Purpose Statement: This blog post will analyze a white paper titled "The Rise of Women's Sports" in order to gain insight for my own white paper that I'll be working on in the coming weeks.
This white paper is very well-designed, with a cohesive graphic style that integrates graphics, statistics, and images with text to make it easier to read. The persistent inclusion of statistics and sources also gives credibility to the message. However, it didn't communicate very well what the problem or solution was—it seemed that these aspects of the white paper were articulated subtextually, which I don't think was a great choice.
From the subtitle ("Identifying and Maximizing the Opportunity") and the later pages of the white paper focusing of partnerships with brands, I think the point of this white paper is to show women's sports as an emerging opportunity for companies to invest in via sponsorships or other deals. However, that wasn't very apparent throughout the paper, with only a few sentences and phrases clueing me in. I'm not an expert in white papers just yet, but I think that being more explicit about the purpose would narrow the focus of the target audience, and make the entire reading experience more oriented toward that purpose.
Despite this drawback, the white paper overall worked very well toward its purpose, if I'm right about what the purpose is. The emphasis throughout the paper, in the writing and statistics, is on the progress that women's sports have made. It keeps a positive tone and, while acknowledging that discrepancies still exist between women's sports and men's, doesn't dwell on it. This focus is useful to attract companies with financial interests in investing in sports by implying that growth will continue and women's sports are a profitable and untapped market.
The evidence that the author(s) use to prove this point is mostly statistics about public perceptions of women's sports and how close they're drawing to men's—even, in some cases, surpassing them. There are also statistics, particularly toward the end, about the increase in deals made with female athletes.
No comments:
Post a Comment