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But what does this all have to do with the subject of the original article?
The writer's point was simply that creating mountains of marketing
collateral was the wrong approach to support a *sales force,* because
nobody read the material and the sales reps ended up having to go over
all of the subject matter as if the collateral hadn't been prepared in the
first place. There's definite technical writing equivalent here, with user
documents taking the place of marketing collateral and tech support the
place of the sales force; the supposed inability of tech writers to
create good marketing materials has little to do with that, but the
underlying question is the same: if your experience is that people aren't
reading the documentation they're being provided, what is the alternate
strategy to support your product's information needs?
Gene Kim-Eng
----- Original Message -----
From: "Gene Kim-Eng" <techwr -at- genek -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Sent: Thursday, April 29, 2004 8:59 PM
Subject: Re: Great piece on marketing collateral
>
> I've spent much of my writing career in companies where the distinction
> between technical and marketing communications was kind of blurry, and
> one thing that's taught me is that *all* the documentation is (or should be)
> a potential "marketing tool." My one and only "all-technical" publications
> dept was at my previous employer, and I never was able to get that idea to
> sink in there, even though it was common knowledge that our sales people
> handed our user manuals out to potential customers...
---
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