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Re: Great piece on marketing collateral

Subject: Re: Great piece on marketing collateral
From: "Mike O." <obie1121 -at- yahoo -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Fri, 30 Apr 2004 07:33:50 -0400


kcronin -at- daleen -dot- com wrote:

I write sales proposals and technical sales documents for a living. I
thought that was a good article, both in content AND in how it was
written. The writer knows his or her audience. That audience apparently
doesn't include a few of you.

It's funny - one of the hardest things I've ever done was to try to get a
team of tech writers to emphasize the *benefit* of the product they were
documenting.

That's because tech writers are trained to back up everything they say with real technical facts. Marcomm (and Sales) is not held to that same standard, so of course writing about a product's "benefits" is easier for them.

Not that marcomm writing has any less integrity... it's just that in my experience as a consumer of marcomm docs, marcomm writers are free to make product claims without actually documenting the underlying technical facts that demonstrate the truth of the claim.

I am allergic to writing stuff like "increases your sales" ... "saves you money" ... "a powerful, easy-to-use, best-of-breed product" when I haven't tested it to be true. And especially when I KNOW it isn't true. (OK, those are simplistic examples, but the point remains...) When you are a tech writer, every claim you write needs to be backed up with an actual fact, right in the document.

Also, just wondering about the composition of the tech writing team... (generalizing now Keith, not picking on your team): Was it a team of top-level tech writers hired for their varied product experience in many different markets? Or was it a team of mid-level/jr tech writers hired because their salary demands weren't high and they had a little RoboHELP experience? I think the former would have no problem switching to marcomm mode.

I wonder if tech writers have trouble emphasizing the "benefit" when the benefit of the particular product is perhaps a little fuzzy. Tech writers don't do well with "fuzzy." How do tech writers discover what the benefits of the product are? Are the benefits plainly evident in the product and can be discovered, documented, and explained? Or does manangement/marcomm provide the tech writers with a external list of product claims and say "These are the benefits... make sure you emphasise them in your technical docs...NO! You got it wrong again!!"

Mike O.

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