April 30, 2014: Here we go again! Back by popular demand, here’s Part 3 in our Lame Marketing Phrases series. Enclosed is another fresh batch of stale phrases to amaze your co-workers, roll your eyes at, and cite during meetings when these phrases inevitably come up. You might even say: “If Didit pointed this one out in a humor article, sir, it must be lame.”
Hang onto your hackneyed hats – here we go!
Experiential Marketing. Yes, the customer experience is a real and vital thing in marketing, but the sophistic way that “experiential marketing” is being used strikes us as bad copy lifted from a bad 1990s-era VR game or, worse, from a New Age guru-penned guide to holistic self help. Look — is there any kind of marketing that doesn’t happen in the phenomenal world? We’d answer this question, but then we’d have to coin an even more obnoxious phrase: neumonal marketing: the practice of hawking goods and services in a world of pure form.
Shiny Object. This phrase is literally for the birds (specifically Jackdaws, which furnish their nests with gaudy baubles). “Shiny objects” are said (by marketers of non-shiny objects) to distract marketers from the serious business of accounting, attributing, correlating, and other green eyeshade stuff. The problem is that this derogatory term has been used as a blunt instrument to dismiss anything that’s not “a serious marketing platform.” Remember, folks: shininess is in the eyes of the beholder, and green eyeshades are shiny objects themselves.
Connecting The Dots. “Connecting the dots” is often used as marketing doubletalk for “let’s create a story when there is none yet.” Hey, connecting the dots is great if you’re reading a road map, but they’re useless if you’re studying a Rorschach test, which is what many interactive media plans look like today. Read our lips: don’t use this term: it’s hugely overused and somewhat condescending.
Passion. This much overused word is often found in the Twitter profiles of hyperventilating social media gurus, who seem to find it impossible to say that they’re simply “interested” in something. These short-form gurus are laboring under the delusion that “passion” is a synonym for “love.” We wonder how horrible they’d feel if they knew that the original Latin root of “passion” is pati – which means “to suffer” (which is what we do when we read their profiles).
Content Bursting. We hate to admit the fact that we inadvertently create cliches around here, but here’s a new one from the overheated Didit brain trust: “content bursting.” What is it? The awesome practice of having your content synchronously EXPLODE over the social channels in a way that OVERWHELMS your customers with experiential MESSAGING. Yeah, you can see why this will hopefully never become a winner. We hope….
Socialytics. Socialytics? OK – is it really that hard to say “social analytics?” Must everything be shortened into infinitesimal character space? Sorry, “Socialytics” is “Socialidiotic” — the term is so brain-dead that it even makes ‘LOL’ look smart!
World-Class is actually more like the way Bill Cosby described school in the summer time – no class. If you actually have won an award or are otherwise recognized, then that’s good. But otherwise, it’s empty words.
Marketing Arsenal – This martial mil-speak phrase is often spoken by Type-A marketing hawks when prepping their audiences on “how to engage the customer” (presumably with cannon fire). Aggression is a wonderful thing but can we ratchet back all this talk about the carpet-bombing and targeted rifle fire (unless you’re selling survival gear)?
True Engagement – As opposed to what, fake engagement? Engagement that isn’t honest isn’t engagement – we call it mummery, which customers and prospects will eventually sniff out and reject.
Game-Changer – Success in marketing can’t be determined by tactics, which this hoary phrase implies. It can only be determined by the honest offering of value. A good, solid plan that’s flexible and offers solid value to customers
Semantic Harmonization. It’s really disappointing to make up something that you think will be the next big buzzword when it turns out that the phrase already exists in medical billing technology. And to think we could have been super star SEO lecturers — bloviating about keyword categorization and entity search… Alas, sometimes the game can’t be changed.
Got more lame marketing phrases? Share them! Tweet out to us at @diditmarketing.
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