The following is taken from a memos 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 is 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 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.
Based on a report from the marketing department, the Super Screen Movie company advertising director has recommended increasing the budget of advertising next year in order to increase movie attendance. While this may achieve the increased attendance desired, that conclusion is not supported by the evidence given here. There are significant questions around availability and awareness, content, the industry as a whole, and the biases of the recommender that need to be addressed first.
For example, while overall attendance of the studio's movies may be down, it's not clear if the studio produced and released the same number of films as it had in previous years or if the films were shown in the same number of theaters with the same number of show times. The dip in attendance could be attributed to the availability of the movies, rather than awareness or interest. It would also be helpful to do additional research to determine if in actuality the potential audience had heard of the movies and the positive reviews or not.
It's also not clear if the movies released in the past year were similar in content or target audience as previous years. It's possible that preceeding films were "blockbuster" action films with an appeal to the widest possible audience, while the previous year focused on elite directors and niche audiences that would, of course, result in a smaller turnout.
In addition, its important to look at the industry as whole in order to get a full picture of how the movies performed. The studio needs to evaluate whether overall movie attendance was up or down the previous year, by what percentage, and determine whether their movies performed above or below that baseline. It's actually possible this studio's attendance number are better than the industry. The studio also needs to determine the competitive landscape: were there blockbusters released by other studios that simply pulled all available viewers?
And finally, the fact that the recommendation to increase the percentage of budget going to advertising versus other cost centers is being put forward by the advertising director needs to be evaluated. It's important to know if other departments agree that advertising should be increased and are willing to offer up part of their budgets to do so.
While allocating a greater portion of the studio's budget to advertising could potentially increase attendance, it's not justified by the information given here. There are too many other potential reasons viewership could have been down that need to be evaluated and eliminated before determining what action to be taken, or if any action needs to be taken at all.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 16 15
No. of Words: 434 350
No. of Characters: 2188 1500
No. of Different Words: 201 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.564 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.041 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.749 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 158 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 123 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 96 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 62 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 27.125 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.915 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.812 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.328 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.624 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.058 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 9, column 1, Rule ID: IT_IS[6]
Message: Did you mean 'it's' (='it is') instead of 'its' (possessive pronoun)?
Suggestion: It's; It is
... and the positive reviews or not. Its also not clear if the movies released i...
^^^
Line 13, column 339, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'studios'' or 'studio's'?
Suggestion: studios'; studio's
...at baseline. Its actually possible this studios attendance number are better than the i...
^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, but, finally, first, if, look, may, so, while, for example, in addition, of course
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 22.0 19.6327345309 112% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 10.0 12.9520958084 77% => OK
Conjunction : 16.0 11.1786427146 143% => OK
Relative clauses : 9.0 13.6137724551 66% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 22.0 28.8173652695 76% => OK
Preposition: 65.0 55.5748502994 117% => OK
Nominalization: 16.0 16.3942115768 98% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2258.0 2260.96107784 100% => OK
No of words: 434.0 441.139720559 98% => OK
Chars per words: 5.20276497696 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.56428161445 4.56307096286 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.92219772178 2.78398813304 105% => OK
Unique words: 209.0 204.123752495 102% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.481566820276 0.468620217663 103% => OK
syllable_count: 712.8 705.55239521 101% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 9.0 4.96107784431 181% => OK
Article: 6.0 8.76447105788 68% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 4.0 1.67365269461 239% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 16.0 19.7664670659 81% => Need more sentences. Double check the format of sentences, make sure there is a space between two sentences, or have enough periods. And also check the lengths of sentences, maybe they are too long.
Sentence length: 27.0 22.8473053892 118% => OK
Sentence length SD: 49.4143435022 57.8364921388 85% => OK
Chars per sentence: 141.125 119.503703932 118% => OK
Words per sentence: 27.125 23.324526521 116% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.125 5.70786347227 107% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 12.0 8.20758483034 146% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 2.0 6.88822355289 29% => More negative sentences wanted.
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: 0.184883282732 0.218282227539 85% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0630388785249 0.0743258471296 85% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0868565350955 0.0701772020484 124% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0970968209174 0.128457276422 76% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.072001744124 0.0628817314937 115% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.6 14.3799401198 115% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 44.07 48.3550499002 91% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.8 12.197005988 113% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.18 12.5979740519 105% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.72 8.32208582834 105% => OK
difficult_words: 103.0 98.500998004 105% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.5 12.3882235529 117% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.8 11.1389221557 115% => 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.