This question presents an interesting twist: It’s a “weaken the argument” question, but the
argument to be weakened is in the answer choices, and the weakener is the stimulus. There
we find out that an advertising strategy developed for and used by political campaigns has
now successfully been applied to corporate accounts. The strategy is to design
controversial ads that will become news, generate media attention, and evoke public
responses from officials. Thus, the companies get a lot more exposure than they pay for.
We don’t have to look very far for the choice that’s incompatible with this notion; choice
(A) directly violates the “get something for nothing” principle behind the strategy. This
strategy flies in the face of the assertion in (A), which says that the usefulness of an ad
campaign is based solely on the degree to which the ads themselves persuade people. (A)
does not consider extra media coverage or public comment by officials to be relevant to an
ad’s effectiveness. If the statements in the stimulus are true, then (A) is seriously weakened
by the fact that some ads are successful thanks to a factor besides persuading the public—
namely because they make the news and generate free publicity for the client
official explanation
