RE: Great piece on marketing collateral

Subject: RE: Great piece on marketing collateral
From: Mailing List <mlist -at- ca -dot- safenet-inc -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Fri, 30 Apr 2004 16:00:12 -0400



On Behalf Of Mark Baker said:

> The point I'd like to get you to is that technical
> communication is supposed
> to be task oriented. What that means is that the
> subject of a technical document is the task, not the product.

Trivially true, but consider:

The task may be a generic one, that can be performed
with your product, somebody else's product, or with
drumsticks. If you waste time talking up how much
more efficiently it can be done with your product than
with drumsticks, you are making the user read about a
comparison, but you aren't addressing the comparison that's
important to him (or was, before he paid for your product).
He already knew that either your product or the competitor's
was better than drumsticks.

The task that needs describing may be peculiar to your
product, such as how to configure it in order to get
to tasks that you actually want to perform. Even though
this is not directly an "accomplish business task" thing,
you would be doing your reader a disservice if you didn't
describe it. You'd also be doing them a disservice if you
said "setup/config is not a primary task for somebody in
your position, so it is not described here -- it is
described in an engineering document that we don't provide
to customers."

>A technical document
> is a how-to
> document, not a product specification.

At least one of the documents that I include in a
doc set has appendices that give electrical specs,
environmental (for use and for storage) specs, cable
or connector pin-outs, standardized performance data,
tables of algorithms supported in firmware, protocols
supported, APIs supported, and so on.

> A document that specifies the characteristics of a product is
> an engineering
> document, not a technical document. A technical document is
> about how to
> perform a task. Technical documents are sometimes packaged
> with a product,
> and sometimes sold separately. But their subject is always
> the task and
> never the product.

We sell both to end-users and to developers, so both kinds
of info are required. Developers want to know about the
design/characteristics of the product, because they have
to program for it.


> And (to get to the immediate point) the fact that the
> document is about the
> task and not about the product means that if doing the task
> will increase
> sales it is perfectly legitimate to put the phrase "increase
> sales" in a
> technical document, though it would not be appropriate to put it in an
> engineering document.

You are talking about a task that they would not
otherwise be performing, if they didn't have your product?
Or, about a task that they perform in a specific manner
with your product, and differently with somebody else's?

> > The docs should also not make any relative claims unless
> > those claims are specific and detailed, including details
> > like: "Relative to what, exactly??"
>
> Relative to not doing the task or to doing it differently.
> Again, it's about the task, not the product.

Er... I tell users how to perform certain tasks using
our product -- tasks that they already knew they wanted
to perform in some fashion, but now they need to know
how to get them done using our product. I don't jump up
and down and butter them with how much better life is
becoming, now that they're using our product. For that
matter, I don't tell them how the task would compare
if done with the other guy's product. I *might* contrast
with how they would previously have done it in software,
versus how it must now be done with our equipment, if
there are useful distinctions to be made and if it seems
helpful to give them a familiar reference or starting point.

[...]
>
> As with all marketing writing -- as with all writing -- you
> should strive to
> find the words that will actually appeal to your audience.

I'll insert the phrase "free beer" into every third
paragraph about our Hardware Security Modules and crypto
accelerators, etc. That should do it. :-)

/kevin

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