Re: Marketing Writing

[Robert Plamondon <robert -at- PLAMONDON -dot- COM>]

Somewhere, buried in thousands of messages about pronoun usage (which
I personally believe to have been posted under the influence of Evil
Aliens who use their Mind Control Devices to perform Hideous Experiments
on the Unwitting People of Earth), someone asked about Marketing Writing.*

I've been doing marketing writing for some time.  It's hard, but usually
fun.  In general, marketing writing is an uneasy alliance between ad
copywriting and technical writing, at least in the semiconductor industry,
where I generally hang out.  You want to pitch the product, but you have
to describe it in some detail as well, and often the audience consists
of engineers, though of course this varies by industry and product.

The best thing about marketing writing is that it's used directly by
marketers, who tend to be horribly overworked, but are sitting on
great big piles of money, and know how to spend it with both hands.
Marketers also value documentation (though they sometimes can't
tell good from bad).  Thus, I find that the actual writing is harder
on the marketing side, but the availability of money and the level
of appreciation are higher.

Since marketers are typically paying for both technical and marketing
writing (or, even if they aren't paying for the technical writing, they
care about it), it's possible to land work by simply informing the
marketers you know that you'd like to do that kind of work, and do they
have any documents that they really need done that aren't being worked
on?  (Always ask the second part of the question.  Although it seems
obvious, sometimes people don't jump from the theoretical to the here-
and-now easily.)  It worked for me.

        -- Robert

* They were having a Sale on Capital Letters, and now I have to Use them
  Up before they go Stale.