Guidelines For Writing Assignment

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Assignment At A Glance

The general idea is to:

1. Search out and rank the best competitive analyses available on each consumer product assigned. In this Bottled Water report, this initial step has been prepared for you.
2. Compile three report sections on this topic, as explained later in this document:
• The Our Sources chart where you rank the reviews [Note, for this bottled water report, this initial step has been prepared for you so you won't have to do this.]
• A Full Report section where you summarize and analyze what the reviewers say
• A Best Reviewed section, where you distill and write about the essence of what the reviewers say. Complete this section last.

Please use Microsoft Word to prepare your work. Use AP style throughout.

The articles and reviews used as references for this Sample Report are intended for use ONLY with this project. Some information contained in these references has been altered or invented for the purposes of the Sample Report, and should not be used in any other context.

General tips

1. The results of product testing are the central focus of ConsumerSearch content above all else. In particular, when you prepare the Best Reviewed section and the paragraphs of your Full Report, avoid discussing things that are not relevant to deciding which of the products are best buys, top-rated, or the best of their kind, based on the most credible research.

2. You *must* pick some products as being best of their type, according to the most credible reviews. Don't detract from the depth of your research by spending words undermining or complaining about the quality of the research available to you. We write from the consumer's point of view, where the consumer must make a choice. You, as a ConsumerSearch writer, need to decide what that choice is rather than shirking that task off onto the reader.

3. If you have doubts about whether the consumer should be buying a product in the category you are covering, cover this further down in your copy, not up near the lead, and not in the Best Reviewed section, and not in the first few paragraphs.

4. Do not do any reporting for this particular article. Reporting, in which you call or email noted experts in the field to track down a story, is appropriate for a regular ConsumerSearch report, but should not be engaged in when preparing this initial writing sample report.

5. In addition to identifying the best products, it is important to cover products that fall short for whatever reasons. This is discussed on later in these guidelines.

6. It is important that your copy comes in clean of spelling and grammatical errors and that your sentences and overall logic make good sense. Re-read your stuff one more time before sending it to us. Use AP style.

Notes on ConsumerSearch's Ranking Values for Reviews

1. ConsumerSearch is more impressed when reviewers pick a product as a favorite from among a field of various competing products than it is when reviewers review a single product and then say they like it.
2. ConsumerSearch prefers reviews that compare three or more products to reviews that compare only two products.
3. In a war between two reviewers, consider not merely the methodological strengths of the reviewer's analysis and testing techniques, but also the reasonableness of the product choices. Once you become more experienced, you'll be able to downgrade reviews that simply don't make credible choices.

What About User Reviews?

Epinions, Amazon.com, user reviews at Sears.com, etc:
ConsumerSearch is often not very impressed by the approach of sites that invite visitors to post their own ratings, votes or opinions. The reality is that on the Internet, voting systems have been problematic and unsatisfying. Usually, too few consumers actually vote, and even when they do the data can be suspect. Voting sites can be subject to fraud -- manufacturers posting fake reviews to boost product rating.

Many times, the individual reviews are well meaning, but often not very critical. And since many of those posting reviews don't have experience with more than one product, the reviews can lack a frame of reference.

However, user reviews can be very useful for spotting problems -- one example is when we noticed dozens of owners posting reviews to Amazon.com about a particular blender -- all of the problems revolved around the exact same breaking part. Thus, we were able to spot a problem in a product that had been otherwise highly rated by Consumer Reports.

ConsumerSearch writers should be strong in explaining this bias to consumers when they prepare their reports, and they should downgrade the results of raw opinion posting data.

General Instructions

1. Voice. Since ConsumerSearch is a collaborative project, ConsumerSearch uses the collective "we" rather than the first-person "I." Generally, ConsumerSearch does not use the term we" very often, however.
2. Avoid Being Snide. Avoid using a snide or condescending or sarcastic tone. Our attitude is that there are many good consumer resources out there, and we are looking for the best of the best. Just be factual, stating that reviewer X did not back up their picks by including their testing criteria, or that this review has lower credibility because the writer didn't use blind taste testing, etc.
3. Avoid Intruding Ourselves. Avoid saying that ConsumerSearch recommends anything. Our brand is to create a report out of saying what the reviewers say.
4. Paragraph Size. Keep it short. Three or four sentences is a good length.
5. Focusing Your Work. It is common for you to be concerned about the amount of chaos in the material you have been reviewing and to wonder if you will be able to sort through it all. Typically, the products you are researching do not line up neatly in your product category and there seems to be no perfect "best." At this point, let our process guide you. Focus on the top picks of the most credible experts and testing organizations.

Instructions For Writing Sections Of The Full Report

The Full Report section comprises the main narrative portion of a ConsumerSearch report. In this section, tell the reader what the reviewers say in a way that is easy to understand. This section is the heart of ConsumerSearch, and your writing here is the star of the show. Check the products the reviewers recommend to make sure they are still being sold in the marketplace.

Format

The following format seems to apply well to most product categories. For the first two or three paragraphs: 1) write about who had the best, most credible review, and why that review was best (resist the temptation to describe why this review was not as good a methodology as you would have liked). You may, or may not, also write about what other good reviews you found. 2) Write about a product that is not included in the ConsumerSearch Best Reviewed section and explain why.

1) Summarize the Review Landscape

The purpose here is to show that you built your report using the work of third-party experts. Basically we're saying, "Here is the material we used as building blocks to prepare our own report." In this opening paragraph or two, we want to communicate to readers how ConsumerSearch works -- that we find and analyze all the research material we can on a given topic. Write about which reviewers in the Our Sources list are better than others, and then give some sense of how you built on that work to arrive at your Best Reviewed section.

2) Write About Something Controversial or Bad

In this paragraph write about something that inspires interest and tension, such as a) a disagreement among reviewers, b) products in the marketplace that do not work, c) reviewers whose work is poor. The purpose of this paragraph is to distinguish ourselves from review sites where everything is always rosy.

3) Hard Lead

Note that after the Review Landscape and Controversy sections, the main body of the Full Report should usually follow with a hard lead (in journalistic parlance). That means immediately identifying which model, types of models or manufacturers the reviewers rate as best.

Do not write leads that start like this: "So you always knew you wanted a breadmaker, but you didn't know where to start." Or this: "Your nine-year-old dropped her training wheels some time ago, and it is time to move up to a bicycle that she can use for several years."

Do write leads that start like this: "Most experts feel that for the average consumer, the Chrysler Minivan generally outclasses the Ford and Toyota minivans." (Assuming that is true).

Do not unduly expose the reader to your own frustration in finding the best reviews.

Go Off The Deep End Just A Little And Sound Like An Engineer

It is desirable in your writing to take the reader into at least one depth area that only an expert would care about or ever think about. Point out that a certain motor a dishwasher manufacturer selected has a mean time between failures of 3.7 years whereas the average dishwasher motor has a mean time between failures of 9.7 years. This is the kind of detail and granularity that can turn a consumer skeptic into a believer in you. The idea is for the reader to say in his mind, "This writer is so far into this topic he has truly gone off the deep end."

Continue writing the Full Report -- talk about general information about the product, types of products, and items shoppers may want to consider before buying. Also write sections on the top-rated products and explain why they are so highly rated. Cover other leading, popular or bestselling products and discuss why or why not they are a good choice.

Consult the Full Report sections of posted ConsumerSearch reports for examples of how to write the Full Report.

ConsumerSearch Best Reviewed

This is the first element readers will see in your report, even though writing this section is one of the last processes in your report. Your decisions about which products to include in the Best Reviewed section are based on which products are chosen most often as best in the most credible reviews (providing you did not find some major reason to disqualify the top pick in reviews -- such as it being discontinued, or recently recalled or changed in some fundamental way since being tested).

It is critical that you begin each Best Reviewed entry with a powerful phrase in the first sentence. Here are two examples:

• The experts consistently come back to the xxx unit as the best breadmaker on the market today.
• This is the top-rated breadmaker on the market today in this price range.
• This is the expert's top choice in tape backup machines.

The reader primarily wants to know 1) what the experts pick, 2) what the top rated one is, 3) which is the best value choice or the best inexpensive one, or simply 3) which is the best one.

Here are weak Best Reviewed opening lines:

• This unit is a great value and is easy to clean.
• This unit is a good choice for people who like to go outdoors.

Basic Requirements For Good Best Reviewed Entries

• Each Best Reviewed entry should tell the consumer we are reporting on what the experts say and indicate a correlation to third party wisdom.
• Each Best Reviewed entry should contain an indication of what we call relative evaluation vs. the items' peers. This item is top-rated or is the expert's #1 choice contains information indicating not just a feature of the item, but that it is superior overall against other choices.
• Each Best Reviewed entry should indicate how the unit stacks up against its peers in the Best Reviewed section. DIFFERENTIATE the fast answer picks.

Format

Your first Best Reviewed selection will generally be the best mainstream choice, followed by best-value, or best luxury product. Sometimes your Best Reviewed section will be ordered by size class or price class (or other physical distinguishing trait).

You may indicate up to six Best Reviewed selections for each category.

Producing An Acceptable ConsumerSearch Best Reviewed Section

A reasonable consumer should be able to read the Best Reviewed Section and, based on what is in it alone, be able to feel like he or she is making an intelligent choice. It is a common error of writers that their copy reveals no particular reason to buy one unit over another.

The idea is to say,

This product has more of this but less of that.

while...

This other product has more of this but less of that.