#26 - The advertising campaign for Roadwise auto insurance

[Administrator]

Please post your questions below!

[_klkl]

I guess I missed a question no one else missed.

I eliminated D) because I thought if ads that target one alienate non-target population, an ad campaign that targets multiple groups would be worse, since it would alienate everybody.

Am I interpreting the stimulus incorrectly?

[Christen Hammock]

Hey Klkl!

We're trying to strengthen the author's conclusion, which is that Roadwise's ad strategy is smart because of their diverse audience. In other words, Roadwise doesn't want to alienate anybody by targeting a particular demographic, so they make a range of commercials. I arrived at Answer Choice (D) two ways—first, none of the other answers fit! Here's an explanation of each answer choice, highlighting your question about (D).

(A) is an opposite answer. It's not "smart" not to target demographics if a targeted ad ends up reaching a diverse audience anyway! This weakens the author's argument.

(B) Also an opposite answer! It can't be "critical" to do the opposite of what Roadwise is doing. This weakens the author's argument.

(C) This is outside the scope of the question. We're limited to examining what the different ad strategies do—not how effective they are in different industries.

(D) The difference here is between individual advertisements and an "advertising campaign." For example, even though an individual ad might target Demographic #1 and alienate Demographic #2, the Roadwise strategy would be to create another ad that targets Demographic #2 to prevent alienating them. The campaign wouldn't be consistently targeting any particular demographic, so the result is less alienation!

(E) Similar to (C), this answer falls outside the scope of the question. We know nothing about the content of any ads mentioned!

[ssnasir]

Hi there,

I was drawn to E because I figured that if the content of an add falls short to influence the target audience then having a variety is a good idea because then at least one add's content wouldn't risk falling short. But, is that too much assumption on my part? because what if none on the add's content resonates with anyone?

Thank you!

[Adam Tyson]

Definitely making too much of an assumption there, ssnasir. We don't know anything about whether the content of any of the Roadwise ads "falls short," whatever that means. The issue here isn't content, but variety. We just know that they have a lot of different kinds of ads and they have a lot of different kinds of customers, and the author thinks that makes sense.