Argument Topic: "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

Companies are constantly looking for ways to increase number of customers, and Super Screen Movie Production Company is no different. They had a poor previous year, and the marketing director believes that by spending more on advertising to the public, Super Screen movies will enjoy a higher viewership. However, the memo the director released is full of unjustified reasons for his conclusion and suggestion, and the director must adequetely support his conclusion by incorporating additional information.

The reasoning for a diminishing number of patrons should be immediately assertained because that issue is the driving concern. The memo stated that in the past year, fewer people attended their movies than any other year; however, the director does not give context to external factors that could have contributed to a decreasing audience. For example, if the nation were to have entered a depression, fewer people would be expected to watch movies because they would have less money to spend on entertainment. In this case, the production company might be experiencing an issue that all other movie companies are dealing with. Thus, the lack of context about other influences prevents the reader from understanding the reason for a decline in the number of viewers. A necessary question would then be are there external factors that are causing the number of viewers to decrease, and a possible way to determine that would be to investigate the lose in viewership for this company compared to other related production companies. Answering this question would allow the advertising director to determine whether the decrease in viewers is a company specific problem that must be faced or a sector problem that is affecting everyone.

Additionally, the memo cites an increase in the percent of positive reviews over the past year, and it argues that that increase suggests that the quality of the movies are excellent. The memo does not investigate whether the percent increase was due to more positive reviews or fewer negative reviews. For example, if there are fewer negative reviews, the company could look into whether that caused by those reviews no longer watching their movies. Another issue with that metric is that the memo specifies the percent increased "about specific Super Screen movies." The memo fails to mention if the other movies had horrible reviews. As such, an important question would be what is the overall quality of all of the Super Screen movies, and how does that quality compare to other production companies. This would give the advertising director a metric to determine if quality of the movies is or is not an issue.

Finally, the advertising director claims a lack of awareness by the public as a reason that fewer people watched Super Screen movies. This claim does not seem to follow from the earlier discussion about the increase in the percent of positive reviews for specific movies. The director does not give any background for this claim which makes the reader question its validity. For example, the marketing team could have spent almost all of their budget for the previous year on trying to let the public know how well reviewed some of their movies are. If that were the case, it seems unlikely that the problem is that the public is unaware of the movies produced by Super Screen. Instead, that scenario would suggest that some other factor is causing a decline in attendance. Therefore, an important question to answer would be how the previous marketing budget was spent, and whether the public truly is unaware of Super Screen movies. If the director of marketing is able to answer those questions, he could narrow down the factors causing a decline in patrons.

Overall, the memo issued by the director of marketing seems hastely written and poorly supported; however, it can be improved by incorporating why the number of patrons fell, whether Super Screen movies are quality movies, and if the public is actually unaware of Super Screen movies. The answers to those questions will help determine the cause for the decline in viewers attending Super Screen movies, but the easiest method might be to create a poll that would ask the public why they would or would not attend a Super Screen movie.