Sunday, September 21, 2008

Marketing Language

I was struck by an an amazingly concise, thoughtful observation while reading David Meerman Scott's The New Rules of Marketing and PR. "Marketing language that can be substituted for another company's isn't effective in explaining to a buyer why your company is the right choice."

At first, I dismissed the line as common sense, but when I started looking around I saw countless examples.....EVERYWHERE, that violate this principle. Just go searching through PR Newswire and browse any industry release; there is a 90% chance (*Caution, fictional statistic) what you've read is a cookie-cutter press release stuffed with corporate jargon about cutting-edge ideas and break through technologies.

My question is, when did it become out of style to write like your talking to a human and not a biological information processing unit (if that doesnt make sense in context them in clearly not as clever as I think I am). I liken corporate jargon to today's Politically Correct (P.C.) speech. Although it serves a purpose in some cases, the language often detracts readers from the real point of an article.

SO I ask myself, what can I do to avoid falling into the same traps when I get "out there?" Luckily, Scott addresses this idea a little further in his own blog, and suggests several good texts to help remedy the matter. Hopefully, with a little help we can all eliminate this problem and help rid the world of marketing language.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for referencing my ideas. Sometimes I feel like companies talk like they are a cult and everyone reading their stuff are already members of the cult and know the lingo.

Truth is that nobody wants to read gobbledygook.

David