White Paper Pundit

Callouts (aka ‘pull quotes’) are a powerful way to draw reader attention to important messages on a white paper page. They are often placed in the sidebar of the white paper page, and contain important business messages extracted from the primary content on that page. To date, callouts have typically used enlarged text, but on occasion they have also included business-oriented images such as charts, or concept graphics.

This week, as part of my FREE White Paper List published each Friday, I ran across an interesting callout in the featured white paper of the week, “The Demarc Extension and its Critical Role in Enterprise Network Telecommunications Infrastructure“. This white paper dealt with the highly technical subject of demarc extensions.

(Click to Enlarge)

According to wikipedia a demarc extension is the transmission path originating from the interface of the access provider’s side of a telecommunications circuit demarcation point that ends at the termination point prior to the interface of the customer’s telecom equipment. Whew!

My first reaction was,”How odd, that a seemingly humorous cartoon would be placed in a serious technical white paper?” As part of my featured white paper commentary, I indicated that the cartoon was something that I probably would not include in a highly technical project, but I gave kudos to this marketer for trying a new and different approach.

Then one of the frequent readers and commentators to this blog, Mark McClure, who authors the Samurai Writer blog, provided some interesting feedback as to why this approach might be a highly effective tactic in white paper marketing. As he wrote:

I felt the the cartoon-style drawing worked well because, along side the more serious business tone of the writing, they added a note of ‘insider humor’ at the chaos that ensues whenever neglected and critical cabling issues bring down a business network.

The cartoons call outs in this white paper quickly identify the problem/headaches that land on the heads of IT cabling teams and their managers when cabling goes wonky.

Probably the most responsive readership will be a tech team leader who has inherited a cabling mess in the bowels of what passes for a data center or maybe an IT manager or CIO who has experienced “network wide layer 1 issues” and knows their head is on the block if the reasons are not identified and fixed.

My point is that there’s a self-effacing humor in most cabling professionals and they realize many IT Pros and the majority of non-IT managers neither understand or care about cabling once it goes into the wall or under the floor panel.

From that perspective I understand where the ‘black humor’ of the white paper’s cartoons is coming from.

So is this a smart white paper tactic that marketers should follow for both their business and technical audiences?

From my perspective, it depends on the subject and the audience. I don’t think a C-Level executive that is reading a business  white paper as part of a multi-million dollar purchase decision will find this a professional business tactic. Using a cartoon might actually do more harm than good.

On the other hand, with a mid-level or customer-facing reader that is experiencing clear pain points, (in this case with telecom cabling), might find such a tactic worthwhile in drawing their attention to an otherwise somewhat-plain technical presentation.

Win, lose, or draw, it’s nice to see white paper marketers stepping out and trying something new. It will be interesting to see whether this tactic builds greater reader affinity with a technical audience that in turn, promotes greater ‘call-to-action’ and propels the business relationship forward.

To download the complete white paper, please use this link.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 24th, 2010 at 6:55 am and is filed under Design & Format, WP Components, WP Marketing, White Paper Writing, short attention marketing. 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.