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Subject:Re: A direct attack on TW? From:Betsy Shoolbred <BSHOOLBR -at- ECS-INC -dot- COM> Date:Thu, 23 Jul 1998 16:05:11 -0400
This ad puts your company (whatever its name is) in a great position to
counter attack. Point out that your competitor requires an extra piece of
hardware to run their product. Do their customers have to pay more for this
extra hardware? Your 50-page manual must be much cheaper than buying a piece
of hardware. You can also point out that it must be cumbersome/hard to
learn/hard to use since they have to use some extra keyboard to access the
program. I'm sure your marketing folks can go on and on about this one.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Burke Michael [SMTP:miburke -at- WSICORP -dot- COM]
> Sent: Thursday, July 23, 1998 3:11 PM
> To: TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU
> Subject: A direct attack on TW?
>
> All
>
> I wanted to pass on an interesting advertisement that takes a direct
> swipe at a user manual I wrote, and at all user manuals in general.
>
> A recent ad run by one of our competitors directly attacked our product
> because of the existence of a user manual, essentially implying that
> since we supply a manual for out product, then our product must be
> terribly complicated. The manual in question runs a scant 50 pages, 30
> of which are installation instructions, but this is hardly mentioned in
> the ad.
>
> Their product uses a special keyboard which you can use to access the
> various elements of the software. So it doesn't need a manual.
>
> Our product is intuitive enough that it probably doesn't need a user
> manual, but since we needed to do an install guide, we decided to put
> some interface instructions, as well.
>
> Now I know that this is merely an ad that is running in a magazine aimed
> at a very narrow audience, one that probably doesn't want to read a
> manual (professional pilots). But, should we as TW be concerned about a
> direct attack on a product based on the existence of a manual?
>
> Michael Burke
> Technical Writer
> Anonymous Corporation (for legal purposes...)
>
>
> ~
