The purpose of this assignment is to implement communication strategies for delivering negative news.
11-37. Message Strategies: Rejecting Suggestions and Proposals [LO-5] Walter Joss is one of the best employees in your department, a smart and hard worker with a keen mind for business. His upbeat attitude has helped the entire department get through some recent rough times, and on a personal level, his wise counsel helped you grow into a leadership role when you were promoted to marketing manager several years ago. You generally welcome Joss’s input on the department’s operations, and you have implemented several of his ideas to improve the company’s marketing efforts. However, the proposal he emailed you yesterday was not his best work, to put it mildly. He proposed that the company dump the advertising agency it has used for a decade and replace it with some new agency you’ve never heard of. The only reasons he offered were that the agency “had become unresponsive” and that a “smaller agency could meet our needs better.” He failed to address any of the other criteria that are used to select advertising agencies, such as costs, creative skills, technical abilities, geographic reach, research capabilities, and media experience. This is the first you’ve heard any criticism of the agency, and in fact, their work has helped your company increase sales every year. Your task: Draft an email message to Joss, rejecting his proposal. (Note that in a real-life setting, you would want to discuss this with Joss in person, rather than through email, but use email for the purposes of this exercise.)
Write a 100-250-word e-mail responding to the scenario. Incorporate the conventions related to delivering negative news in an indirect manner by including the following:
1. Buffer statement
2. Reasons for the situation or decision
3. Negative news
4. Additional information
5. Respectful closing
Follow the guidelines for composing professional e-mail, including the following a subject line length appropriate for the genre and the content of the message.