Re: Tech writing vs. marketing writing

Subject: Re: Tech writing vs. marketing writing
From: Dick Margulis <margulis -at- fiam -dot- net>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Wed, 02 Oct 2002 18:06:38 -0400




Kevin Montgomery wrote:





For instance, the phrase "most monumental release ever" calls up images in my mind of ancient stone monoliths, lines of Window OS source code stretching horizon to horizon, immovable, immutable... Certainly not what the advertiser had in mind. Fortunately, we are all familiar enough with the product to see beyond those images.



Executives who write their own advertising and marketing copy are like lawyers who represent themselves. (For those who don't know the epigram: A person who represents himself "has a fool for a client and an ass for an attorney.")

A story:

In a former life I worked in a small-town bakery, where the owner, a former IBM sales manager, decided he could write better ad copy than the drones at the local tv station could. He also decided he had a better voice for narrating the commercials. One product he felt the need to promote was an "old-fashioned fried cake" (cake doughnut) that the bakery produced in large volume for Rich Foods. So we see, broadcast every night on the six o'clock news, a scene of doughnuts on a conveyor moving through a long tank of boiling fat, while my boss intoned this selling point: "You get MORE FOR YOUR MONEY with __________'s Fried Cakes than with supermarket doughnuts. They weigh almost TWICE as much per dozen!" Yum!




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References:
Tech writing vs. marketing writing, was: Re: Having a killer resume: From: David Neeley
Re: Tech writing vs. marketing writing: From: Kevin Montgomery

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