Written pieces

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What this deliverable is

The final project requires two written pieces. One of them must be a call-out piece — a specific format we’ll use throughout the semester that identifies a problem in your industry, explains its real-world impact, and highlights organizations doing it right.

The second piece is your choice: a blog post, an op-ed, a newsletter, a long-form social thread, a features article — anything that serves your campaign’s communication goals.

The call-out piece

What it is

A call-out piece is constructive criticism at scale. It names something broken in your industry, backs it up with evidence or specific examples, and then pivots to showcase organizations doing it differently.

The format has three moves:

1. Name the problem — clearly, specifically, and without hedging
2. Show the stakes — why does it matter? who does it hurt?
3. Point to better examples — what does good look like, and who’s doing it?

It’s called a “call-out” piece because you’re calling attention to something that’s being done wrong industry-wide. But the goal isn’t to shame — it’s to raise standards by showing what’s possible.

What it is not

• A rant or complaint piece (no solutions = just venting)
• A soft critique buried in qualifiers (“some might argue…”)
• A takedown of one specific company (that’s a different genre)
• An opinion piece without evidence

Structure

Opening hook: Start with a specific, concrete example of the problem — not a generalization.

Bad opening: “Many coffee shops today have problems with their social media presence.”

Strong opening: “The third café this month just posted a photo of a latte with no context, no caption, no reason for me to stop scrolling. Just the latte. Just… existing.”

The problem, named clearly:

The specialty coffee industry has an awareness problem disguised as a content problem. Most independent cafés have something worth saying — a sourcing story, a technique worth explaining, a community worth celebrating — and they’re posting latte art instead.

Why it matters:

This isn’t just a missed marketing opportunity. When independent cafés don’t communicate their value, they cede the discoverability conversation to chains that have the budget to be everywhere. Starbucks doesn’t need your local coffee shop’s Instagram strategy. But your local coffee shop does.

Who’s doing it right:

[Brand 1] tells the full story of every bean they source — the farm, the elevation, the process. It’s not aspirational content. It’s just information that respects the audience’s intelligence.

[Brand 2] goes further: they document the relationship with farmers across multiple years, showing how the collaboration has changed. Now their audience doesn’t just buy coffee — they feel invested in it.

Closing: Bring it back to the reader — what should they take from this? What’s the shift in thinking?

Example call-out piece (full)

Title: Your local coffee shop is invisible — and it doesn’t have to be

There’s a café two blocks from Montclair State that I’ve walked past every day for a year. Last week, a friend from a neighboring town asked me where to get good coffee in Montclair. I mentioned it. She’d never heard of it.

I looked up their Instagram afterward. 300 followers. The last post was seven weeks ago. It was a photo of a latte.

This is not a story about one café. This is the default state of independent specialty coffee in 2026.

The strange thing is, the ingredients for great content are usually present in these shops. The barista who trained in Oslo. The beans sourced from a single family farm in Oaxaca where the owner has been going every year for six years. The reason the pour-over tastes different here than anywhere else. None of this makes it online.

Instead: another latte. Existing.

The stakes are real. When independent cafés don’t build digital presence, they lose the discovery layer entirely. Someone new to the area searches “good coffee near me” and lands on Google Maps, which shows Starbucks at the top — because Starbucks spends money on local SEO. The independent shop with better coffee, lower prices, and a more interesting story doesn’t show up until page two.

Some cafés are getting this right. Onyx Coffee Lab (Rogers, Arkansas) built a following of 150,000 on Instagram not through lifestyle content but through education — processing methods, roast profiles, water chemistry. They treat their audience like people who want to understand, not just consume.

Fly by Jing, a small-batch chili crisp brand, grew almost entirely through founder storytelling. Every post answered a question the audience had but didn’t know they had. Now they’re in Whole Foods.

Neither of those brands started with a marketing budget. They started with the decision to communicate.

The formula isn’t complicated: say something true, say it specifically, say it repeatedly. Your latte doesn’t need to just exist. It can have a story. Tell it.

The second written piece

This is your choice, but it should serve your campaign. Options:

• Blog post — educational or narrative content that lives on your site or Medium
• Email newsletter — written for an existing subscriber base; assumes some familiarity
• Op-ed — an opinion piece written in your organization’s voice on a topic relevant to your industry
• Long-form social thread — a series of connected posts designed to be read as a sequence (works especially well for LinkedIn)
• Features article — reported, with quotes and research, suitable for local media placement

Match the format to your campaign goals. If your strategy targets local press, write something that could be pitched to a local outlet. If your audience is already following you on email, write a newsletter edition.

Common mistakes

• Opening with a generalization. “Many brands today face challenges with…” loses the reader immediately. Open with a scene, a specific example, or a direct statement.
• Calling out without showing better. A piece that only identifies problems is a complaint. The call-out format requires the pivot to better examples.
• Vague “better examples.” “Some brands do this well” doesn’t work. Name them. Describe specifically what they do and why it works.
• Passive voice throughout. “Mistakes are often made” — by whom? Active voice, direct statements, named subjects.
• Writing to everyone. You have a persona. Write to that person. The piece should feel like it was written for Maya, not for a general audience of “people who like coffee.”