If a white paper can only be written, what do you call a video that accomplishes the same thing? Except for your first criteria, a video can accomplish every other criteria, and it provides the added advantage that it can demonstrate the content being presented.

A video can also include interviews with the experts that support your facts and findings. And with a well designed menu interface (e.g., a DVD) the viewer can easily navigate the content.

Brochures are written to press emotional buttons like fear, greed, envy, vanity. The content is generally rather vague promises and “dreamy” promises.

White papers are written to appeal more to logic and to offer specific facts and figures. The content is generally more precise and specific than anything in a brochure.

(A datasheet is something else: a spec sheet packed with numbers and details.)

Most brochures are heavy with graphics and light with text. White papers are typically heavy with text, but lack the graphics.

As long as you retain the educational integrity of a white paper via in-depth content, you can add graphics and design without changing the perception of the medium.

But most of all, it’s when your so-called white paper is nothing but a brochure (aagh!) in disguise. (Kind of like the wolf in grandma’s nightshirt: “My, what pretty budgets you have!”)