A White Paper That Would Make George Carlin Proud
If you’re a fan of standup comedy, you’ll probably remember George Carlin’s famous routine from the 1970s called, “The Seven Words You Can’t Say on TV”. While the routine was pretty controversial in its day, it’s fairly tame in comparison to many song lyrics and comedy routines today.
In the spirit of George Carlin, blog site “Marketing with Technology and More” has posted a white paper entitled, “The Seven Dirty Words You Can’t Say in Subject Lines; and 100 Others you Shouldn’t Use Either.”
Most of the list in the paper represents obvious marketing words that any first-year marketing writer knows to stay away from with a ten-foot pole, such as “Fast Cash”, “Promised You”, and “100% Free”.
But I see this document more as marketing piece to increase mailing list subscribers than provide the level of educational content that would qualify it as a true white paper.
I guess their strategy to increase subscribers and gain exposure worked with me. You can decide for yourself whether or not it works for you.
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August 17th, 2007 at 8:27 pm
First of all, very interesting blog. First time I have seen anyone provide great insight on white papers.
As the author of this white paper, I thought I would give you some insight as to how it came to be. I do a series of webinars for a national trade association on best practices in permission-based customer email communications. About 100 people attended a session I did two weeks ago on email creative. These attendees are people who create email messages, and the top question I received from multiple participants is what words or phrases to avoid in the subject line. Over the years we had developed a list that we used internally and shared with a few clients (but have never published).
Rather than just send out a printed sheet with a list of words and phrases, we decided to have some fun with it. As a long-time Carlin fan, the headline just worked. Is it a deep white paper? Not at all. However, I promise you there are many of these phrases that top notch marketing copy writers have used (and continue to use). They may seem obvious, but they aren’t.
Is there enough educational content? Great question. What is the yardstick by which one measures the amount of content that makes a true white paper. We have published quite a few on the Subscrbermail web site, most have much more depth
August 19th, 2007 at 10:52 am
Hi Jordan,
Thanks for the background on the paper.
Actually, I think the document could be built out to be a legitimate white paper by providing some industry insights, statistics and case studies about those experiences that you mentioned.
I’m sure your readers would like to know more about the negative or financial impact of using these words to promote their business. If you write the document from the perspective of educating someone who may know nothing about the finer elements of advertising, what to avoid, and the components they should employ as part of a successful marketing campaign, you could reach a potentially greater audience with it, and gain some positive exposure for your firm as well.
Best of luck and thanks for your input on my blog.
Jonathan