Argument Topic: "The following is taken from a memo from the advertising director of the Super Screen Movie Production Company. "According to a recent report from our marketing department, during the past year, fewer people attended Super Screen-produced movies than in any other year. And yet the percentage of positive reviews by movie reviewers about specific Super Screen movies actually increased during the past year. Clearly, the contents of these reviews are not reaching enough of our prospective viewers. Thus, the problem lies not with the quality of our movies but with the public's lack of awareness that movies of good quality are available. Super Screen should therefore allocate a greater share of its budget next year to reaching the public through advertising."
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.
To begin with a given argument, author states that due to decrease in number of people who attended Super Screen-produced movies, marketing department is somewhat lacking to reach out to people. In order to assert this, he gave some weak arguments which should be questioned in order to know what is actually going on. Author also concludes that from next year Super Screen-movies should allocate a greater share of its budget for public advertising.
Firstly, author talks about some reports which showed decrease in number of the viewers of the movie produced by their company. But he has not mentioned what are the factors which were considered in that report. He only asserts that out of entire data, last year was worst. How can he assert this? We do not know who are those people? From which age groups are they belong? Where are they living? In what number this report was made? Another thing I would like add here is, author also mention that movie still got a positive review from the movie reviewer. Author again does not mention who are these reviewers? What are their likings and disliking? How many numbers of reviewers have given a good rating? It might be possible that decrease in number of people because of Super Screen do not produce the genre of movie which viewer like to watch.
Secondly, Author asserts on base of his prior arguments that decrease in number of viewer is only reason because lack of awareness of movies in public. It is also a questionable argument. Author did not mention the marketing budget and if it’s movie popularity reaches to movie reviewer then why not to people? There is some lack of strong arguments in order to decide some strong steps.
Author finally concludes that due to this all remedies in marketing, company should increase its annual share of total budget. Again it is questionable argument, what is the surety that increment in budget would increase their viewers?
In a whole, in given arguments there are many questionable arguments which are very weak in order to take any decision. There are many questions which i stated in prior paragraph which need to be answered in order to know the actual reason behind the decrease in number of perspective viewer of the Super Screen-produced movie.
argument 1 -- not exactly
argument 2 -- not OK
argument 3 -- OK
flaws:
You should not ask for those data. Even though the data are available, the flaws are still there.
Need to analyze the structure of the statement and argue accordingly:
condition 1:
According to a recent report from our marketing department, during the past year, fewer people attended Super Screen-produced movies than in any other year. And yet the percentage of positive reviews by movie reviewers about specific Super Screen movies actually increased during the past year.
condition 2:
Thus, the problem lies not with the quality of our movies but with the public's lack of awareness that movies of good quality are available.
conclusion:
Super Screen should therefore allocate a greater share of its budget next year to reaching the public through advertising.
then here goes the argument:
argument 1:
'more positive reviews' is not equal to 'more viewers'. The director does not state the qualifications of the reviewers of the movie. Are they lay persons who attended the movie, or are they college professor of films and art, whose reviews tend to be more academic based than entertaining.
argument 2:
the director needs to determine if there are other means of seeing Super Screen Movies other than attending their movie theatres. Perhaps viewers have discovered a cheaper or more convenient means of watching these movies without attending the theatre. If that is the case, then the publicity of Super Screen movies is not the issue and advertising would make no impact to the situation.
argument 3:
'more advertising' is not equal to 'more viewers'. Maybe the quality of the movies is not good enough, or the price is so expensive and people can't afford...etc.
Attribute Value Ideal
Score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 24 15
No. of Words: 386 350
No. of Characters: 1831 1500
No. of Different Words: 182 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.432 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.744 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.421 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 131 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 75 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 53 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 30 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 16.083 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.602 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.417 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.281 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.454 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.093 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5