Unit 4 slidedoc 3 barb

1. How to Write the “Marketing” White Paper

2. Types of White Papers 3-10
Marketing White Paper Requirements and Guidelines 11
• Audience and Purpose 12
Required Structure 13
• Creating the Title Page 14-15
• Creating the Table of Contents 16
• Writing the Executive Summary 17-19
• Writing the Introduction 20-22
• Writing the Methodology 23-24
• Writing the Results 25-27
• Writing the Discussion and Conclusion 28
• Writing the Bibliography or Works Cited 29
Table of Contents
2

3. • Position White Papers
• Technical White Papers
• Marketing White Papers
There are Three Types of White Papers
3

4. • The term white paper was originally
used to describe a report that
states the social or political position
of an organization or think tank.
Position White Papers
4

5. • Technical White Papers present the
results of tests or research findings
aimed at solving problems.
Technical White Papers
5

6. • This type of white paper offers to
solve problems for a client or
customer. They are persuasive
documents aimed at selling
products and services.
• Note: marketing white papers
are the most common type
found in internet searches.
• You will be writing a marketing
whitepaper.
Marketing White Papers
6

7. • White papers are composed in a
variety of formats and for delivery
across multiple platforms.
Formats and Platforms
7

8. • White papers are part of the
communication that businesses and
organizations use to present a brand
image.
• Creating cohesive and consistent
looking communication across
platforms is important.
White Papers and Document Design
8

9. • Using structured authoring
software is a way of separating
content from format and
document design in order to
produce communication
products that have a consistent
look and feel.
• In this way, content that is
produced for one audience and
purpose can be adapted for
another. Adobe FrameMaker is
a popular structured authoring
software.
Structured Authoring
9

10. • You will not be using structured authoring software to write your white
paper, but you will be able to practice structured authoring
conceptually.
• I will require a rule for how to organize the body of your white paper.
This rule is to use IMRaD structure to organize the content of your
paper, and it would be similar to a rule used in structured authoring
software for marketing white paper content.
• The next section of this lecture, explains the requirements for the white
paper and also how to use IMRaD structure.
Structured Authoring and Your White
Paper
10

11. White Paper Requirements
and Guidelines
11

12. • Keep the hypothetical writing situation in mind to help you focus on
audience and purpose as you write.
• You work for a company that specializes in crisis communication
management.
• The purpose of your white paper is to present the findings from your
research about how a company, business, or government agency
communicated about Covid-19.
• Your audience is people who work for a similar company, business, or
government agency who need to understand how they should
communicate about Covid-19 or a similar pandemic.
• These potential readers of your paper would visit your company’s website
to download and read white papers and other communication about crisis
management.
• Ultimately, the goal is to interest these professionals in using your
company’s services to help them plan how to manage a crisis event.
Audience and Purpose
12

13. • Organize your white paper using pages for some items and major section
headings for others:
• Title (1 page)
• Table of Contents (1 page)
• Executive Summary (½-1 page)
• Introduction (Section Heading: ½-1 page)
• Methodology or Methods (Section Heading: ½-1 page)
• Results (Section Heading: 1-2 pages)
• Discussion* (Section Heading: ½-1 page)
• Conclusion (Section Heading: ½-1 page)
• Bibliography (APA) or Works Cited (MLA) (1 page)
• * The chart from the grounded theory exercise goes in this section
Required Structure.
13

14. • Use document design to
create visual interest but
apply what you learned
previously about graphic
design.
• Notice how the colors in
these title pages do not
support the white paper’s
purpose. In fact, the colors
work against the message.
Creating the Title Page
14

15. • The color choices and design
elements support the
purpose of these white
papers.
Examples of Effective Title Page Design
15

16. • Use dot leaders which are the periods
between an item in the TOC and the
corresponding page number(s).
• Right-align page numbers.
• The table of contents should also be
well-balanced on the page.
• The automatic TOC feature in Word is
useful to learn because it does this
formatting for you.
Creating the Table of Contents
16

17. • Rhetorically, an executive summary is written for a high-level decision
maker(s) who will not have time to read the entire paper.
• Your purpose in writing a summary is to persuasively sell the importance
of crisis management and, of course, interest the decision maker(s) to
use your services. It is a summary that could be also be used as a stand-
alone document to serve as a preface to a potential meeting with the
decision maker.
• Your summary needs to state the problem that your services are
promising to solve for the reader and show key findings from your
research. It should be written for an educated decision maker but not be
highly detailed in terms of methodology.
• The Executive Summary should include details from every section of
your white paper after the executive summary, to include methodology,
results, and conclusion.
Writing the Executive Summary
17

18. • Write an engaging opening paragraph that reveals the problem,
• Summarize the key findings from your analysis, and
• End with lessons that can be learned from these findings that reveals a
need to use professional crisis management services.
To write the summary:
18

19. • In today’s 24/7 media landscape, everything can quickly become a crisis, and
your business needs to prepare for how to manage not only the possibility of
your own crisis event but those of other brands who can open your organization
to more risk.
• This white paper presents research findings from an analysis of the crisis event
and communication surrounding it that significantly damaged Food Network
star Paula Deen’s brand in 2013 and posed risks to all brands associated with
her.
• The findings show how the Food Network and other companies associated with
Deen’s brand successfully managed their risk while Deen herself mismanaged
her communication so badly in her responses to the crisis that she lost her
million dollar food empire and permanently damaged her brand for years to
come. The difference in these crisis communication responses illustrates the
importance of crisis management.
• The Food Network and other companies all had plans developed by crisis
management professionals while Deen did not.
Example of an Executive Summary
19

20. • Rhetorically, the introduction of a marketing
white explains what you did.
• To start the introduction you can either begin
with a brief background section that summarizes
the crisis event and then follow it with a
statement of purpose or do the reverse. And your
introduction needs to state the specific research
objectives.
• Because an executive summary is not read by all
readers, it’s fine to repeat some of the
information from the summary in your
introduction.
Writing the Introduction
20

21. • Introduction
• This white paper presents research findings from an analysis of the crisis event
and communication surrounding it that significantly damaged Food Network
star Paula Deen’s brand in 2013 and posed risks to all brands associated with
her.
• Background
• On May 17, 2013, Paula Deen and her brother were sued by their former
restaurant manager, Lisa Jackson, for 1.2 million. Jackson claimed that the
Deen’s tolerated a racist workplace environment and made racist jokes and
comments themselves.
• Although a judge ruled in favor of the Deen’s, what Paula Deen said during a
deposition triggered a crisis event that significantly damaged her brand in just a
little over a week.
Example of an Introduction
21

22. • Objectives
•
The research objectives included investigating the following:
• how prior scandals involving Deen influenced public perceptions about this
crisis,
• how the media reported and influenced perceptions about the crisis,
• how Deen and her employer, Food Network, as well as other companies
responded to the crisis.
Example continued
22

23. • Rhetorically, a methodology section
explains how you did the research.
• Include the types crisis communication
data you gathered, the organizing principles
you applied using one or more of the
scholarly articles, and the method used to
code data.
Writing the Methodology (or Methods)
23

24. • Methods
• Communication data was gathered from popular digital sources and included
excerpts from articles about the crisis found in online news sources as well as
samples of public comments from readers.
• The data was organized according to three phases of crisis communication as
described by Tulika Varma in [article title] and David Wahlberg in [article title]
and analyzed to determine how well the data fit this model.
• Phase 1: Denial
• Phase 2: Minimize Effects
• Phase 3: Resolution
• Reader response data was coded inductively using Grounded Theory
methodology
Example
24

25. • Rhetorically, the results present the
findings and what the findings mean.
• How you organize this section is your
choice, but the organizing pattern should
take readers logically through the findings
and your analysis.
• In the example about Deen’s crisis event,
the writer could organize the information
according to each phase of Varma’s crisis
event cycle.
Writing the Results
25

26. • Phase 1: Denial
• Phase 2: Minimize Effects
• Phase 3: Resolution
• A more complete definition of each phase would need to be given to
help readers follow the analysis.
• Next, the writer would want to logically order the findings under each
corresponding phase using subheadings and interpret the significance of
the findings for readers.
• Including some supporting visuals and graphics would be useful as well.
So, first-level headings under results
might be:
26

27. Figure 1: Themes in reader response comments to Huffington Post article.
• You will need to include at least one graphic that represents findings
from coding the data. Remember to label and caption your graphic. This
should be in the Discussion section (see the next slide).
Requirements for the graphic representing coding data.
27

28. • Rhetorically, the discussion section should
discuss the overall conclusion about what
lessons were learned about the
importance of crisis management.
• Rhetorically, the conclusion section should
tell the reader what to do. Based on what
you learned through your research and
analysis, what should the reader of your
white paper do to communicate about
Covid-19 (or a different pandemic)?
Writing the Discussion and Conclusion
28

29. • Compose a bibliography or works cited
page for all sources you cite in the white
paper (remember, you need at least nine
primary sources, and you should cite the
article that you borrow your framework
from, too, for a total of at least ten
sources).
• You can write either in APA style
(bibliography) or MLA style (Works Cited).
Writing the Bibliography or Works Cited
29