News
 Cutting-Edge,
Mission-Critical Analysis: Steps to Avoiding
Overused Gobbledygook, by David Meerman Scott
Just as teenagers use catch phrases, certain words
and phrases crop up again and again in Web sites and
news releases—so much so that the gobbledygook
grates against my nerves and many other people's,
too.
As a journalist, I get a hundred or so news releases
each week and look at dozens of Web sites a day.
Sadly, nearly all are laden with meaningless
gobbledygook. I wanted to analyze how many of these
words are being used, and so I created a method to
do so.
First, by polling select PR people and journalists
and asking them to write a list of gobbledygook
phrases, I selected those that are overused in news
releases. Then I turned to Factiva, a Dow Jones and
Reuters Company, for help with my analysis.
The folks at the Factiva Reputation Lab used
text-mining tools to analyze news releases sent by
companies in North America from January 1 to
September 30, 2006. Factiva analyzed each release in
its database, which consists of releases sent to one
of the North American news release wires it
distributes, including Business Wire, Canada
NewsWire, CCNMatthews, Commweb.com, Market Wire,
Moody's, PR Newswire, and Primezone Media Network.
An Analysis of Gobbledygook
The news release wires collectively distributed just
over 388,000 news releases in the nine-month period,
and just over 74,000 of them used at least one of
the Gobbledygook phrases.
The winner was "next generation," with 9,895 uses,
and there were over 5,000 uses of each of the
following words and phrases: "flexible," "robust,"
"world class," "scalable," and "easy to use."
Other notably overused phrases with between 2,000
and 5,000 uses included "cutting edge," "mission
critical," "market leading," "industry standard,"
"turnkey," and "groundbreaking." And let's not
forget "interoperable," "best of breed," and "user
friendly," each with over 1,000 uses in news
releases.
How Did We Get Here?
People often say to me, "Everyone in my industry
writes this way. Why?" Here's how the usual
dysfunctional process works and why these phrases
are so overused: Marketers don't understand buyers,
the problems buyers face, or how their product helps
solve these problems. That's where the gobbledygook
happens.
First, the marketing person bugs the product
managers and others in the organization to provide a
set of the product's features. Then the marketing
person reverse-engineers the language that they
think the buyer wants to hear based not on buyer
input but on what the product does. A favorite trick
that some ineffective marketers use is to take the
language that the product manager provides, go into
Microsoft Word's find-and-replace mode, substitute
the word "solution" for "product," and then slather
the whole thing with superlative-laden,
jargon-sprinkled hype.
By just decreeing, through an electronic word
substitution, that "our product" is "your solution,"
these companies effectively deprive themselves of
the opportunity to convince people that this is the
case.
Write for Your Buyers
Your buyers (and the media that cover your company)
want to know what specific problems your product
solves, and they want proof that it works—in plain
language.
Your marketing and PR are meant to be the beginning
of a relationship with buyers and to drive action
(such as generating sales leads), which requires a
focus on buyer problems. Your buyers want to hear
this in their own words.
Every time you write—yes, even in news releases—you
have an opportunity to communicate. At each stage of
the sales process, well-written materials will help
your buyers understand how you, specifically, will
help them.
Your marketing and PR are meant to be the beginning
of a relationship with buyers (and journalists).
This begins when you work at understanding your
target audience and figure out how they should be
sliced into distinct buying segments or buyer
personas. Once this exercise is complete, identify
the situations each target audience may find
themselves in.
What are their problems? Business issues? Needs?
Only then are you ready to communicate your
expertise to the market.
Here's the rule: When you write, start with your
buyers, not with your product.
-
MarketingProfs.com.
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Melissa Data
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