Workplace Writing Assignment #3: Professional Letter Composition

Scenario Introduction: You are the Marketing Manager of Virtual Solutions International, and you are currently heading up an on-line marketing campaign for one of your biggest clients, Alphatech, a video game design and production firm. Your contact at Alphatech is Rachel McCoy, the acting publicity manager.

Scenario History: The campaign started off well: as expected, you put together an effective marketing team that was eager to get the job done, and together you have carefully created a comprehensive marketing plan for the campaign. The client satisfaction rating was at an alltime high of 5/5. Your reputation as a marketing manager could not have been better.

But while the campaign kicked off well, it has recently run into some problems.

Scenario Complications - The Stakeholder's Changing Requirements: Over the course of the campaign, Alphatech has made numerous suggestions for alterations to the marketing plan, some minor and some major. At every other check point, they have presented new ideas, which has been helpful of course, but their continual suggestions for alterations have also introduced some volatility in your campaign's progress, including backtracking on plan ideas and rushing to incorporate their latest demands.

Last week, Rachel McCoy suggested incorporating a few new and fairly complex web-ad features, which necessitates from your team a whole new set of storyboards for the marketing campaign. Specifically, each suggested web-ad feature contains a number of smaller features, and to add to the complexity, McCoy has insisted upon a significant degree of interdependency between the features.

The marketing management methodology you initially adopted is just not suited for such a high degree of dynamic development. It is now too late in the campaign to experiment with new storyboards with interdependent web links. Even though Alphatech is paying for these changes, the deadline of October 15th is fixed. In an attempt to make the deadline, you have battled to get new resources on board, but they are insufficient. This is turning out to be a difficult situation for you, your team, and Virtual Solutions.

With limited resources and working late into the night, you have just come to the unfortunate conclusion that it will be impossible to incorporate the new storyboard requirements with the interdependent links without compromising the fixed deadline set by the clienthaving updated storyboards ready for a meeting on October 15th is simply impossible.

Next Steps: You don't want to lose the trust and respect that you have established with the client; however, the news must be sent that the new changes cannot be made, and the storyboards will not be completed by the deadline.

Task: Using the letterhead below, compose a professional letter to Ms. McCoy in which you strategically inform her that Alphatech will not receive their deliverables for the October 15h meeting.

Information and Context:

You work at Virtual Solutions, a marketing fulfillment firm (the letterhead has been provided for you)

Rachel McCoy is the acting publicity manager at Alphatech, which is located on 1235 Yonge Street in Toronto Ontario, M5V0A8

You have only worked with her in a professional capacity for a few months

*NOTE: Feel free to make up further information you require to complete the letter, such as an alternative or compromise that will soften the blow of the bad news and point to the future.

Consider:

The format of a professional business letter we established in class

The approach to take when delivering bad news we established in class

Appropriate style, tone, and focus (writing for your audience)