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Subject:RE: Need help please From:"Gilger.John" <JGilger -at- acresgaming -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Tue, 30 Oct 2001 12:04:30 -0800
Nancy,
Here, at Acres Gaming, we have marketing copy writers who work in the
marketing department to produce whatever the marketing team needs.
I don't believe they have written any white papers about technical
issues, but then again, I don't read their stuff.
My team documents our products for our customers' users and our support
team.
Perhaps you can get your VP to understand that you are talking about two
very different audiences. He needs the marketing crew to produce company
propaganda aimed at the prospective customers' purchasing departments.
You need to produce accurate, factual information that is useful to your
customers' users and your tech staff. Hopefully, your VP is intelligent
enough to realize the difference. You may want to remind him that the
last time he purchased an automobile, there wasn't a single shop manual
displayed on the sales floor. Conversely, the last time his car was in
the shop there weren't any slick, glossy brochures in the mechanics'
work areas, only in the customer waiting area.
HTH
John Gilger
Senior Technical Writer
Acres Gaming, Inc.
-----Original Message-----
From: Nancy Mignone [mailto:n_mignone -at- hotmail -dot- com]
Sent: Tuesday, October 30, 2001 11:47 AM
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: Need help please
Hi,
At the risk of someone trotting out a canned, "humorous" response, let
me
begin -
We are a new company, and I have a problem. My problem is the head of
marketing, a VP.
This gentleman is very creative and intelligent. He also considers
techncial
writing as a subset of marketing.
For example, at the moment marketing is developing a white paper on
software
architecture. I've never worked in a shop where that documentation type
is
done by marketing.
He considers that all white papers to be marketing's responsibility,
with
the content provided by marketing (him).
Look and feel, font colors and styles, bullet styles - all marketing. He
insists on having input into and approval over everything that goes out
publically, such as our Installation guide.
Are there any technical leads or department heads or field laborers like
myself in TECHNICAL WRITING who can tell me what a reasonable division
of
work between technical writing and marketing might be?
Thanks.
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