GMAT Essays (AWA)

Prompt :

The following appeared in a memorandum from the vice president of Road Food, an international chain of fast-food restaurants.

This past year we spent almost as much on advertising as did our main competitor Street Eats which has fewer restaurants than we do. Although it appeared at first that our advertising agency had created a campaign along the lines we suggested, in fact our total profits were lower than those of Street Eats. In order to motivate our advertising agency to perform better, we should start basing the amount that we pay it on how much total profit we make each year.


Response :

The vice president starts off his memorandum by claiming that Road Food spent a very similar amount on advertising in the past year as did their main competitor Street Eats. He has also mentioned that their total profits were lesser than that of Street Eats. In doing so, the vice president seems to be blaming the advertising agency for their poor financial performance and suggests that Road Food should start paying the agency based on the profits they make which he claims will motivate the agency to perform better. There are several flaws in the memorandum which makes it weak and non compelling.

Firstly, we need some information as to how well known Road Food is as compared to Street Eats. This will help us analyse whether spending as much as their competitor on advertising is warranted. If Road Food has been around longer than Street Eats and is better known among the general public, there is no real need to be spending as much as Street Eats on advertising. This will help them significantly cut down on their advertising expenses and in turn boost revenue.
While on the other hand, if Road Food is comparitively newer, then the fact that they are only spending as much as Street Eats on advertising- in spite of having more restaurants- would explain why they have not been able to benefit as much as their competitors from advertising. If the latter is true, then Road Food certainly need to spend more on advertising to gain popularity among the masses and thereby increase sales.

Secondly, the vice president conveniently blames the advertising agency for the inability of his restaurant to make more profits than their competitors. There is no evidence provided in the memorandum to attribute the lack of profits to the poor performance of the advertising agency. For all we know, there could be a variety of factors influencing Road Food's profits or lack of it when compared to Street Eats. One of them could be the quality of food served. It is quite possible that the dishes served at Street Eats are more easy on the tongue or tastier than those served at Road Food. If that is the case, then Street Eats would most definitely be drawing a lot more customers than Road Food. We also have no information on the prices and relative expensiveness of the two restaurants. Maybe, Road Food leaves a bigger hole in the pocket and hence customers find better value for money at Street Eats which could possibly explain their better profits. Hence, the lack of evidence pertaining to the performance of the advertising agency makes the vice president sound weak when he tries to blame them for the poor profits obtained by Road Food.

Because of the flaws explained above we can conclude that the memorandum is weak and not persuasive enough. The vice president should better summarize the points that he is trying to put across especially on why he thinks the advertising agency is to be held responsible for the poor profits. That would help the memorandum gain more strength and thereby provide it more validity than it currently holds.

It is rather a concise and perfectly exposed subject, brilliant logic, quite objective analysis. As to me, I guess that not only from the point of view of the corporative behaviour within the company but also for the sake of remaining serious and neutral, anyone who pretends to serve as an example for his working staff in no kind of way should blame without any evidence provided, of course it is not acceptable. Even specialists from https://domypapers.com would agree that the memorandum is weak and the reasons you expose in your essay are pretty just, though maybe not the only ones...

Hi Katherine,

By "Writing style" i'm assuming you are mainly referring to the formatting of the paragraphs.
Well, I'm struggling with that since i'm writing the essays in notepad as i'm having issues with my Microsoft Word. And the paragraphs and formatting sometimes come out in a haphazard manner when i copy it over from notepad into this text box here. Anyway, I'll try and fix it the next time.

Thanks for your suggestions. Will surely write a couple more essays before my exam.

Thanks,

Kaushik

Hi Katherine,

I've written another essay. Can you please evaluate.

https://www.beatthegmat.com/awa-evaluation-t283666.html

Thanks,

Kaushik