Estimated Reading Time: Less than a minute
White papers are a staple of B2B marketing. We write them to explain complicated topics or products to our customers. We read them to try and glean what our competitors are really doing.
Did you even wonder why they are called white papers at all? Since most documents are printed on white paper, the modifier “white” would seem redundant, and too generic to differentiate from other documents.
The term was coined by the British Government to distinguish shorter informational documents with white covers from the formal legislative documents sent to Parliament with blue covers – called “blue papers.” The term was adopted by industry in the 1990’s to mean any short informational paper.
So for all of you tired of reading eight to ten-page white papers, just be glad B2B marketing didn’t adopt “blue papers.”