Do people still read white papers? That was a question someone posed to me recently.
They argued that senior decision-makers in end-user organisations don't have time to read whitepapers. Meanwhile IT managers and tech specialists don't read them because they already have a reasonably good grip on what's going on in their technology space.
I'm not sure I entirely agree. Absolutely, any IT vendor who believes traditional whitepapers are read by senior decision-makers in end-user companies is surely dreaming.
But I know plenty of people in IT departments who will gobble up information from a whitepaper if it's on a subject they're interested in but don't know a lot about.
(What do I mean by traditional whitepapers? Well, that's probably a topic for another post - not least because I have to go out now. Hope everyone in the UK is having a great bank holiday!)
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Of course they don't read them - except in one context - when they are business driven and demonstrate clear domain (i.e. market) expertise demonstrated by case material. It all gets sanitised but then it depends on who's writing it. A simlar question might be "Do you believe in the many 'I Am/Was A CEO And Found The Silver Bullet' type book which McGraw-Hill churn out with boring regularity."
I should know, I've written my share of them and it's amazing the number of times I get sent them as part of a briefing pack!
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