By Gordon Graham
While every company is unique, a lot of white papers share the same problems. How can I put this delicately? Many white papers suffer from an over-abundance of wishful thinking, unattributed statistics, vacuous logic, and good old-fashioned hype. And there’s no place where hype is less welcome than in your next white paper. Why? Because hype just doesn’t work for skeptical IT managers, cynical journalists or cautious analysts. Hype is especially inappropriate in a white paper, where readers are looking for precise technical background and real-world business benefits. If you give them hype, you can probably kiss your good name goodbye. That’s why I believe one of the top priorities for any white paper writer must be to seek out and destroy hype. But what is hype, and how do we recognize it? Hype is short for “hyperbole.” From the ancient Greek, this literally means “excess” and “to throw over.” Think “over the top” and you’re on the right track.
Hype appears in many guises:
- overblown claims
- extravagant exaggerations
- over-excited tone
- excessive punctuation, a la Tom Wolfe!!!
Here are some examples that should have your own personal hype detector sounding a red alert:
“Our best-selling network analyzer…” (from a company that only sells two different network analyzers).
“A vast majority of IT managers prefer commercial software over Open Source.” (But where is the actual statistic, the survey methodology, and the name of the study’s sponsor?)
“Now shipping! Our most comprehensive update ever! Complete with 99 new and improved features!” (But does that number include all the long-advertised features that now work because you finally got around to fixing the bugs?)
If hype like this is so unpersuasive, why is it so common? I believe there are two main causes of hype: inexperience and arrogance. Inexperience is perhaps excusable in a new writer doing his or her first-ever white paper. An unseasoned writer will most likely ask what an engineer or manager thinks and simply drop whatever they say into their document. With no objective outsider to challenge any basic assumptions, a white paper can get caught in an endless loop of self-referential logic.
Arrogance is even tougher to root out. Many technology companies are driven by what the founders feel is a genuine technical breakthrough. They may spend years proselytizing for their technology. They naturally attract a management team and marketing people that parrot this belief. For instance, Steve Jobs is notorious for his “Reality Distortion Field”: his total disregard for practical limitations or market forces as he pursues his latest inspiration. In the extreme, this can develop into a form of groupthink where everyone assumes their technology is superior, with no need for any proof. This becomes an article of faith and a badge of loyalty.
But simply stating that something is so does not make it so… particularly for someone outside your company. Making this point to your management or client may be painful. But you owe it to them (and to yourself) to challenge any articles of faith and groupthink and to make sure they don’t find their way into your white paper.
What’s the alternative to hype? I believe that an effective white paper presents useful information in a persuasive context based on concrete evidence, inarguable facts, impeccable figures, comments from recognized experts, and stories from actual customers. Your goal should be to think like a lawyer and write like a journalist. Gather all the evidence you need to make your case, and then write so clearly that everyone else can understand it. If you do that, no hype will survive for long in your white paper.
About the Author: Gordon Graham is a 25-year veteran of technology who has written, edited or commissioned dozens of white papers. He has also written 750 magazine articles on technology and won more than a dozen awards from the Society for Technical Communication. He is a partner in Gordon & Gordon where he specializes in writing marketing materials for technology firms.
DISCUSSION: Discuss this topic at the WhitePaperSource forum.
