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As my wife made the transition from pure tech writing to MarCom, I can
speak from her experience, and I get to listen in to her phone
conference / converstations (we share a home office). I agree that good
marketing writing is demanding. However, there are a lot of dumb or
simply clueless people in MarCom who are passing "creativity" off as
good marketing. And yes, bad marketing does pass, and does get perpetuated.
Look at Adobe. They still don't market FrameMaker.
Scott
Brad Whittington wrote:
> I've also been amused, and sometimes annoyed, by the occasional email
> perpetuating what seems to be a knee-jerk animus toward marketing.
>
> In 2000 I got a job in marketing for a telecom test company. In 2006 I
> transitioned to freelance technical writing. I have contracts with
> various clients to produce documentation and marcom material. In a
> typical week I will write online help, outline a white paper, attend
> several product development status conference calls, edit a brochure,
> attend a conference call to establish the audience and corporate
> message for a solicited magazine article, etc.
>
> In my experience, producing marketing material requires much more
> mental effort, creativity and energy than producing documentation. I
> can write documentaion for hours at a stretch with no problem. A pot
> of coffee and some good background music and I can go for 10 or 12
> hours. But producing a 400-word press release is amazingly draining
> work. One hour of that and forget the coffee. I'm in need of a break
> with a martini.
>
> It may be that all this says is that my natural abilities tend toward
> documentation, but regardless, marketing is not a pastime for the
> braindead. It doesn't foster or reward nonsense any more than tech
> pubs or engineering or customer service or accounting or any other
> part of the organization.
>
> Marketing requires a range of experience, knowledge and skill that is
> neither intuitive nor simple. It's not an "anyone can do it" exercise.
> And in current economic conditions, the value of a good marketing team
> cannot be overstated.
>
> I don't see the value in creating or perpetuating adversarial
> attitudes between any groups, regardless of which department I'm in.
> Can't we all just get along? (heh, heh)
>
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2009 tips, tricks, and best practices. http://www.doctohelp.com/SuperPages/Webcasts/
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