RE: Great piece on marketing collateral

[Mailing List <mlist -at- ca -dot- safenet-inc -dot- com>]

Giordano, Connie

> kevin,
> Why are you trying to refute it all?  

I'm not. I'm trying to refute selected arguments 
from certain people. There's a difference.

I don't dispute for a minute that a good, presentable, 
usable set of documents can be a great sales or 
marketing tool.  But we have a guy named Dave, down 
the hall, who writes the marketing collateral, the 
spec sheets with the rah-rah! phrases and buzzwords 
on them, the press-releases (now that our Connie's on 
maternity leave), some of the white papers, some 
of the biz-cases and scenarios, etc. I've provided 
occasional bits of content for them, but usually 
Dave and company are doing their thing for a coming 
product right about the time that I'm up to my eyeballs 
in documenting a different product or release.

> That overall 
> communications package is what keeps a customer from turning 
> into a former  customer.  The distinction between marcomm and 
> techcom, especially for software and IT related products is 
> becoming extremely blurred, and attempting to refute the 
> arguement so eloquently made by others is just foreshortening 
> your career prospects.  

Perhaps this is where you should answer my question in 
another post -- the one where I asked how many times 
I'd bounce while being thrown out the door, if I gave 
my manuals and WebHelp as samples for a marcom writing job.

> In one position early in my career, I 
> was a "public relations specialist", but I wrote spec sheets, 
> white papers, encyclopedia articles and training tips. If I 
> can turn that experience to the advantage of a prospective 
> employer, why wouldn't I?

It happens that we have other people to do those things 
here, and while I assist when they need it, I would 
be seen as treading on toes and usurping if I started 
writing such pieces unilaterally.  Certain people would 
begin to ask why I have so much time on my hands.
You happen to have landed in a position that made 
different demands and gave you a different set of 
opportunities. Good on ya. Doesn't in any way negate 
any point I've made. Or were you conflating my points 
with those of others whom you perceived to argue on the 
same "side" of a multifaceted issue-set? 

> I've gone to plenty of job interviews prepared a stack of 
> "technical" and a stack of "marketing" pieces. I've gone it 
> with PR pieces and promotional pieces, and I've gone in with 
> systems doc and user doc.  

I could make up dummies of such pieces. They wouldn't be 
the ones that our company actually uses... in other 
words, they'd be fakes.  If I'm going to fake, then 
why don't I just steal Dave's stuff for interview 
purposes?  Dave has received his notice, and will be 
gone in a couple of months, with all marketing being 
centralized in another country by the new owners. I'll 
have even less exposure to marketing. 

Or, I could stick with what I've done, and be honest 
about it.

> It comes down to basic job-hunting 
> skills: Do your homework--is it possible that the 
> organization sees on-line help as related to product 
> marketing? If not then you've started your audience 
> analysis...  finish it by asking the right questions to 
> determine how they view the communications functions in their 
> organization. Then target your pieces as appropriate. If you 
> can't do that, buy yourself a pillow, cause all those bounces 
> are going to catch up to you! 

So, as a hiring marketing manager, looking to fill 
a marcom-writer slot, you would accept my useful 
and effective WebHelp as an example of marketing literature?
Or would you shake your head at the naiveté of someone 
who apparently didn't even know the difference?

"Kevin, tsk, tsk, tsk... where is your stack of actual 
MARKETING documents that you've done? You are applying 
for a marketing-writer job. Didn't that clue you in?"

"But, I haven't done any of those. My last two or 
three jobs didn't call for that kind of writing. 
Some guy on Techwr-l said that the stuff I *did* do, 
my QuickStart/Configuration Guides and my Help, are 
equivalent to marcom documents. You aren't going to 
tell me that he led me astray, are you?"

As a matter of fact, the other two North American 
tech writers at SafeNet report to corporate Marketing 
in Maryland. I report to Engineering, here at our 
Canadian product development division (formerly a little 
company called Chrysalis-ITS).  Those other two have 
reported to Marketing for some time. THEIR documents 
are more engineering-like than mine.  Go figure. 

My documents could be used by sales or biz-dev (in 
fact, they have been) to help clinch sales of our 
product, but my documents are not marketing communication 
pieces. My adjectives are understated and relate to 
accomplishing the task at hand, whatever that might 
be... but it's a technical task that the customer 
wants to accomplish. 

For example, I have a section containing a bunch 
of pages that tells the user how to remotely administer 
our product. I don't tell them all the benefits and 
joys of remote administration. But I tell them what 
the capability is, and that it's there, and if they 
want to do it, I tell them how to do it, and I tell 
them the trade-offs that might be involved.

Perhaps the problem is that many of us are in very 
different companies, industries and circumstances, 
and we just don't clearly understand what the 
Techwhirler across the street does all day.

/kevin

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