What’s wrong with plain old English? Nothing, you say? Then why are so many marketing and PR ‘experts’ using Jibberish and Gobbledygook? Do you ever read something and think: “Holy crap, I have no idea what that was all about!”
Welcome to the world of marketing-speak. In an effort to sound as impressive as possible, the language used is designed to dazzle you with the company’s importance, its outstandingness and its absolute mission-critical, groundbreaking, industry-leading whallapaloo. What? Exactly! Obviously when writing material that’s meant to promote a company or a product, there should be a certain elevation to the use of laymen’s terms, but not to the point where it’s so lofty that no one understands it. Honestly, what is the point of that? To show off? To promote the cleverness of the PR team? Don’t you have a product to sell?
Stop trying to dazzle. Ask yourself: “What does my customer NEED from me?” Are you making your customers work hard just to figure out how you can help them? Or, in the (slightly-convoluted) words of John F Kennedy:
“Ask not what your customer can do for you; ask what you can do for your customer!”
Meanwhile, take a moment to read through David Meerman Scott’s The Gobbledygook Manifesto. Download a copy here.
