What are some marketers thinking when they do this?

It's as if the Marketing Department had changed its mandate to become The Department of Sales Prevention.

A corporation hired an agency with former IT people, who also know sophisticated persuasion skills and have direct response experience.

The agency delivered an easily-read, persuasive piece, sending a subtle message with the vocabulary used by buyers of this product – who are tech company executives – instead of a general audience.

Months later the piece appeared on the corporation website, bearing little resemblance to anything the agency sent. Instead, it now looks like most digital posts aimed at the general public…

• Headline doesn't answer, "What's in it for me?" The reader has zero reason to continue reading.
• Begins with the phrase beginning every marketing message crafted by those bereft of creativity: "In these competitive times..."
• Uses an obvious stock, no-name header image that bears little resemblance to the article subject.
• Comprises text only; video links and eye-catching call-out boxes in the original are gone.
• Includes several old and tired buzzwords the general public might recognize, but from which the intended audience of tech company executives have moved on.
• Contains plural disagreements and incorrectly used words.
• Seems written by someone pretending to understand the subject, instead of someone who truly understands.

Few will read this boring, poorly written piece, because it looks like everything else floating on an ocean of mediocre content, with which all of us are too familiar. Which leads me to ask...

Two questions for corporate marketers to which I’ve never received an answer …

1. You hired an agency with former IT people as writers and researchers. Why did you hire a dog and then choose instead to bark yourselves? (thanx to David Ogilvy for that analogy.)
2. Why do you think your crud is better than the exceptional content delivered to you by the people you paid?

Sadly, I too am experienced with clients who enjoy turning persuasive storytelling into corporate blandishment that nobody wants to read.

When it happens, I assuage my fragile, hollow eggshell male ego, by telling myself that as long as payment clears the relevant financial institutions, the client bought it and can do with it as they wish.

Yet still I wonder WHY?

Perhaps you know the answer?

If you do, please tell us why in the comments below the LinkedIn version.

Thank you.