Along with the message the company used effective technique to promote the campaign, they used reputed celebrities like Narendra Modi (Prime Minister, who truly believes in change and in the power of youth) and a famous cricketer Yuvraj Singh to endorse their campaign to create the hype in the audience and spread awareness of the issue. Celebrities are people who enjoy public recognition by a large share of a certain group of people. (Khatri, puja)

My primary research is concerned with the campaign’s motive to help the youth of India understand the various poverty problems brewing so that they can take a step towards its betterment. To let this idea pass through the youth of India, ITC CLASSMATE has made an advertisement, which has a quote saying ‘IDEAS COME ALIVE WHEN YOU BELIEVE IN THEM.’ In the advertisement, a famous Indian cricketer, Yuvraj Singh, holds a classmate notebook along with an array of other stationary objects – thereby depicting both the campaign and its products.

Rhetoric is the art to persuade or motivate a particular audience. This campaign aims to persuade the youth to help give ideas for the betterment of the country. I believe ITC CLASSMATE has been successful in making this campaign rhetoric.

There are three main aspects for a campaign to be rhetoric i.e. Ethos (credibility), which means convincing by using the character and idea of the author, Logos (Logical), which means persuading by the use of reasoning and Pathos (Emotional), which means persuading with the assistance of emotions. This campaign has used all the three aspects of rhetoric.  

ITC Classmate is a well-known company that brings up a number of programs and campaigns for the betterment of the rural areas in India as well as the country as a whole.  The business of the company is to sell notebooks and other stationary products. It is doing extremely well but what makes the company outstanding is that it is thinking about the betterment of the country and taking an initiative to take India to a great level. This explains one major aspect of rhetoric i.e. Ethos. The credibility of the company to launch this campaign is extremely important. Along with this, the credibility of the company is shown by the way they make it reach so effectively to the audience, by endorsing reputed celebrities in this field, who are highly respected and followed to promote their campaign. For example, Narendra Modi our Prime Minister, who is really respected well because of the background he came from and the heights he achieved after that. Also he has always promoted the education aspect really well all his life and also promoted the youth to bring the change in society. This explains my secondary research, which centralizes the implementation stage. This stage is concerned with an actual plan of action taken either by non-profit organization of the government or rather the main audience which is the youth, for a major difference or change. Till these people don’t start thinking about the rough conditions as their own survival test, a difference cannot be made.