When Data Do Not Persuade: Planning–Expression Integration in Bilingual Digital Marketing Tasks

Abstract

Digital marketing is saturated with metrics yet the availability of data does not guarantee persuasion or execution. This paper reports an artefact-based qualitative study of over twenty bilingual slide decks produced across two one-month task cycles in a vocational undergraduate marketing context. Task 1 asked students to analyse Guangzhou Vocational University of Science and Technology as a product competing in the education market using PEST, Porter’s Five Forces (and in some cases an industry life cycle lens) and SWOT. Task 2 required an STP analysis of Victoria’s Secret in the China market with optional competitor comparison and recommendations. The decks were coded through a planning–expression integration lens. Planning competence was operationalised as decision framing, prioritisation and trade-offs, strategic coherence and action design. Expression competence was operationalised as argument structure, evidence transparency and warranting, functional bilingualism and multimodal clarity. Students frequently included metric-like statements such as TGI values, platform attention indicators and macro figures. However, data often did not persuade because claims were weakly sourced, weakly defined or weakly linked to conclusions through explicit warrants. These evidence–argument gaps then disrupted integration at later checkpoints, including unclear decision statements, framework stacking without prioritisation, stakeholder and scope drift, segmentation without targeting criteria, competitor lists without a stable competitive frame and recommendations that remained non-operational. The paper proposes low-burden task rules and rubric gates that make evidence work visible, strengthen decision statements and improve executability in bilingual digital marketing tasks.