White Paper Pundit

I happened across a blog site today called B2B Media 2.0 and Globalization, that like many sites these days, this one likes to compare white papers to blogs. In a post entitled, “Will Blogs Replace White Papers?”, the blogger states:

Most Blogs are seeking attention, a modern form of PR and marketing communication. In this sense they are similar to White Papers and better in many ways:

1. The length of a blog is a lot more flexible, anything from a quick comment on a news item to a lengthy analysis based on in-depth research.
2. Blogs invite response, which is the whole point of marketing communication.
3. Readers can be anonymous until they want to respond (as opposed to White Papers which usually require a registration, which brings on the obligatory follow-up emails and phone calls).

Whew! There are so many flaws in these arguments that I would need three more pages to adequately respond to each one in detail, but here goes my short answer to this gibberish:

“Blogs and White Papers are Seeking Attention” – Isn’t the role of marketing to “seek attention”? Yes, white papers are a one-way marketing tool that gets the attention of a prospective customer by educating them with in-depth information on a particular topic. Blogs on the other hand, are short daily updates designed to solicite a response by a prospective customer to an individual point. To say that these two mediums are similar because they are both seeking attention is akin to saying that oatmeal and caviar are the same because they are both examples of food. Please.

“Blogs can be a lengthy analysis based on in-depth research” Where? I have yet to see a single blog site that spans more than a page of text. In fact, if a such a blog existed and regularly published length blog posts of this nature, it would defy the entire concept of a blog, and they would lose their audience pretty quickly. On the other hand, if this blogger thinks they can dole out a small chunk of in-depth information each day on their blog, and that a business decision maker is going to patiently log on and read each one, they are living in a dream world. Business decision makers want to download one single document with all the information immediately. They’re not going to wait or spend an inordinate amount of time reading a multi-paged blog post. They’re also too busy to participate in such nonsense on a regular basis. This is one big reason that white papers are superior to blogs, at least among enterprise decision makers.

“Response is the whole point to marketing communications” To a certain degree, yes, a certain amount of response is desired in any marketing communications campaign, but to say that blogs are now a superior means of achieving that response is a real stretch. The ends don’t justify the means here. There will always be a market for conventional marketing communications such as direct mail, broadcast advertising and printed as well as online deliverables such as white papers that are designed to appeal to different customer needs.

What we have here is a good example of “blog-bias”. This blogger is so enamored with blogs that it has clouded their judgement. Yes, blogs are here to stay, and they are a great way to communicate with business customers. But they have a long way to go before they will be considered a equally valued and trusted marketing medium to that of white papers.

White papers are perceived very differently from blogs. The medium has established a name for itself. When a business decision maker sees the word “white paper” on a website, they expect to find a high quality, researched, and truthful document. On the other hand, the word “blog” conjures up a very different first impression, thanks in large part to many of the political kooks on the Internet. Blogs have a long way to go before they will be perceived in the eyes of a business executive as a trustworthy source of information. 

After all, if you had to purchase a multi-million mission-critical business solution, would you use the information on a blog as the sole source to make that decision? No, I didn’t think so.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 21st, 2007 at 1:41 pm and is filed under 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.