Q15 - Marketing consultant: Last year I predicted that LRG's

[gaheexlee]

Hello,

What makes (B) the correct answer over (A)? They both are your cookie cutter answer choices to weakening type questions, and both seem to apply in this situation.

The (incorrect? correct?) reasoning I came up with eliminating (A) is that (A) assumes the competing consultant had adopted the advertising campaign even though the stimulus never explicitly stated this. The stimulus had instead opted to say "advice."

In contrast, (B) doesn't make this assumption. (B) can be interpreted to mean either that consultant adopted, or did not adopt, the advertising campaign.

This question is very similar to Q13 (also a weakener) in this section, and Q13 had had an answer akin to (A) here as its own answer.

What makes the two questions different?

[ohthatpatrick]

Let me put up a complete explanation before responding to your narrower questions.

Question Type: Flaw

Argument Core:
LRG used a different consultant for ad campaign
+
sales are down
+
new products are selling especially poorly
=========
The ad campaign was ill conceived

At this point, we try to think of Missing Links and Potential Objections.

I don't see any Missing Links worth pursuing. We would need to define "ill conceived" and link it with "sales being down and new products selling especially poorly".

But most savvy LSAT test takers would recognize this argument as involving a causal/explanatory conclusion, and therefore the most likely direction the correct answer will take will be an Alternative Explanation.

I always consider the Anti-Conclusion when I'm doing Assumption Family questions and trying to come up with Potential Objections.

Here, the anti-conclusion is "the ad campaign was good" (not ill-conceived).

If I were trying to defend the ad campaign and say that it was well conceived, then how would I respond to the fact that sales are down and new products sold poorly?

I'd have to say something to the effect of "even though the campaign was a good one, OTHER factors caused the disappointing sales results".

(A) This looks good. "Takes for granted" = Necessary Assumption. If you negated this answer, it would say "LRG's sales WOULD have been LOWER still, without the ad campaign". That definitely makes the ad campaign sound like it was effective. It managed to slow the bleeding, so to speak.

(B) This also looks good. "Fails to consider" = Weaken. If other economic factors caused the low sales figures, then we shouldn't be blaming the ad campaign.

(C) Eliminate. The author doesn't have to assume that LRG's new stuff should outsell other established products. That's too strong.

(D) Eliminate. The author isn't assuming that LRG had effective advertising. If this answer is more broadly saying that the author assumes that ANY time an established product sells well it's due to effective advertising, then that claim is way too extreme. This is really trying to take advantage of an illegal negation. The author assumes "low sales --> ineffective advertising", and this answer choice negates each of those ideas.

(E) This describes the ol' Necessary/Sufficient flaw, which means that there was a conditional statement in the premise and the author performed an illegal reversal/negation. There was no conditional, so this is a garbage answer.

Down to (A) and (B), it gets ROUGH!

As the previous poster guessed/surmised, I think it comes down to "competitor's advertising campaign" in (A).

Who said that a competitor designed an advertising campaign?

It seems like the story could just consist of this:
- LRG had an ad campaign.
- They go to a consultant, our author, who says "this campaign sucks and won't work"
- LRG ignores that consultant and takes the advice of another. That advice might have been "Looks good, go for it!"

So I think the test writers could have been thinking they could disqualify (A) by saying "who said the competitor had its own advertising campaign?"

I think the other key distinction between (A) and (B) is the type of objection each allows us to make.

Remember, the author is saying "because of dismal sales numbers, we know the ad campaign was ill conceived."

(A) allows us to object, "It wasn't ill conceived: the sales numbers would be even worse if we HADN'T done that campaign."

That's not a ringing endorsement for the campaign. It would be a forceful objection if the conclusion were "Thus, the ad campaign did nothing". (This is the reason why this type of answer IS a correct answer on Q13, whose conclusion IS of the form "X has no effect on Y")

(B) allows us to object, "It wasn't ill conceived: those dismal sales numbers were caused by factors unrelated to the ad campaign."

That's WAY more powerful, since it essentially means the author no longer has any leg to stand on.

The author's sole reason for thinking the ad campaign was ill conceived was evidence of bad sales numbers.

Well if those bad sales numbers are caused by something unrelated to the ad campaign, then those bad sales numbers are "unrelated" (i.e. irrelevant) to the conclusion.

I am with you in thinking that Q15 is a mean, mean question. I do think (A) is incredibly tempting, but so is (B). Forced to decide between two seemingly workable answers, frequently the decision comes down to strength of language or overall breadth / punch.

(B) wins that battle by rendering the premise irrelevant.

(A) does give us a way to argue that the ad campaign had some merit; it was preferable to doing nothing. But that's not a huge objection to the author's argument.

Essentially (A) accuses the author of thinking that the ad campaign did nothing or actually harmed.

That's just a teensy bit overboard. In order to accuse an ad campaign of being ill conceived, you don't necessarily have to believe it did NOTHING of value.

Hope this helps.

[b.johnson015]

Thanks for the above explanation; it was quite exhaustive and viewed the question from angle that I had previously not considered.

I agree that B is MUCH more forceful than A - for the latter leaves open the possibility that the campaign was still ill-conceived despite its limited success. In other words, that the campaign contributed somewhat to the company's sales doesn't mean it was the right call. Maybe it had a terrible ROI, and lots of money was wasted for only marginal results. Maybe an alternative marketing plan showed more promise. Remember, we are told that sales are LOW - even if they might be lower without the campaign doesn't change the fact that they are low. It is reasonable to surmise, then, that the campaign was not a smashing success.

Also as you noted, I think it is important to point out that the consultant's argument is NOT that the campaign was ineffective - but rather that it was a bad call given his prediction.

[aparhar]

So I was going over this question as well as I got it wrong and it confused the crap out of me too as I had it between A/B. Looked on this site and completely agree with "ohthatpatrick" in terms of his second explanation to why A is wrong.


To me the "competitors advantage difference" is too artificial. Its a very ticky tack reason to me for a flaw question and not very real but maybe thats just me.

However, the second difference is very real and I would also add a third difference.


The reason A is wrong in my estimation is because even if LRG sales would be lower in the absence of competitors advertising campaign, you could still argue the advertising campaign was ill conceived. 1) Because the advertising campaign hypothetically should booster sales (thats a very common sense assumption which IMO is well within the boundaries of the stimulus).

Additionally, even if thats the case it still doesnt undermine the fact that another reason why the marketing consultant had argued against the campaign was that the campaign would be "ineffective in promoting new products". Even if the sales as a whole would have been lower, you don't really know if the sale of new products would be really low or not. Answer choice A in my estimation refers to the entire amount of sales However, the answer does not eliminate the possibility of sales from new products being high and everything else being really low which could still lead to LRG sales being lower in the absence of the competitors advertising campaign.

Not sure if you folks agree or disagree.

[braintreeprez]

My post is on a slightly different topic than answer choice B > A. I'm totally convinced by all the reasons everyone has mentioned. Going off a side note on someone else's post, though, I wanted to know why in #13, answer choice B was right, while in #15, answer choice A is not.

More specifically: If we're straight up just comparing #13 and #15 (NOT choices A and B in #15), how can the same basic answer choice be correct in #13 but not in #15? The arguments both contain a causation error; the questions are both ID the flaw; and 13-B says the same thing as 15-A.

Note: in my discussion below, I'm taking a few slight liberties with the arguments to make my point.

#13 says that, because the crime rate hasn't gone down (Y) while the % prison population has (X), increasing imprisonment (X) won't help reduce the crime rate (Y). Diagrammed loosely, this says (the // represents correlation):

X // Y --> X not cause Y

And here, the right answer choice (B) says: Actually, if it weren't for X, Y would have been worse.

#15 says that, because sales decreased (Y) while this new ad campaign (X) was happening, the ad campaign probably is the culprit:

X // Y --> X cause Y

Here, answer choice (A) says the same thing as (13-B): Actually, it it weren't for X (the new ad campaign), Y (bad sales) would have been worse.

So why is 13-B right while 15-A is not? Well, the key seems to be 'NOT cause' in #13 (vs. just straight up 'cause' in #15). If, as 13-B says, crime rate would actually have been higher without more imprisonment, we know for sure more imprisonment did NOT cause an increase in crime rate. However, in #15, if sales had been even lower without the new ad campaign, that doesn't matter-- it doesn't tell us anything for sure. The new ad campaign could STILL have caused bad (lower) sales.

What if we changed the argument/diagram in #15 to match #13? That would give us the claim:

The new ad campaign (X) did NOT cause the lower sales (Y).

In this case, answer choice 15-A would have been correct, just as 13-B was correct. If sales had been lower in the absence of the new ad campaign, then we know for SURE the ads did NOT cause the decrease in sales; hence, this answer choice represents an assumption allowing the marketing consultant to be right (aka her flaw).

This is a bit twisted/going out on a limb, but it was really bothering me why 13-B could be right and 15-A wrong (in addition to the existence of the superior choice B In 15). This is how I reasoned it out, but if anyone else has thoughts on this, please share!

[ohthatpatrick]

This nightmare question has spawned a nightmare thread. Look at the world you've wrought, LSAC!

Here are my thoughts on the last couple posts:

- both (A) and (B) refer to low sales figures broadly. I love the distinction between OVERALL sales figures and the SPECIFIC aim of promoting NEW products, but that distinction doesn't really have a wedge that differentiates between (A) and (B).

- be careful with the "even if ... it could still be ...". These answers don't have to be perfect to weaken.
For (A), "even if sales would have been WORSE without the campaign, that doesn't PROVE that the campaign was well conceived. It only seems to show that the existence of the campaign had SOME positive effect ... it lessened the damage."

But similarly, for (B), "even if something else caused the low sales figures, that doesn't prove that the campaign was well conceived."

So it's not like (A) or (B), in its attacking form, would REFUTE the conclusion. We're just asking ourselves, "which one makes us backpedal more?"

Ask yourself, in which one of these conversations does the author receive a more powerful rebuttal?

Author: Campaign X was a crappy campaign. Look at these low sales figures.
Rebuttal: The sales would have been even worse without Campaign X.
Author: Big whoop. If I say it was ill conceived to jump across that canyon using only a diving board, would you say, "No it wasn't, you would have fallen even sooner without the diving board"?

Author: Campaign X was a crappy campaign. Look at these low sales figures.
Rebuttal: Actually, the low sales figures were caused by something else.
Author: Oh ... well ... then, I guess I haven't given you any reason yet to believe that campaign X was crappy.

(B) beats (A) because (B) removes the only premise the author had to stand on.

(A) doesn't do that. It muddles the picture somewhat and makes it seem like the campaign had at least some value, but it's not creating a powerful objection.

--- The reason Q13 and Q15 are different is because, though they both deal with correlation to causality, the conclusions make different claims.

Q15 is basically saying "X did a poor job of bringing about Y."
Q13 is saying "X is powerless to do ANYTHING about Y."

If you establish that X did ANYTHING to help bring about Y, you have refuted Q13. But you haven't yet refuted Q15, because you can take a step in the right direction while still doing a poor job of reaching the destination.

[contropositive]

Let me put up a complete explanation before responding to your narrower questions.

Question Type: Flaw

Argument Core:
LRG used a different consultant for ad campaign
+
sales are down
+
new products are selling especially poorly
=========
The ad campaign was ill conceived

At this point, we try to think of Missing Links and Potential Objections.

I don't see any Missing Links worth pursuing. We would need to define "ill conceived" and link it with "sales being down and new products selling especially poorly".

But most savvy LSAT test takers would recognize this argument as involving a causal/explanatory conclusion, and therefore the most likely direction the correct answer will take will be an Alternative Explanation.

I always consider the Anti-Conclusion when I'm doing Assumption Family questions and trying to come up with Potential Objections.

Here, the anti-conclusion is "the ad campaign was good" (not ill-conceived).

If I were trying to defend the ad campaign and say that it was well conceived, then how would I respond to the fact that sales are down and new products sold poorly?

I'd have to say something to the effect of "even though the campaign was a good one, OTHER factors caused the disappointing sales results".

(A) This looks good. "Takes for granted" = Necessary Assumption. If you negated this answer, it would say "LRG's sales WOULD have been LOWER still, without the ad campaign". That definitely makes the ad campaign sound like it was effective. It managed to slow the bleeding, so to speak.

(B) This also looks good. "Fails to consider" = Weaken. If other economic factors caused the low sales figures, then we shouldn't be blaming the ad campaign.

(C) Eliminate. The author doesn't have to assume that LRG's new stuff should outsell other established products. That's too strong.

(D) Eliminate. The author isn't assuming that LRG had effective advertising. If this answer is more broadly saying that the author assumes that ANY time an established product sells well it's due to effective advertising, then that claim is way too extreme. This is really trying to take advantage of an illegal negation. The author assumes "low sales --> ineffective advertising", and this answer choice negates each of those ideas.

(E) This describes the ol' Necessary/Sufficient flaw, which means that there was a conditional statement in the premise and the author performed an illegal reversal/negation. There was no conditional, so this is a garbage answer.

Down to (A) and (B), it gets ROUGH!

As the previous poster guessed/surmised, I think it comes down to "competitor's advertising campaign" in (A).

Who said that a competitor designed an advertising campaign?

It seems like the story could just consist of this:
- LRG had an ad campaign.
- They go to a consultant, our author, who says "this campaign sucks and won't work"
- LRG ignores that consultant and takes the advice of another. That advice might have been "Looks good, go for it!"

So I think the test writers could have been thinking they could disqualify (A) by saying "who said the competitor had its own advertising campaign?"

I think the other key distinction between (A) and (B) is the type of objection each allows us to make.

Remember, the author is saying "because of dismal sales numbers, we know the ad campaign was ill conceived."

(A) allows us to object, "It wasn't ill conceived: the sales numbers would be even worse if we HADN'T done that campaign."

That's not a ringing endorsement for the campaign. It would be a forceful objection if the conclusion were "Thus, the ad campaign did nothing". (This is the reason why this type of answer IS a correct answer on Q13, whose conclusion IS of the form "X has no effect on Y")

(B) allows us to object, "It wasn't ill conceived: those dismal sales numbers were caused by factors unrelated to the ad campaign."

That's WAY more powerful, since it essentially means the author no longer has any leg to stand on.

The author's sole reason for thinking the ad campaign was ill conceived was evidence of bad sales numbers.

Well if those bad sales numbers are caused by something unrelated to the ad campaign, then those bad sales numbers are "unrelated" (i.e. irrelevant) to the conclusion.

I am with you in thinking that Q15 is a mean, mean question. I do think (A) is incredibly tempting, but so is (B). Forced to decide between two seemingly workable answers, frequently the decision comes down to strength of language or overall breadth / punch.

(B) wins that battle by rendering the premise irrelevant.

(A) does give us a way to argue that the ad campaign had some merit; it was preferable to doing nothing. But that's not a huge objection to the author's argument.

Essentially (A) accuses the author of thinking that the ad campaign did nothing or actually harmed.

That's just a teensy bit overboard. In order to accuse an ad campaign of being ill conceived, you don't necessarily have to believe it did NOTHING of value.

Hope this helps.

Thank you for the explanation. After 1.5 hour spent on figuring out why A is not the right answer and reading your post, this is what my thoughts came down to (a interpretation of your explanation for A):

we want to object the claim that advertising is the result of bad sales. A does not make a clear objection because it's implicitly agreeing that the sales were low and the advertising was ineffective, but sales would have been "lower still" had it not been for the advertisement. B on the other hand, explicitly destroys the argument by saying the advertising had nothing to do with the sales going down.

I think its so hard to see the subtle difference between A and B during timed test but I initially picked B because I luckily made the prediction before going into the answer choices that perhaps something else caused sales to go down and not the advertising per se

[dellara94]

This is a really dense thread so I'm not sure if someone has mentioned it yet-- but I think a really easy reason to rule out A is because it talks about the absence of the "competitor's advertising campaign" but the stimulus doesn't even talk about a competitor's advertising campaign.

What happened was marketing consultant A told LRG's latest campaign would be unpopular and ineffective. They ignored market consultant A and listened to market consultant B to go ahead with their own campaign. So market consultant A thinks the season's sales figures is a direct result of going ahead with their own campaign, it is our job to argue that it wasn't.

So when answer choice A discusses the absence of the "competitor's advertising campaign," I can immediately rule it out as irrelevant. I think it's trying to confuse us to think that the competing consultant's drew up competing campaigns, but that isn't the case.

B wins.

[olena.lukianenko]

The Answer choice A says: " it takes for granted that LRG's sales would NOT have been lower still in the absence of the competitor's advertising campaign."

Why everybody says that this answer choice states that " LRG's sales WOULD have been lower in the absence..."

Why "NOT" is omitted?

[reginaphalange]

The conclusion is 'The ad was ill conceived.'
Here is an advantage (A) has over (B):

(A) tells us that even though sales are bad, the ad was helpful, because it prevented sales from being even worse. That's good indication that the ad was NOT ill-conceived. We'd definitely want to prevent even worse sales

Whereas (B) does not show that the ad helped at all. Even though bad sales were caused by something else, we have no indication that the ad did any good. So this answer doesn't tell us the ad was not ill conceived, the way (A) did. Further, an ad campaign costs money, so it seems ill conceived to have spent that money on the ad, and end up having bad sales anyway.

Does that make sense? I chose (A) because it tells us the ad had a tangible desirable effect, whereas (B) is neutral.

Further, I thought that it's reasonable to assume that a consultant advising on a campaign would think about it in the context of the business and industry, rather than just solely on the campaign in a vacuum (what would that even mean? The aesthetic value of the campaign)? So it doesn't seem adequate to say, like in (B), the campaign ITSELF was well conceived, but it just didn't perform well in light of something else going on in the business or industry. That's like getting a consultant who excuses himself by saying 'Oh I thought you wanted me to analyze the campaign abstractly, I didn't know you wanted to know how well it would do at this point in history, or in the context of YOUR business, or for sales in this country.'

[DavidS899]

This one has me really tripped up.

I chose A over B. I didn't like "competitor's advertising campaign" and that initially almost had me eliminate A altogether but I reread the stimulus and realized the answer choice could have been using this phrase not to say that the competitor owns the advertising campaign or created it but just that that was the advertising campaign the competitor stood by in advising LRG, in the face of the other marketing consultant's criticism.

Argument is

P: Sales figures down
P: New products selling especially poor

C: Ad campaign ill conceived.

A and B both point to alternative causes of low sales figures outside of the scope of the ad campaign.

A is saying "what if the sales figures were low regardless (for any other reason)"
B is saying "what if the sales figures were low because of unrelated economic factors"

I chose A because if B is true it must also be true that A is true.

B's *unrelated economic factors* falls in the scope of A's *literally any other reason for low sales*.

[KenM242]

So this is what LSAT is coming down to?

When reading "competitor's advertising campaign" we must have the ability to assume that its the LRG's competitor and NEVER the consultant's?

OK.

f this s.

I feel that LSAT LR questions are using more of dirty tricks to dig traps for the students rather than test their logic.

[krisk743]

So this is what LSAT is coming down to?

When reading "competitor's advertising campaign" we must have the ability to assume that its the LRG's competitor and NEVER the consultant's?

OK.

f this s.

I feel that LSAT LR questions are using more of dirty tricks to dig traps for the students rather than test their logic.

AH

MEN

[JinZ551]

My thoughts on why A is not an ideal answer here:

even if the sales would have been LOWER without the mentioned AD campaign,
sales with the campaign: $100
sales with out the campaign: $99

In this case, the campaign did raise the sales ($1), but can we say that the consultant's argument is wrong about the campaign being ineffective and ill-conceived? No.

Thus A is not a strong answer to attack the consultant's argument.

[JeremyK460]

Let me put up a complete explanation before responding to your narrower questions.

Question Type: Flaw

Argument Core:
LRG used a different consultant for ad campaign
+
sales are down
+
new products are selling especially poorly
=========
The ad campaign was ill conceived

At this point, we try to think of Missing Links and Potential Objections.

I don't see any Missing Links worth pursuing. We would need to define "ill conceived" and link it with "sales being down and new products selling especially poorly".

But most savvy LSAT test takers would recognize this argument as involving a causal/explanatory conclusion, and therefore the most likely direction the correct answer will take will be an Alternative Explanation.

I always consider the Anti-Conclusion when I'm doing Assumption Family questions and trying to come up with Potential Objections.

Here, the anti-conclusion is "the ad campaign was good" (not ill-conceived).

If I were trying to defend the ad campaign and say that it was well conceived, then how would I respond to the fact that sales are down and new products sold poorly?

I'd have to say something to the effect of "even though the campaign was a good one, OTHER factors caused the disappointing sales results".

(A) This looks good. "Takes for granted" = Necessary Assumption. If you negated this answer, it would say "LRG's sales WOULD have been LOWER still, without the ad campaign". That definitely makes the ad campaign sound like it was effective. It managed to slow the bleeding, so to speak.

(B) This also looks good. "Fails to consider" = Weaken. If other economic factors caused the low sales figures, then we shouldn't be blaming the ad campaign.

(C) Eliminate. The author doesn't have to assume that LRG's new stuff should outsell other established products. That's too strong.

(D) Eliminate. The author isn't assuming that LRG had effective advertising. If this answer is more broadly saying that the author assumes that ANY time an established product sells well it's due to effective advertising, then that claim is way too extreme. This is really trying to take advantage of an illegal negation. The author assumes "low sales --> ineffective advertising", and this answer choice negates each of those ideas.

(E) This describes the ol' Necessary/Sufficient flaw, which means that there was a conditional statement in the premise and the author performed an illegal reversal/negation. There was no conditional, so this is a garbage answer.

Down to (A) and (B), it gets ROUGH!

As the previous poster guessed/surmised, I think it comes down to "competitor's advertising campaign" in (A).

Who said that a competitor designed an advertising campaign?

It seems like the story could just consist of this:
- LRG had an ad campaign.
- They go to a consultant, our author, who says "this campaign sucks and won't work"
- LRG ignores that consultant and takes the advice of another. That advice might have been "Looks good, go for it!"

So I think the test writers could have been thinking they could disqualify (A) by saying "who said the competitor had its own advertising campaign?"

I think the other key distinction between (A) and (B) is the type of objection each allows us to make.

Remember, the author is saying "because of dismal sales numbers, we know the ad campaign was ill conceived."

(A) allows us to object, "It wasn't ill conceived: the sales numbers would be even worse if we HADN'T done that campaign."

That's not a ringing endorsement for the campaign. It would be a forceful objection if the conclusion were "Thus, the ad campaign did nothing". (This is the reason why this type of answer IS a correct answer on Q13, whose conclusion IS of the form "X has no effect on Y")

(B) allows us to object, "It wasn't ill conceived: those dismal sales numbers were caused by factors unrelated to the ad campaign."

That's WAY more powerful, since it essentially means the author no longer has any leg to stand on.

The author's sole reason for thinking the ad campaign was ill conceived was evidence of bad sales numbers.

Well if those bad sales numbers are caused by something unrelated to the ad campaign, then those bad sales numbers are "unrelated" (i.e. irrelevant) to the conclusion.

I am with you in thinking that Q15 is a mean, mean question. I do think (A) is incredibly tempting, but so is (B). Forced to decide between two seemingly workable answers, frequently the decision comes down to strength of language or overall breadth / punch.

(B) wins that battle by rendering the premise irrelevant.

(A) does give us a way to argue that the ad campaign had some merit; it was preferable to doing nothing. But that's not a huge objection to the author's argument.

Essentially (A) accuses the author of thinking that the ad campaign did nothing or actually harmed.

That's just a teensy bit overboard. In order to accuse an ad campaign of being ill conceived, you don't necessarily have to believe it did NOTHING of value.

Hope this helps.

Thank you for the explanation. After 1.5 hour spent on figuring out why A is not the right answer and reading your post, this is what my thoughts came down to (a interpretation of your explanation for A):

we want to object the claim that advertising is the result of bad sales. A does not make a clear objection because it's implicitly agreeing that the sales were low and the advertising was ineffective, but sales would have been "lower still" had it not been for the advertisement. B on the other hand, explicitly destroys the argument by saying the advertising had nothing to do with the sales going down.

I think its so hard to see the subtle difference between A and B during timed test but I initially picked B because I luckily made the prediction before going into the answer choices that perhaps something else caused sales to go down and not the advertising per se

if you take the advice of a marketing consultant about your new product's ad-campaign, it wouldn't be unreasonable to say that the campaign was designed by the consultant

assuming this is true (a) is still wrong because it's vague

analogy:
Z sells around 50 shoes per year
Z sold 10 shoes this past year
Z took advice from a marketing consultant about their shoe ad campaign for this past year
the advice was shitty

(a) they would've sold 10 shoes anyway without the advice

and...

this doesn't allow me to conclude a definitive evaluation about the advice
i can still conclude shitty or not-shitty