20 Creative Classroom Marketing Activities

These 20 engaging marketing activities offer more than just a fun learning experience for kids. By providing interactive tasks that focus on marketing concepts and techniques, they can help students develop important critical thinking, problem-solving, and communication skills. Students can also express their creativity, work together to create marketing campaigns and analyze the effectiveness of different strategies. Not only will they gain a better understanding of the world of business and marketing, but they’ll also develop an appreciation for how these concepts are applied in everyday life.

1. PowerPoint Activity for Students

This comprehensive presentation covers various aspects of advertising, such as its purpose, impact, motivation, techniques, hidden ads, product placement, celebrity endorsements, guidelines, and ‘fake news’. Engaging visuals and clear information encourage discussions among students about the media that influences them.

2. Debate About the Elements of Marketing

Students are provided with background information on product placement, its history, and examples of its use in various contexts, such as movies and sports events. They are then encouraged to discuss and argue for or against the practice of product placement in popular culture.

3. Evaluating the Influence of Ads on Target Markets

In this experiment-based activity, students will select 10 different types of food and create a survey asking participants to rate their desire to eat each item on a scale of 1 to 10. This makes for a fantastic opportunity to learn about different types of advertising and how they can influence people’s preferences.

4. Make a Marketing Plan

In this activity, children are asked to create an advertisement that would persuade people to come to the United States; showcasing the country’s positive aspects. This exercise helps students develop their creativity, persuasive writing, and drawing skills while gaining a deeper understanding of the historical context of immigration in the U.S.

5. Media Literacy Activity

In this media literacy activity, children learn to be more discerning consumers of various media forms, such as television, print media, and the internet. Tim and Moby from BrainPOP guide kids through a process of understanding advertising, recognizing persuasive techniques, and separating facts from opinions. By learning these strategies, children can better decode and analyze content from TV shows, newspapers, and websites.

6. Product Development Marketing Project

In this cross-curricular activity, students work together to research sneaker design, create their own sneakers, and develop a marketing and economic plan for their product. This unit helps students apply knowledge from various subjects, such as science (running principles), math (marketing and finances), and language arts (presentations and research).

7. Marketing Case Study

This activity helps students explore the history of the Shamrock Shake and analyze the marketing lessons learned from this popular seasonal product. Students use critical thinking skills to complete a media analysis, assess other seasonal food items, and explore the marketing strategies behind those products.

8. Read A Book To Learn About Marketing Skills

This digital picture book introduces children to the art of crafting convincing advertisements, which can be an engaging and useful skill for their future. It not only enhances their language and writing skills but also encourages creativity and critical thinking.

9. Hold a Market Day

Hosting a market day can provide a fun and engaging way for students to learn about marketing concepts and business skills, including budgeting, advertising, and customer service. It can also foster creativity and innovation, as kids brainstorm and create their own unique products to sell.

10. Study Marketing Concepts

This quick and engaging exercise is designed to help kids build their vocabulary in the context of advertising and marketing. It helps students reinforce their understanding of advertising and marketing concepts, while also improving their reading comprehension and identification skills.

11. Create a Monster Advertisement

This fun and imaginative activity involves creating an advertisement for a fictional monstrous product that could appear in a monster newspaper or magazine. Kids are encouraged to be inventive with their ideas; designing products and services tailored to monsters and coming up with catchy slogans and pitches.

12. Create a TV Commercial

In this activity, students work in groups to create a unique TV commercial. After determining their product or service, they develop an outline, incorporating slogans or jingles. Finally, groups present their work to the class, either by describing, singing, or acting out their commercials.

13. Advertising Techniques Project

This engaging project aims to teach students about various advertising techniques, such as bandwagon, testimonial, name-calling, and repetition, by having them create their own sample advertisements. Creating their own ads can help students become more aware of the persuasive strategies used in real-life advertisements, helping them become more informed consumers.

14. Analyze Marketing Techniques in an Ad

This teacher-created worksheet provides a brief text about advertising, explaining what it is and its purpose. Students are then required to read the passage and answer a series of comprehension questions. By working through this worksheet, children not only learn about advertising but also practice and develop essential literacy skills, such as reading fluency, comprehension, and critical thinking.

15. Social Media Marketing Analysis

This lesson introduces students to easily confused words and the use of prepositions while also exploring the concept of micro-influencers and their impact on the marketing world. Learning about this real-world example of social media marketing can help students who are interested in pursuing a career in these fields.

16. Analyze the Effectiveness of an Ad

For this activity, children will employ critical thinking to examine a media advertisement before determining the message of the ad and identifying the intended audience. Students will learn to critically analyze media content and enhance their understanding of advertising techniques.

17. Focus on the Power of Slogans

This activity prompts children to come up with a catchy slogan for a product or service before encouraging them to consider famous slogans they already know. Apart from learning about the importance of strong marketing messages, this exercise also enhances their language abilities.

18. Marketing Crossword

This fun and engaging marketing crossword puzzle can help kids develop their critical thinking and problem-solving skills. It’s perfect for a low-prep brain break activity or formative assessment task.

19. Marketing Escape Room Challenge

This marketing-themed escape room challenge encourages problem-solving and critical thinking, allowing students to apply their knowledge of the four Ps of marketing (product, price, place, and promotion) in a real-life business scenario. The lesson is easy to prepare, with the task cards just needing to be printed in advance.

20. Create a Super Bowl Commercial

The objective of the lesson is for students to discuss the persuasive strategies employed in various Super Bowl ads. Students are given a note-taking sheet to record their ideas while watching the ads before sharing them with their peers in structured presentations.