This is an uncompensated and independent review of Peter Guber’s book, ‘Tell To Win’. I received an ‘uncorrected proof’ copy a while back and have finally made time to pen today’s post.

Peter’s long and successful career as a Hollywood movie producer (Rain Man, Gorillas in the Mist and Batman, to name just three) and as an entrepreneur, have provided plenty of material for stories and anecdotes.

I was particularly drawn to the author’s experience of creating and using stories that helped him win a deal, convince an investor, or persuade the rich and famous to help with a project or two.

However, most stories (I counted at least 89!) are centered around how well known people, such as Fidel Castro, Jack Warner and Wolfgang Puck, have tapped in to the human desire to emotionally connect with a vision or dream through the power of storytelling.

Peter’s a great believer in the importance of positioning a story within the context of a person’s values and aspirations. That’s why it’s difficult to fake a story or copy someone else’s, because people usually see through words that are masking subterfuge and deceit.

Reading ‘Tell to Win’ from start to finish was hard work! There were so many stories and details, that I often found myself leaving the book down for a while. Not a bad approach, as I realized later the author’s cleverness in including a cast of characters large enough to appeal to all ages and a wide demographic.

Of course, as a businessman, Peter has a long list of stories that were incremental in clinching deals, but he also shares some that cost him dearly. He stresses the importance of the back story and how due diligence is essential before making a pitch.

Although the thrust of the book is towards oral stories and the emotional strings they help pull, there’s much to think about for b2b customer success story and case study writers.

The two big ones for me are:

a) the back story for both the customer AND the client (who hires the writer).
This means getting in the same room or on the dog’n'bone (Cockney slang for telephone) and detecting all those vital details that are never going to appear in an email.

b) The headlines, slogans and killer lines!
Here are two of my favorites:

i) World famous designer Norma Kamali’s exertion to the leading actress in the movie, “The Deep”:
“Oh, just throw a T-Shirt on over it”.
30 plus years later I can still see the look that launched a thousand wet t-shirt contests.

ii) “Under Armour”. This is actually the brand name for a best-selling line of sports under shirts. And a very powerful image it is too. Who wouldn’t want such protection, regardless of sport or ability?

I’d recommend this book to all case study writers, for sure! However, there is little here about writing or telling stories. If anything, the emphasis is on connecting with others by using the emotive appeal of story and narrative, whether it’s a single word, phrase or a life’s work.
Business people who are trying to persuade others to do things for them will also find much to think about (b2b marketers come to mind!)

- Mark ‘IT case study writer’ McClure

Have white papers seen better days?

Over at Paul Dunay’s ‘Buzz Marketing For Technology’ blog, there’s a controversial post that argues they have:

“Is the white paper dead for b2b marketing?”

The premise is that the very term ‘white paper’ has lost its uniqueness and authority status.

Why?

Because the ‘market’ has become saturated with pre and post-sales / marketing collateral that’s hijacked the term ‘white paper’ but, in format, and in content, delivers a confusing mish-mash of data (rather than information)

So much so, that more and more people are tuning out of reading or even requesting white papers, goes the post.

(All partly true, by the way.)

And the proposed solution?

Well, I’ve gotta say it brings tears of joy to a copywriter’s digital heart.
Think, ‘topic micro site’.

Read that again – ‘topic micro site’. And if you don’t get it, then hop over to the Bloom Group’s very own site where you can see the concept in action.

Now, in this post, I’ll leave their e-book versus white paper positioning for another day.

But I will say that if you think what passes for white papers these days is a distorted mess, wait to you see what the majority of ‘topic micro sites’ devolve into over time. I’d be willing to wager that lots of them will distract and deflect their readers with links and unstructured trivia that are high on facts but fall way short on useful and structured information.

(For the record, I quite like the Bloom Group’s site but still reckon a well-crafted white paper, even an e-book / special report, can do the job just as well and with less confusion as to what to read next.)

In my opinion, the winning attribute of an excellent white paper is that it can be expertly crafted and written to ‘guide’ the reader to the key points in five to ten pages without introducing any distractions.

Whereas, by definition, topic niche sites have links just begging to be clicked; and many of these are links to other sites. Yikes! Come back dear reader, come back!
Of course, I write in jest, since B2B readers are smart enough to keep on target and not waste 20 mins reading time browsing the New York Times because a topic site link brought them there. Aren’t they? ;-

By the way, in case you’re wondering, I do have a horse or two in this ‘race’. By that, I mean the writing of technology white papers and other web content, including email autoresponder copy. Ultimately, it’s your visitors who will decide what they like to read and view on your site so you better be testing and tracking what does and doesn’t work. On that point, I’m an agnostic copywriter – just do what works!

However, until it’s proven otherwise, I believe that multi-million dollar technology sales funnels will continue to have expertly-written (and designed!) white papers for the C-level folks to sink their teeth into.

And I see ‘topic niche sites’ playing a supportive and broader role to their more direct white paper brethren because I don’t think the decision makers will have the time or inclination to surf and nibble on niche topic sites and come to specific conclusions.

They don’t’ want to work that hard and will ‘reward’ (with attention) marketers who make it e-a-s-i-e-r to get their problems solved and questions answered.

What say you?

- Mark McClure

PS – Paul, if you’re reading this, please have a look in your spam(!) folder for the two comments I made to your post over the last week. They’re in some kind of net purgatory zone, it seems. Maybe this is Karma for not getting to grips with Avaya’s IP Phones when I had the chance