"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.
In the memo, the advertising director claims that next year's advertising budget should be increased because the public is not aware that good quality movies produced by Super Screen are available. They justify this by the fact that less people attended Super Screen movies in the past year than in previous years although the percentage of positive reviews has actually increased, indicating movie quality has not degraded. However, there are key pieces of information that must be demanded before the reallocation of budget can be evaluated.
Firstly, why are fewer people attending Super Screen produced movies? The memo assumes there could only be two possible options, movie quality and advertisements, but there are several other possibilities. Are there any recent scandals associated with Super Screen? Have the movies lately been more targeted towards niche audiences than mainstream ? Either of these options would decrease the audience for the Super Screen movies, leaving only fans of Super Screen or the particular niche audiences to serve as the movie audience. This could also account for the increase in percentage of positive reviews, since the remaining viewers are more predisposed to like the movies already, without being indicative of the quality of the movies.
Alternatively, people might also be attending fewer Super Screen movies because of issues in movie scheduling or changes in viewer trends. There could be fewer theaters screening Super Screen movies or Super Screen could be releasing movies during packed release times and facing too much competition with other films with large, dedicated fanbases, like Marvel movies. It could also be possible that people are just switching to watching less movies in theaters in general, because they are moving to streaming platforms like Netflix instead. In any of these cases, the recommendation is again inappropriate. Thus, there should be statistics gathered on general cinemagoers, the release times and locations of Super Screen audiences, and data on why their reviewers chose to keep watching their movies. Based on this, a more tactical approach can be planned to change their distribution methods instead.
However, if after all of this, it is ascertained that the issue is simply that advertising has not been able to reach enough of the public, increasing the budget may still not be the correct solution. Instead, details on the medium of advertising currently used, a survey of what advertisements are most effective, and the effectiveness of the advertisements already in place need to be gathered. Perhaps the company is mainly advertising through newspapers, but newspaper consumption has decreased in the past few years. Then, simply increasing budget to print more newspaper adds will not be effective. Instead, they need to switch to bus-stop ads or youtube ads, after investigating what would be most effective for their audience. Or they might have youtube ads already, but people might not like their trailers. In that case, hiring a new creative team may be much more effective than increasing the number of trailers.
Thus, to determine the best steps forward, all of the aforementioned questions need to be addressed. The evidence provided in the memo is insufficient to support the recommendation proposed, and audience surveys and gathering statistics is the critical next step before reallocating Super Screen's budget. With this new information, it will also be possible to decide whether changes in distribution or content of the movies or their advertisements would be a better way to tackle the decreased audience.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 25 15
No. of Words: 569 350
No. of Characters: 2989 1500
No. of Different Words: 256 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.884 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.253 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.765 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 233 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 166 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 116 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 74 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 22.76 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.856 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.6 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.287 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.486 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.05 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 233, Rule ID: FEWER_LESS[2]
Message: Did you mean 'fewer'? The noun people is countable.
Suggestion: fewer
...ble. They justify this by the fact that less people attended Super Screen movies in ...
^^^^
Line 5, column 440, Rule ID: FEWER_LESS[2]
Message: Did you mean 'fewer'? The noun movies is countable.
Suggestion: fewer
...t people are just switching to watching less movies in theaters in general, because ...
^^^^
Line 9, column 44, Rule ID: ALL_OF_THE[1]
Message: Simply use 'all the'.
Suggestion: all the
...s, to determine the best steps forward, all of the aforementioned questions need to be add...
^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, but, first, firstly, however, if, may, so, still, then, thus, after all, in general
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 37.0 19.6327345309 188% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 23.0 12.9520958084 178% => OK
Conjunction : 17.0 11.1786427146 152% => OK
Relative clauses : 8.0 13.6137724551 59% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 28.0 28.8173652695 97% => OK
Preposition: 73.0 55.5748502994 131% => OK
Nominalization: 16.0 16.3942115768 98% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 3066.0 2260.96107784 136% => OK
No of words: 569.0 441.139720559 129% => OK
Chars per words: 5.38840070299 5.12650576532 105% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.88402711743 4.56307096286 107% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.85761632624 2.78398813304 103% => OK
Unique words: 268.0 204.123752495 131% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.471001757469 0.468620217663 101% => OK
syllable_count: 943.2 705.55239521 134% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 4.96107784431 121% => OK
Article: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 7.0 1.67365269461 418% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 9.0 4.22255489022 213% => Less preposition wanted as sentence beginnings.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 25.0 19.7664670659 126% => OK
Sentence length: 22.0 22.8473053892 96% => OK
Sentence length SD: 54.67934162 57.8364921388 95% => OK
Chars per sentence: 122.64 119.503703932 103% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.76 23.324526521 98% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.96 5.70786347227 69% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 17.0 8.20758483034 207% => Less positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 3.0 6.88822355289 44% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.67664670659 107% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.273880891266 0.218282227539 125% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0939212118438 0.0743258471296 126% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0998069402877 0.0701772020484 142% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.179254364806 0.128457276422 140% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0925665193833 0.0628817314937 147% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.3 14.3799401198 106% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 40.69 48.3550499002 84% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.1 12.197005988 107% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.28 12.5979740519 113% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.7 8.32208582834 105% => OK
difficult_words: 143.0 98.500998004 145% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.5 12.3882235529 93% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.8 11.1389221557 97% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 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.