The flood of buzzwords in marketing: Why we need more substance again
A comment by Verena Gründel on the daily flood of buzzwords, the pitfalls of a lack of analytical thinking, and the desire for more reality in business.
When clever phrases obscure the facts
When was the last time you used a buzzword without knowing exactly what it meant?
Yesterday? The day before yesterday? Last week? Most likely. Because we all do it!
Our corporate world, and even more so the digital marketing bubble, is overflowing with empty, clever-sounding phrases. We—buzzword alert—incentivize sensationalist word salad by putting it on stage, applauding it, and trying to outdo each other with it.
If we turned meetings into drinking games or set up cliché jars, we’d be drunk all the time and still have enough money left in the till for a taxi home.
You might find the topic amusing. After all, there’s a lot of comedy in it when the marketing high performer explains: “Through an AI-supported, cross-channel engagement framework, we can seamlessly integrate brand purpose and performance marketing and drive truly relevant KPIs—game chaner.”
But there is also a downside to this dressed-up marketing bullshit: it distracts from the core. It obscures poor figures, supports the wrong KPIs, and dilutes the substance. It promotes the wrong people and supports pointless strategies. It leads to wrong decisions and wasted money.
To my knowledge, no one has yet calculated the economic damage caused by the bullshit we spout every day. But I’m sure it’s significant.
This week, I read about Shane Littrell from Cornell University in the SZ.
He developed the Corporate Bullshit Receptivity Scale (CBSR) and investigated how receptive people are to bullshit statements.
He found, as he writes in the journal ‘Personality and Individual Differences’, that people who fall for bullshit generally think less analytically. On the other hand, they are more likely to believe and spread nonsense than the rest.
Nevertheless, there seem to be enough of them, because bullshit bingo works as a strategy. Business bullshitters usually get away with it unpunished. Do we think that’s okay?
I don’t. I hereby resolve to question even more closely the numerous embellished empty phrases I hear all the time. Because I really don’t want to be accused of not thinking analytically.
Are you with me? Or in other words: Do you support my strategy for more reality, purpose, and genuine thought leadership in digital business? It’s a low-hanging fruit, right?
PS: The buzzword I’m using quite a lot at the moment is VO2max. I’m trying to increase it through interval running in order to achieve my half marathon goal. But I don’t really know exactly what it means medically – and why it sometimes goes up and down.
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