An Elon faculty member was honored this fall for her research on the way writers at marketing communication agencies draw on personal knowledge to write effectively, even if they at first know little about their clients' corporate practices.
“Many studies look at what we call ‘professionals-who-write,’ like accountants, social workers, and nurses who write as part of their jobs but writing is not their primary job,” said Pope-Ruark, noting that such studies greatly outnumber those that examine technical writers. “I hope this research will encourage others in the field to seek out more writing professionals as research subjects, so that we can learn more about how these writers balance and draw on the many different personal and professional communities they belong to in order to write effectively.”
The dissertation, “Challenging the Necessity of Organizational Community for Rhetorical Genre Use: Community and Genre in the Work of Integrated Marketing Communication Agency Writers,” examines how five employees for a marketing/communications agency use skills and techniques from their own writing industry to work for clients in fields with which they have little or no background.
Her overall findings: A writer does not need to be part of a client’s business to write advertisements, news releases, annual reports or other items that do a good job of conveying understandable information to the intended audiences. They draw on their experience and their relationships with clients to make up any missing knowledge.
“Marketing agency writers work quite effectively for their clients without being members of the clients’ organizations,” she said.
Pope-Ruark joined Elon this fall after completing her doctoral program at Iowa State University. After earning her master’s degree in professional communication at Clemson University, Pope-Ruark worked as a writer and project manager for an integrated marketing communication firm in Los Altos, Calif., which served companies in the Silicon Valley. She researched, wrote and managed numerous marketing magazines, brochures, postcard mailers, application briefs, solution briefs and newsletters for her clients.
After leaving the firm, Pope-Ruark said, she spent several months in Pittsburgh doing Web, marketing, and public relations consulting for a growing architectural firm before starting her doctoral program at Iowa State.