The stimulus tells us that "advertising agencies have successfully modified a strategy originally developed for political campaigns" so that they can better suit the needs of corporate clients. We know, therefore, that this strategy worked because the stimulus describes it as "successful." The actual strategy focuses on "providing 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."
We are looking for the answer choice that the stimulus seriously undermines. It's important to note that the correct answer is being undermined by the stimulus and not the other way around.
(A) is the correct answer because it is undermined by the stimulus. If the statements in the stimulus are true, then answer choice (A) cannot be true. The usefulness of an advertising campaign is obviously not solely based on the degree to which the campaign's advertisement persuades their audience since the modified strategy that the advertising agencies are currently using for their corporate clients is not aimed at persuading audiences, but merely at getting free publicity and air time by being controversial. We know this strategy is successful, therefore, (A) is undermined.
(C) is not the correct answer because the stimulus does not undermine it. The stimulus has not given us any information on whether or not campaign managers are "making increasing use of strategies borrowed from corporate advertising." Therefore, we cannot say that the stimulus undermines answer choice (C). Remember that, on the LSAT, the boundaries of our knowledge are defined by the limits of the stimulus. If the stimulus does not discuss it, then we do not know about it.
Hope that was helpful! Please let us know if you have any more questions.
jacaroeJune 26, 2017
When you said that we are looking for the answer that undermines the stimulus not the other way around, the answer became clear. Thank you for that. It really helped clear it up.
Madelyn-LuskeyJuly 11, 2018
Can you please explain (B)?
ChristopherJuly 28, 2018
@Madelyn-Luskey, the discussion in the question doesn't do anything to the argument in (B). The discussion above is talking about how advertisers have gotten corporate clients free press by causing controversy. The discussion also suggests that this suits the needs of those corporate clients, which would indicate that it is an effective marketing strategy. This undermines (A) because (A) holds that successful advertising must be persuasive, while the example above shows that just name-brand recognition is helpful. However, (B) is making a point about how effective advertising is in persuading voters, and the discussion doesn't have any impact on that statement whatsoever.
StephDecember 27, 2018
Hi, Can you all please explain why the correct answer is not D?
RaviDecember 27, 2018
@Steph, happy to help.
I think you may have misread D to mean that corporations are typically more concerned with enhancing the goodwill toward the corporation than maintaining public recognition of the corporate name or that you interpreted "recognition" to mean "positive association."
However, what D says is that corporations are typically more concerned with maintaining public recognition of the corporate name than with enhancing goodwill toward the corporation. "Recognition" here just means awareness, and there doesn't have to be a positive association with it. This answer is saying that corporations care more that people know who they are than having the vast majority of people, who know who they are, think highly of them. This is perfectly consistent with what's in the passage. This inference could be made from reading the stimulus, so the passage's contents would not seriously undermine this assertion.
Does this make sense? Let us know if you have more questions!
Julie-VJune 21, 2019
the explanation for D was a little confusing, could it be further expanded? also, can someone also explain why E would be the incorrect answer? Thank you in advance!
RaviJune 21, 2019
@Julie-V,
Happy to help. Let's take a look at (E) and go into more detail on (D).
We're looking for an answer choice that basically needs to be false based on the statements in the stimulus.
(D) says, "Corporations are typically more concerned with maintaining public recognition of the corporate name than with enhancing goodwill toward the corporation."
A big problem with (D) is that we don't know anything about the general/typical concerns of corporations in one direction or another, so (D) isn't undermined by what's being said in the stimulus. As a result, it's not the right answer choice.
(E) says, "Advertising agencies that specialize in campaigns for corporate clients are not usually chosen for political campaigns."
The problem with (E) is that we do not know how much crossover exists between the advertising agencies doing corporate and political work. Because we don't know how much crossover there is, the information in the stimulus does not undermine (E), so it's out.
Does that make sense? Let us know if you'd like further clarification!
ShirnelApril 26, 2020
I understand this explanation but I chose (C) because it stated "use of strategies borrowed from corporate advertising campaigns." That to me seemed like a reversal of the first sentence because corporate advertising was borrowing from political campaigns.
shunheMay 3, 2020
Hi @Shirnel,
Thanks for the question! That is true that it reverses what the stimulus says. The stimulus tells us that advertising agencies have modified a strategy from political campaigns for corporate clients, whereas (C) tells us that campaign managers have transformed political campaigns by using strategies borrowed from corporate advertising campaigns. HOWEVER, we are not told that these are two mutually exclusive phenomenon. It is completely possible for strategies to go both ways—advertising agencies use some strategies from corporate clients for their political campaign clients, and use other strategies from political campaign clients for their corporate clients. This is consistent with the information given in the passage, and so we cannot say that (C) cannot be true based on the passage.
Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.
mikeheathMay 12, 2020
Could C also be incorrect because the answer doesn't specifically address the strategy mentioned in the stimulus?
