Q26 - The advertising campaign for Roadwise auto insurance

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Strengthen (the Conclusion, not argument)

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: Having a variety of commercials (some funny / some serious) is a smart move for Roadwise auto insurance.
Evidence: Purchasers of auto insurance are so demographically diverse.

Answer Anticipation:
The argument is essentially saying it's smart for Roadwise to have some serious commercials that will appeal to serious adults and old people, while having funny commercials that appeal to younger or less stolid people. A correct answer could rule out a potential downside of this strategy or give more evidence that the strategy is working.

One potential objection I can think of is, "What if the serious people see your funny commercial, or the funny people see your serious commercials?" There's a risk of a mismatch between the type of commercial and the designed target audience, so maybe an answer helps clarify that Roadwise is good at making sure the right people see the right version of their commercials.

Correct Answer:
D

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) This is about the typical strategy, not about Roadwise's atypical VARIED approach.

(B) This almost weakens, since having varied styles of commericals means that Roadwise doesn't have a super CONSISTENT effort at establishing brand identity.

(C) "OTHER" types of products is completely out of scope.

(D) YES, but it's tough to interpret at first. Since we know that purchasers of auto insurance are a demographically diverse group, if Roadwise were to target one of these demographics, it would alienate people who aren't part of that demographic. This strengthens Roadwise's strategy to instead target different demographics with different ads, so that even if a given demographic is alienated by ONE ad that Roadwise runs, that demographic may feel targeted by a different ad that Roadwise runs.

(E) This sounds like a weakener, since it's saying "efforts to DO NOT pay off".

Takeaway/Pattern: It ended up being more of a Strengthen the argument (the usual) question. Sometimes, when we're asked to Strengthen or Weaken a claim or conclusion or hypothesis, there isn't really a premise that we need to factor in. The correct answer is just independent support for or evidence against the claim/conclusion/hypothesis. Here, it seems crucial to keep in mind the "auto insurance buyers are demographically diverse" premise in order to understand the potential value of (D).

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