Business Phrases You’d Like to Kill

By Jim Bianchi
Posted in BtoB Marketing Group News | LinkedIn

In our unscientific survey of communicators and executives to find the business buzzwords that should be banned, many of you nominated phrases that drove you nuts.

So, as a follow-up to last week’s post on biz buzzwords to be banned, here are the phrases that  you’d like banished from business communications – along with some of your comments related to the offending phrases:

1. At the end of the day (Has displaced “the bottom line”)

2. It is what it is (Of course it is. Isn’t it?)

3. Teachable moment (Aren’t they all?)

4. Having said that / That being said (I’m going to keep talking)

5. It’s all about the brand / Live the brand (What happened to the customer?)

6. Let’s take (the discussion) offline (So I can beat you up in private!)

7. Let me wrap my head around that (Imagine the mess that would make!)

8. Out of the box / Outside the box (… and into the toilet)

9. Reach out (Can’t you just say “call” or “write”?)
I find the variation of this – “Out-reach” – even more irritating. AJ

10. User engagement (When’s the wedding? For the ring, he went to Jared!)

Thanks to all for contributing!

We also received a few contributions – real-world quotes – that go beyond mere irritation and I just don’t know how to categorize them. But still, they’re worth sharing:

A. “The glide path of mission critical work streams”
eh?

B. “We need to market our green initiative, although we really don’t have one.”

Amazing! You can’t make this kind of stuff up.

BtoB Marketing Group News | LinkedIn

Further corporate howlers…

Following on from our last post, we thought these two fine examples of grammatical ineptitude were worthy of sharing. These are absolutely genuine adverts, found on ElectronicsTalk.com last year. Enjoy – but remember as you deride the woeful lack of language skills that produced these gems, that it’s very easy for speling mistakes to creep into even the most carefully prepared text. Oh damn…pass the Tipex please!

Go to the bottom of the spelling class…

Spotted this morning on the Education Today website. Oh the irony.

Defeating writer’s block

Anyone who writes for a living will, at some time or other, be afflicted by the curse of writer’s block. Here’s some excellent advice from Shear Creativity about what to do when it strikes…read more here 

Writer’s block. It strikes at the worst possible time making what would be a simple, fun exercise an exhausting one. It is exacerbated by stress, and often, leads to endless hours of frustration and hundreds of pages of useless copy, discarded for eternity. At least we don’t use typewriters any more, right? Copywriters back in the day must have been the leading cause of deforestation and global warming (as if advertisers needed any more blemishes on their reputation).

So what’s a wordless wordsmith to do? Here are some ways to cure the linguistically challenged.

1. Misdirection. Try thinking of topics completely irrelevant to the task at hand. If you’re supposed to be writing about the social consequences of performance monkeys (what more can you say?), start from a different angle. Maybe it’s sandwich making, Disney princesses or firefighters. Sometimes the most random approach results in the most interesting, creative outcome.

2. Move and Shake. Get up. Go do something. Anything that will distract you from ruminating over those darn performance monkeys! Clean your office, go for a jog or call your grandma – she misses you! Once you allow yourself to relax and step away from the computer, the creative juices will start flowing once again.

3. Ask someone else. A different set of eyes, ears and brain cells can make a world of difference, and having a conversation can provide a fresh perspective to the problem. Experts tend to be TOO involved and often lose sight of what they have to offer – give someone else a chance to think for a change.

4. Research. What are other people saying about performance monkeys? Maybe you can build off someone else’s idea or maybe their opinion will spark a thesis of your own. Gathering as much information as possible will allow you to view the problem holistically and give you a more knowledgeable outlook going forward.

5. Wait until tomorrow. If you have the option, nothing beats getting your beauty rest. Who knows? Those performance monkeys may come to you in your dreams with just the right story… or maybe when you wake up, rested and refreshed, you’ll have the energy to tackle that writing once and for all.

6. Write exactly what you know. Right now, you think nothing more can be said about the social consequences of performance monkeys. So say that. Tell us what led you to believe that, and speak honestly and openly. A candid piece will come naturally, and even if it’s not your final draft, it will get your writing gears running smoothly.

7. Or, you can just write about writer’s block. That’s what we did!

Shear Creativity: 7 ways to chip off the old [writer’s] block

UK trade magazine adopts Social Media interaction as editorial policy – is this the future?

A major b2b title in the UK has become the first to employ Social Media directly in the production of its print-edition editorial. Control Engineering magazine under the editorial direction of David Greenfield has only been an active participant in the business networking site LinkedIn since May 2009, but has already built a strong following of around 3,500 users. LinkedIn allows users to organise themselves into groups based on interests or professions. Each group offers its members an interactive discussion board facility that allows them to debate the various themes and topics they are interested in. By following and participating in these discussions on its LinkedIn and Facebook pages, Control Engineering’s editor has been able to tap into a rich seam of lively debate and informed comment from which to create highly-topical editorial. You can read the first article developed in this way here.

In a publishing world that has for so long simply regurgitated print editorial in online form, this is a very interesting development. Closing the loop between traditional and modern media makes a lot of sense from an editorial point of view; comment is easily obtained, it’s dynamic, fresh and completely democratic. Anyone has a chance to have their voice heard, not just those with big PR budgets and advertising spends.

For PR companies, it provides the clearest signpost yet that the role is changing. Clearly, it is no longer enough just to be writing and sending out press releases when editorial policy is being built in such a dynamic way; PR companies now have to take an active role in monitoring and engaging in forums such as Linked In and Facebook or risk having their messages left behind. It’s like the editors are stepping down from their ivory towers into a vibrant, thronging marketplace filled with colour and distraction. The challenge for PR people is to ensure they maintain an influential position in this melee; if you like, a guiding hand to lead an editor gently but firmly to their client’s stall. We can only do that by being there and staying connected.

Honesty is the best policy

“Photoshopping” – the deliberate manipulation of photographic images to enhance, conceal or mislead – is in the news a lot lately,  mainly as a result of the media’s growing unease about the use of implausibly-skinny models to promote ladies fashion. But as far away as it may seem from the glamour of haute couture, the world of B-2-B PR is not immune to Photoshop controversy, particularly when it comes to the portrayal of professional display equipment such as LED screens and videowalls.

The problem is – like stroppy catwalk models – such devices are notoriously difficult to photograph well, particularly with digital cameras. There are problems of exposure, viewing angles, unpredictable moiré effects and screen refresh artefacts. Little wonder, then, that some manufacturers resort to the “artist’s impression” approach to creating imagery for their products.

Personally, I don’t like it. Trying to promote a visual product by using a picture that has been faked is questionable practice at best. Particularly so when the subterfuge has been badly executed, as in the example above. In this recent image from a well-known European manufacturer, the fake image has been badly aligned, resulting in a picture that seems to float a good centimetre outside the physical dimensions of the screen. Not good. The same image also features fake mullion lines superimposed over what is quite clearly a stock library image. To my mind, not only does this seriously undermine the quality proposition of the product concerned, but it also raises questions of ethics –  a deliberate attempt to mislead a potential customer surely is not a good start to the relationship. If a manufacturer is willing to “lie” about how its screen actually looks, what else are they willing to lie about?

We do, from time to time, manipulate images of our client’s products to enhance their appearance or correct some of the technical problems that often occur when photographing screens. However there is one big difference: We NEVER use library shots to fake a screen image because it is vital to maintain integrity. We would never for a second consider putting an untruth into a press release – why would we do so with an image?

When we go on a shoot we always take lots of shots at various timings and exposures, and then use these collections of real images to create a composite or an HDR composite of a real, genuine product image.

If you or your client are a display manufacturer – please think twice about using fake pictures. With just a little more effort and skill, you can achieve great results without cheating. As they say – honesty is the best policy.

3 reasons why you shouldn’t use numbers in headlines

As avid LinkedIn followers, we read a lot of posts from various groups and individuals from around the business world. Like any social media service, postings in the various groups to which we belong are very much writing “in the raw” -  an un-edited stream of collective consciousness that is often rewarding and informative, but just occasionally a little annoying. One of our top bugbears is what appears to be (or maybe we just noticed it!) a growing tendency to use meaningless numbers in headlines to try and grab attention.

There is a well established school of thought in marketing that holds that numbers, and particularly odd numbers, used in headlines in some way adds credibility to the message that follows. Personally, I don’t agree. There may be cases where it is appropriate, but the more I see “5 great ways to..” or “7 reasons why…” the more it irritates me.  It’s not often I get to exercise irony in a professional capacity, so I thought it might be fun to examine why I find it irritating and thereby establish a case for not using numbers in headlines. So here goes: My 3 reasons why you shouldn’t use numbers in headlines…

1) It’s patronising. Good business writing does not dictate to its audience, it engages with them. By numbering your points in some arbitrary way, you are lecturing rather than engaging; you are implying that your reader is so dumb that they can’t perceive your points for themselves or that they have the attention span of a goldfish. Either way, it’s not a good way to win friends and influence people.

2) It’s lazy. A good headline is vital to success; you have perhaps a fraction of a second to grab a reader’s eye as it scans the page. Crafting an effective headline takes time, thought and skill – just ask any newspaper subeditor. A formulaic “5 good reasons…” headline demonstrates none of these qualities. The reader could reasonably surmise that the article that follows will be similarly vacuous and skip it.

3) It’s oh-so contrived. Business writing is not numerology; you should not split or conjoin your arguments in order to meet some arbitrary number of bullet points just because some “marketing guru” said so. Make each point clearly and well, and you’ll have no need to number them to get your arguments across. Your readers will respond much better if you treat them like intelligent people.

AJ – Find me on LinkedIn here

Habitat apologises for ‘hashtag spam’

Today’s Daily Telegraph carries an interesting story illustrating just how badly wrong an ill-conceived Social Media marketing campaign can go. Up-market furniture store Habitat has apparently been caught adding inappropriate keywords – called hashtags –to its corporate Twitter feeds.

Tagging marketing messages with keywords like #Iranelection and#iPhone, the firm tried to ensure its messages achieved a much higher ranking in users’ searches than should have been the case. But, it appears the stunt has backfired badly, and the well-known chain has apparently been forced to issue an apology.

The Telegraph reports: 

Twitter users reacted with anger to the publicity stunt: “Just read about your hashtag abuses,” wrote Caramboo. “You utter scumbags, I’ll never visit your shop again”, while another user, Brownbare, tweeted: “Naughty, money-grabbing furniture outlet. Bad bad bad. Now I’m glad I can’t afford your overpriced Ikea replicas”.

What is very interesting is just how powerful the inherent democracy of social networks is, and how quickly it can bring the errant marketeer to heel once a breach of “Netiquette” (remember that term?) is collectively perceived. The sanction of this electronic plebiscite is swift and decisive. However Netiquette evolves to encompass Social Media, one thing is for sure; Habitat’s ham-fisted, spammy attempts at manipulation will be long-cited as how not to do it.

Habitat apologises for Twitter ‘hashtag spam’ – Telegraph

How many buzzwords can you cram in single sentence?

Sadly, the world of business is littered by buzz-words and catchphrases that have very little to do with creating a meaningful dialogue with the intended audience. Here’s a particularly fine example of business gobbledegook we ran across today:

B2B Product Marketing Leadership in the era of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt requires B2B Focused, Holistic, Guru Agnostic, Outcome-Driven and Action-Oriented Capabilities.

No-one here – and I suspect very few people other than the originator – has the remotest idea what that’s about! Business writing should, first and foremost, be about clarity and accessibility. I suggest that a course in concise writing might serve business people a lot better than learning about Holistic, Guru Agnostic – whoever he is.

“Give your fingers a rest”, advises editor

Barnaby Page of Screens.tv and aka.tv is a highly-respected commentator on the latest developments in digital OOH and other new forms of communication. As such, he is perhaps better placed than most to comment on the latest internet craze/scourge, Twitter. With an elegantly argued case that there is a time and a place for Twittering, Barnaby is perhaps illustrating that, as a serious communications medium, Twitter is reaching – if not maturity – then at least a sober adolescence in the minds of media professionals.

Give your fingers a rest (1)

Barnaby Page – 06 Apr 09, 17:08 PM

With Screen Media Expo Europe nearly upon us, to all those sitting itchy-fingered in the conference rooms (you know who you are) I have just one polite request:

STOP THAT TWITTERING.
Trust me on this: there is nothing to be gained by Twittering conferences in real time, except the irritation of your followers and a spurious sense of “being first”.
Twitter is great for big, unpredictable events unfolding moment-by-moment – things like election nights, Windows reinstalls, soap opera Christmas specials. But when it comes to conferences, what those people who couldn’t attend really need is a thoughtful round-up of key points after the event, all accessible in one place. An article or an email or a blog post, in other words.
Being told what speaker X said five seconds ago, when you the Twitterer aren’t in any position to know whether it’s a trivial throwaway or the lead-in to an important revelation, is useless.
So just don’t do it. The world can wait.

Give your fingers a rest – SCREENS.tv Blog