I know Revolution is read by marketing johnnies, and I am not a marketing johnny, I am a journalist turned consultant - can you think of a lower form of life? But I am thoroughly bored by marketing johnnies' tolerance of the cliche. I don't mean the "sick as a dog" sort of cliche. I mean the new, whizzy, oh-so-punchy words and sets of words that might be amusing or clever the first time they are used - even the first few times - but soon degenerate into meaninglessness. Here is my hate list.
Solution. It's been in the number-one slot for several years, despite its utter meaninglessness. Or rather because of its utter meaninglessness. Saying that you create solutions seems to be a convenient way for a company to get out of having to specify what exactly it does. Here's a good game if you're bored. Pick up any marketing blurb or press release from a technology company and count the number of solutions therein. Score double if the word appears in the company's logo or mission statement.
E-anythingatall. Well, we are all bored of this and the stock market has taken against it (the stock market has a use!).
But it keeps on coming. I was at a trade show the other day when an American came up with a badge marketing EMDA-E or similar. I got excited. Is this the equivalent of number plates running out of letters to put at the end, so starting to put them at the beginning instead? No, my new friend assured me. He was from the US Department of Defence. He was looking for something very secret that was likely to defend the free world against Communists and foreigners, and the E stood for Europe. Oh well.
Meaningless new names for companies. I can give you some real examples: Munico, Dexia, Altadis. Looking around the show, I saw a number of companies with names that were desperately trying to combine desirable features with good, hard marketing consonants. Simply take words like flexible, adaptable, excellent, capable and innovative and cram them together in one name and we produce, for example, Flexcellent and Adexotive. These might well exist. I plead ignorance if they do.
Excess words - you know, marketplace instead of market, revenue streams instead of revenues. Often these are just the marketing equivalent of "um". Stick to um. It might be a cliche, but at least it's a short one.
David Bowen is editor-in-chief of Net Profit, a new-media publishing and research company. Tel: 020 7403 1140; www.netprofit.co.uk.
Comment - Make a stand against bad language.
I know Revolution is read by marketing johnnies, and I am not a marketing johnny, I am a journalist turned consultant - can you think of a lower form of life? But I am thoroughly bored by marketing johnnies' tolerance of the cliche. I don't mean the "sick as a dog" sort of cliche. I mean the new, whizzy, oh-so-punchy words and sets of words that might be amusing or clever the first time they are used - even the first few times - but soon degenerate into meaninglessness. Here is my hate list.
Solution. It's been in the number-one slot for several years, despite its utter meaninglessness. Or rather because of its utter meaninglessness. Saying that you create solutions seems to be a convenient way for a company to get out of having to specify what exactly it does. Here's a good game if you're bored. Pick up any marketing blurb or press release from a technology company and count the number of solutions therein. Score double if the word appears in the company's logo or mission statement.
E-anythingatall. Well, we are all bored of this and the stock market has taken against it (the stock market has a use!).
But it keeps on coming. I was at a trade show the other day when an American came up with a badge marketing EMDA-E or similar. I got excited. Is this the equivalent of number plates running out of letters to put at the end, so starting to put them at the beginning instead? No, my new friend assured me. He was from the US Department of Defence. He was looking for something very secret that was likely to defend the free world against Communists and foreigners, and the E stood for Europe. Oh well.
Meaningless new names for companies. I can give you some real examples: Munico, Dexia, Altadis. Looking around the show, I saw a number of companies with names that were desperately trying to combine desirable features with good, hard marketing consonants. Simply take words like flexible, adaptable, excellent, capable and innovative and cram them together in one name and we produce, for example, Flexcellent and Adexotive. These might well exist. I plead ignorance if they do.
Excess words - you know, marketplace instead of market, revenue streams instead of revenues. Often these are just the marketing equivalent of "um". Stick to um. It might be a cliche, but at least it's a short one.
David Bowen is editor-in-chief of Net Profit, a new-media publishing and research company. Tel: 020 7403 1140; www.netprofit.co.uk.
.jpg)
.jpg)