Leong

Sabrina Leong
Instructor: Zack De Piero
Writing 2
16 March 2015
Writing Project 1
Genres are in every part of the modern world, including the business of
marketing in franchises such as the pizza industry. The rapidly expanding
trend of online ordering via website homepages has heightened the
importance of recognizing and studying genre. Recognizing these
conventions and rhetorical devices is crucial for marketers, businesses, and
consumersand these pizza companies advertisements are an example of
the importance of genre awareness. By being aware of the audience of their
specific genre and employing specific conventions, pizza businesses will
tailor their products more effectively to customers. While many pizza website
homepages share certain conventions such as providing links to social media
pages and employing different pathos, the ways that each pizza business
employs these conventions are unique. Pizza businesses such as
Woodstocks Pizza, Blaze Pizza, and Dominos Pizza modify their website
homepages to be geared toward their audiencesWoodstocks and Blaze
pinpoint specific audiences such as UCSB students and foodies, respectively,
while Dominos concentrates on broadening their audience in Southern
California.

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Genre awareness is acknowledging and understanding conventions

and rhetorical features. It is key for marketers and businesses because they
can focus their ideas on certain target groups and expand their franchises
through doing so. In Navigating Genres by Kerry Dirk, Dirk describes the
importance of genre and genre knowledge: this knowledge that helps us to
recognize and to determine appropriate responses to different situations
that is, knowing what particular genre is called for in a particular situation
(Dirk). Similarly, in her essay Murder! (Rhetorically Speaking), Janet Boyd
defines rhetoric as what allows you to write (and speak) appropriately for a
given situation, one that is determined by the expectations of your audience,
implied or acknowledged (Boyd). Genre awareness tells marketers what is
appropriate and what readers want to see for that specific genre based on
their expectations. For example, the Woodstocks Pizza web designer would
not want to design the homepage to look like a business contract or a
science website. The web designer would want to follow the usual
conventions and rhetorical features of pizza homepages and make sure to
keep specific audiences in mind.
Woodstocks Pizza is geared towards UCSB students and, along with
the usual conventions of a pizza homepage, uses specific photos and
colloquial words to convince their audience to visit their restaurant. Like
other pizza homepages, Woodstocks Pizza gives their location/address in Isla
Vista, their phone number, hours of operation and places their copyright
information on the bottom of the page. They also have links to order online,

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see the menu, take a customer survey, see other locations of business, and
go to the About section with links to their history and mission page. There
are also ads for weekly deals, and buttons that connect to Woodstocks
Pizzas Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter pages. This is important for
consumers to stay connected for deals and ads through social media, and
also a very good way for Woodstocks Pizza to network. This networking can
lead to even more customers who may come in to Isla Vista for vacation and
may have heard about Woodstocks Pizza through Facebook, Instagram, or
Twitter.
Woodstocks Pizza in Isla Vistas main audience is UCSB college
students, so their website includes eye-catching photos of pizza fresh out of
the oven and students sitting outside of Woodstocks Pizza enjoying their
pizza with beers. Embarcadero Hall is also in the background, with the UCSB
logo and the phrase: Legendary Taste Meets Epic Fun. Words like
legendary and epic are colloquial words that are used primarily by
millenials that have to do with something exciting and noteworthy. In this
case, Woodstocks is referring to customers having a great experience at
their establishment. Furthermore, these types of photos specifically take into
account their audience and try to draw them in using the rhetorical device
pathos. Many college students enjoy getting together with friends and
staying socially connected, and Woodstocks hopes the images will inspire
them to do so at their restaurant. This has to do with choice of word, which is
to clearly and persuasively communicat[e] ideas, voices and sounds in

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seamless combination with images (McCloud). Woodstocks used colloquial

words and fun photos in tandem to persuade their audience more effectively.
Blaze Pizza also follows the conventions of the pizza website genre, but
they specifically target foodies through their Instagram section and a Meet
the Chef section. Their homepage has their Blaze Pizza logo and they have
links to other Blaze Pizza locations, their menu, fundraising, franchising,
Blaze Pizza in the press, About us, contact us, and FAQ. Like Woodstocks
Pizza, Blaze Pizza also has Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter buttons. The two
unique sections on the Blaze Pizza homepage are an Instagram section and a
Meet the Chef section and link. These reflect their interest in foodies, who
enjoy taking pictures of their food and knowing more details about their chef.
These sections are important for marketing because they allow Blaze Pizzas
customers and their customers pictures to be on their homepage, which can
be very entertaining for viewers and customers. The Meet the Chef section
and link is also an example of the rhetorical device pathos because it brings
the restaurant closer to the consumers and gives them more information
about the roots of the business.
On the other hand, Dominos Pizza sticks to conventions, but also tries
to broaden their audience in Southern California by including a Tracker link
and an Espaol link. Similar to other pizza webpages, Dominos Pizza also
has a homepage with order online, menu, coupons, and locations. Their
homepage shows images of their pizza, along with other foods such as
sandwiches, pasta, breadsticks, and chicken wings. Dominos Pizza also has a

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section on the bottom that they call Legal stuff where they explain food
allergy information, disclaimers, delivery tips, and copyright information.
Dominos Pizza also has Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus links. Dominos
Pizzas two unique links are a Tracker link and an Espaol link. Both of these
links are extremely useful for customers, making ordering pizzas through the
Dominos pizza homepage even more convenient and appealing. The Tracker
link allows customers to follow their delivery, and the Espaol link allows any
customers who speak Spanish or feel more comfortable with reading Spanish
than English become customers. This broadens Dominos Pizzas audience
immensely, especially in the Southern California area where many
consumers are Spanish-speaking.
In addition, these pizza businesses use rhetorical features such as tone
and purpose to customize their products more effectively to customers. The
tones of these three homepages are energetic and happy. They are trying to
convince the readers to come to their establishments to have a good time.
The tones are also comical at times. For example, on Blaze Pizzas homepage
under the Instagram section, they say, Look Mom, Im on the Blaze
Homepage. On Dominos Pizzas homepage, it says to Master the Art of
Mixing and Matching for their Choose Any 2 or More deal. These are
humorous expressions meant to make the reader laugh and enjoy the
homepage. The purpose of these homepages is to make it more convenient
for customers to order and for advertising. With this in mind, the homepages
are designed to be easy to use. They also have many pictures with ads and

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deals, and the order online buttons are often stand out and are the first
buttons noticed.
Understanding and using all of these conventions and rhetorical
features such as tone and purpose is important for marketers, but its also
important for consumers. Consumers benefit from genre awareness because
genre can help them order pizzas more effectively. For example, if a
consumer eats at a pizza restaurant and likes it, by using their genre
awareness of a pizza homepage they can go online, search for the restaurant
name, go to the website, and then from there they can look at their
menu/order online later, click on the facebook or twitter links and follow the
restaurant, or look for interesting deals. They could know to do this through
genre awareness and remembering the conventions of pizza webpages. This
also ties into another important use for genre awareness, which is that
genres help tell readers and viewers what to expect when they are searching
online. For instance, if a customer were searching online for a horror movie,
they would expect to find many scary pictures. If that customer were
searching online for pizza websites, that customer would expect many
pictures of pizza with the restaurants weekly deals.
Consumers also need to keep genre awareness in mind when buying
goods or services. In her essay, Backpacks vs. Briefcases: Steps toward
Rhetorical Analysis, Laura Bolin Carroll explains why rhetorical analysis is so
important: The more we know about how to analyze situations and draw
informed conclusions, the better we can become about making savvy

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judgments about the people, situations and media we encounter (Carroll).

Carroll has interesting ideas on why rhetoric is important, and one of those is
that media is constantly asking you to buy something, act in some way,
believe something to be true, or interact with others in a specific manner
(Carroll). And in having genre awareness, buyers will now be informed
consumers that understand the goals of the marketers and businesses and
know to test the companys credibility.
In conclusion, homepages for pizza places such as Woodstocks Pizza,
Blaze Pizza, and Dominos Pizza have conventions and rhetorical features
that are geared toward specific audiences, and recognizing and using these
conventions and rhetorical features helps persuade audiences (UCSB
students, foodies, or people of Southern California) to purchase pizzas from
their restaurant. Recognizing these conventions also enables customers to
know what to expect when searching as well. It also allows businesses and
marketers to understand the wants and expectations of their audiences, to
know what is appropriate when advertising, and to expand based on each
customer by using rhetoric and conventions of the genre.

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Works Cited
"Blaze Pizza Homepage." Blaze Pizza. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Jan. 2015.
Boyd, Janet. "Murder! (Rhetorically Speaking)." Writing Spaces: Readings on
Writing. Anderson, South Carolina.: Parlor, 2011. N. pag. Print.
Carroll, Laura Bolin. "Backpacks vs. Briefcases: Steps toward Rhetorical
Analysis." Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing. West Lafayette, IN:
Parlor, 2010. N. pag. Print.
Dirk, Kerry. "Navigating Genres." Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing. West
Lafayette, IN: Parlor, 2010. N. pag. Print.
"Domino's Home Page." Domino's Home Page - Domino's Pizza, Order Pizza
Online for Delivery - Dominos.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Jan. 2015.
McCloud, Scott. "Writing With Pictures." Making Comics: Storytelling Secrets
of Comics, Manga and Graphic Novels. New York: Harper, 2006. N.
pag. Print.
"Woodstock's Pizza Homepage." Woodstock's Pizza Isla Vista. N.p., n.d. Web.
21 Jan. 2015.