White Paper Pundit

A new white paper has been circulating around Social Media circles for the past week that has been generating a lot of buzz. It’s from Canon, featuring the new EOS-1D Mark IV digital camera. The camera has some pretty incredible features for a professional DSLR with full HD video capability and a radically new autofocus system. But it should with a suggested retail price of $4999!

But enough with my lame attempts at product PR. I’ll leave the reviews up to the scads of camera enthusiasts and their blogs. My beef with this document is that once again we see a major company exploiting the name “white paper” in an attempt to impress prospective customers and gain a few PR points.

Here are my reasons why this technical product brochure should not be called a white paper:

1. Scope – We have to be honest here. A white paper is an educational document. It is supposed to educate a prospective reader that knows nothing about the topic, with all pertinent information surrounding that topic. This includes industry issues, business problems, and solutions to those problems. This document is nothing but a technical brochure that dedicates every one of its vast number of pages to features and benefits in exhausting detail.

2. Size – While the size of the typical business white paper has been declining in the past 10 years, most fall into the 6-8 page range. The reason is that most time and attention-challenged business readers can’t assimilate more than that amount of information without going into a carbohydrate-induced stupor. This tome is equivalent to a product-oriented version of “War and Peace”, weighing in at a portly 122 pages! Please, someone pass the No-Doze before attempting to read it!

3. Technical Detail – While I’m not a professional, this document is clearly targeted to the highly knowledgeable photographic enthusiast and professional. It is filled with lots of cutaways, schematics, diagrams, charts, and graphics. In comparison a commercial or business-oriented white paper uses graphics as a way to visually convey a complex concept, where text alone would not suffice. Yes, there are technical white papers, but they do not attempt to position themselves as an elaborate and rich marketing brochure as Canon has done with this piece.

Don’t get me wrong. This is truly an amazing technical brochure, and a round of applause is certainly in order for the marketing team at Canon. But please, don’t call it a white paper. Call it a technical brochure, product overview, technical primer, or technical guide, but not a white paper!

I can just hear it now, “Well, what’s the big deal if Canon uses the term white paper on the front cover of this brochure?” That’s an easy one to answer:

If we randomly assign the term “white paper” willy-nilly to any document we like, we confuse the target reader when we really need one to educate, inform, and convince a prospective client. Think of it as the “chicken little” approach to marketing communications. When we ask for a resume, we know what one looks like. When we ask for a spec-sheet we know what one looks like. And yes, when we ask for a brochure, that also has certain expectations with customers. But if a white paper is everything from a one-page summary to a 122 page technical brochure then something is clearly wrong in Cincinnati!

I’ve written extensively on the need to create a set of white paper standards. If you like to read my perspectives on this issue and would like to chime in with your own two-cents worth, please do.

Thanks for stopping by,

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 21st, 2009 at 8:38 pm and is filed under Design & Format, Misc. Rantings, WP Opinions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.