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
The argument that the advertising director (AD) of the Super Screen Movie Production Company (SSMPC) makes is not completely sound. For starters, the first fact that the AD mentions is that the last year had the lowest recorded attendance by viewers to date.
In this argument, however, one must be careful for any confounding variables that may affect this statistic. For example, was the last year a bad economic year? Did people want to attend SSMPC screenings but simply could not afford to? In order to investigate this fact, an investigation onto the statistics of other similar companies would have to be looked at; if all similar companies suffered a hit with attendance, the past year may be better explained to another variable.
The AD continues on to make the recomendation that, based on the fact that last year's positive reviews increased, the SSMPC should allocated a greater budget towards advertising next year in order to reach more people. This is extremely unreasonable however, as again, there may be other "hidden" variables in the background which better explain last year's trend (i.e., low attendance but better overall reviews). One such plausible example may be the fact that SSMPC has a new competitor. Online streaming services (e.g., Netflix, Disney +) are a growing competitor in the movie industry and some consumers are merely making the digital transition. In this instance, the ratings may have went up because the people who continued to use the Super Screen service have a biased preference for live big screen movies, and thus the reviews may also be biased to the SSMPC's favour. In other words, perhaps other competitors have stripped away fans who were previously not very content with Super Screen services, and removing them also removed their ability to vote on new content.
In such a scenario, spending more money on advertisment (and assuming that people are unaware about Super Screen services is a very risky proposition. Furthermore, something especially concerning is the way the AD framed this proposition, using the word "clearly" and insinuating that this method would be fool-proof in attracting more customers. This could lead to a very rough follow-up year.
Instead, I propose a more reasonable proposition: instead of allocating a higher budget towards advertising, the SSMPC should aim to further cultivate the loyal fanbase they already have by figuring out a way to maximize their earnings from them. For example, slightly increasing prices based on a mathematical model which maximized viewer retention and profits. Or, another example would be to create an incentive program that rewards viewers for referring friends who join their service.
In conclusion, the argument and the recomendation that the AD makes are very short-sighted. Numerous confounding variables which are not taken into account may be lurking in the background and the SSMPC would do well to re-evaluate the findings that they obtained from last year by trying to get additional data (e.g., economic trend, compeititor statistics, etc.)
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 9, column 696, Rule ID: HAVE_PART_AGREEMENT[6]
Message: Note: went is a past participle of "wend". Did you mean 'gone' (past participle of "go")?
Suggestion: gone
... In this instance, the ratings may have went up because the people who continued to ...
^^^^
Line 13, column 1, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_BEGINNING_RULE
Message: Three successive sentences begin with the same word. Reword the sentence or use a thesaurus to find a synonym.
...ir ability to vote on new content. In such a scenario, spending more money on...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, e.g., first, furthermore, however, if, look, may, so, thus, well, for example, in conclusion, in other words
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 21.0 19.6327345309 107% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 16.0 12.9520958084 124% => OK
Conjunction : 10.0 11.1786427146 89% => OK
Relative clauses : 18.0 13.6137724551 132% => OK
Pronoun: 29.0 28.8173652695 101% => OK
Preposition: 52.0 55.5748502994 94% => OK
Nominalization: 18.0 16.3942115768 110% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2612.0 2260.96107784 116% => OK
No of words: 491.0 441.139720559 111% => OK
Chars per words: 5.31975560081 5.12650576532 104% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.70728369723 4.56307096286 103% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.92791025656 2.78398813304 105% => OK
Unique words: 269.0 204.123752495 132% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.547861507128 0.468620217663 117% => OK
syllable_count: 791.1 705.55239521 112% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 4.96107784431 60% => OK
Article: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 6.0 4.22255489022 142% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 67.2592744534 57.8364921388 116% => OK
Chars per sentence: 130.6 119.503703932 109% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.55 23.324526521 105% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.95 5.70786347227 104% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 13.0 8.20758483034 158% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.88822355289 73% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 2.0 4.67664670659 43% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.167054993565 0.218282227539 77% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0514109879389 0.0743258471296 69% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0439678502879 0.0701772020484 63% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0904978471696 0.128457276422 70% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0390588152662 0.0628817314937 62% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.9 14.3799401198 111% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 47.12 48.3550499002 97% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.7 12.197005988 104% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.87 12.5979740519 110% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.33 8.32208582834 112% => OK
difficult_words: 140.0 98.500998004 142% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 8.0 12.3882235529 65% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 83.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 5.0 Out of 6
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.