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To suit the needs of corporate clients

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To suit the needs of corporate clients

by pnk » Sun Jun 20, 2010 5:33 pm
To suit the needs of corporate clients, advertising agencies have successfully modified a strategy originally developed for political campaigns. This strategy aims to provide clients with free publicity and air time by designing an advertising campaign that is controversial, thus drawing prime-time media coverage and evoking public comment by officials.

The Statements above, if true, most seriously undermine which one of the following assertions?

(A) The usefulness of an advertising campaign is based solely on the degree to which the campaign's advertisements persuade their audiences.
(B) Only a small percentage of eligible voters admit to being influenced by advertising campaigns in deciding how to vote.
(C) Campaign managers have transformed political campaigns by making increasing use of strategies borrowed from corporate advertising campaigns.
(D) Corporations are typically more concerned with maintaining public recognition of the corporate name than with enhancing goodwill toward the corporation.
(E) Advertising agencies that specialize in campaigns for corporate clients are not usually chosen for political campaigns

[spoiler]OA - A; LSAT; what the question stem asking us to do. why other options are wrong [/spoiler]
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by gmatmachoman » Sun Jun 20, 2010 10:49 pm
pnk wrote:To suit the needs of corporate clients, advertising agencies have successfully modified a strategy originally developed for political campaigns. This strategy aims to provide clients with free publicity and air time by designing an advertising campaign that is controversial, thus drawing prime-time media coverage and evoking public comment by officials.

The Statements above, if true, most seriously undermine which one of the following assertions?

(A) The usefulness of an advertising campaign is based solely on the degree to which the campaign's advertisements persuade their audiences.
(B) Only a small percentage of eligible voters admit to being influenced by advertising campaigns in deciding how to vote.
(C) Campaign managers have transformed political campaigns by making increasing use of strategies borrowed from corporate advertising campaigns.
(D) Corporations are typically more concerned with maintaining public recognition of the corporate name than with enhancing goodwill toward the corporation.
(E) Advertising agencies that specialize in campaigns for corporate clients are not usually chosen for political campaigns

[spoiler]OA - A; LSAT; what the question stem asking us to do. why other options are wrong [/spoiler]
what does we understand from the stem??

Aim of advertising campaign : Advertisments that are deigned for Corporate clients by the advertising campaign is to create "controversy" and thereby calling for prime-time media coverage and evoking public comment by officials.

Let us do vertical scan:

A)The usefulness of an advertising campaign is based solely on the degree to which the campaign’s advertisements persuade their audiences.

Look for the keyword "solely". The statement means that "main idea" of advt is to "persuade" the audience.

This is directly contradicting the "aim" of campaign managers/advertising campaign.

B,C,D,E are less relavent to the subject stated here.

Assertion : Something declared or stated positively, often with no support or attempt at proof.(Source Wikipedia).

The question stem asks us to find which one of the following are "less plausible" based on the information given in the stem.

Or u can understand it like, which of the following are" getting most hurt" if above statements are true??
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by hardik.jadeja » Sun Jun 20, 2010 11:07 pm
This question is little different from the "undermine the argument" questions we usually practice. Usually we have the passage and we are asked to choose an option that undermines the argument present in the passage. Here we are asked to do the reverse, we have an argument in the passage and we are asked to find a statement that is undermined by the argument in the passage.

Basically option A says that if campaign's advertisements are able to persuade the audience, then only the campaign is successful. But as per the argument in the passage, the campaigns are designed in such a way that they create some sort of controversy and offend public sentiments. So that public start expressing there opinions on television and the company gets prime-time media coverage. According option A, this type of campaign isn't useful, but the fact that such campaigns serve the "needs of corporate clients"(as written in the argument) proves that the argument is undermining the principle given in A.

Option D is almost similar to the conclusion of the passage. So the passage cannot undermine the option D. B, C and E are out of scope.

Hope that helps..
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by pnk » Tue Jun 22, 2010 8:47 pm
Thanks gmatmachoman, Thanks hardik.

Great explanation. Its helped a lot.
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