Marketing Buzzwords: Love 'Em or Loath 'Em
Ah, buzzwords. We all use them. We all love to hate them.
What got me thinking about buzzwords (again) was an article I came across on "viralsourcing," which BusinessWeek writer Ben Kunz defines as a combination of crowdsourcing and viral marketing. So, in essence, a buzzword based on yet another buzzword. Sigh.
OK, I get it. Buzzwords and buzz phrases are an easy way to capture the essence of a thing in one or two words (and, admittedly, I use my share of them). For example, for eons companies have collected feedback from customers and prospects and used that insight to inform their business decisions; today we call that crowdsourcing. Sure, crowdsourcing captures the essence of group feedback that an enterprise takes action on, but it sounds so, well, pretentious.
Every industry has buzzwords and phrases, but I think marketing must lead the field it is enthusiastic embrace of all things buzz-related. In fact, there are myriad websites that capitalize on--and poke fun at--this fervor. Marketing Buzzword Bingo, for example, lightheartedly offers a way for marketers to supposedly "jazz up" their marketing meetings with buzzword-loaded bingo cards. Hit the refresh button for a nearly endless collection of such doozeys as advergaming, brandtailing, freemium, infotanement, and searchandizing, or more standard fare like paradigm shift and convergence.
When I blogged about overused buzzwords way back in the "primeval" days of 2007, the most annoying buzzwords cited in a study at that time were:
the big idea, buzz, critical mass, customer-centric, integrated solution, it is what it is, low-hanging fruit, make it pop, organic growth, outside-the-box, paradigm shift, ROI, and synergy.
Today, the evolution of social media and recent changes in marketing and customer service strategies have created a vast wellspring of new buzzwords to love and loathe.
What is your most--or least--favorite buzzword or phrase in today's social media-crazed, voice-of-the-customer enlightened, twitterific marketing world?
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Ben,
Thank you for your comments. As you and Nicholas noted, buzzwords have an important place in simplifying or explaining a broader concept. It's when the words are overused or expanded well beyond their origin that they become tiresome. And, as I said,I use my share--including many of those listed in all the great responses. Hopefully I use them wisely.
One thing to note. I also asked for favorite buzzwords, knowing that there are words and phrases that are exceptionally useful to make a point. I think it's harder to choose a favorite. Mine is customer insight, because, to me, it's not just having information that's valuable, it's understanding the meaning behind it and using that to drive change.
And the author of "Viralsourcing" responds:
Sigh, indeed. Don Peppers and Martha Rogers built a career on the buzzword "1to1," which means basically personal insight and personalized service. It's a simple idea, but like all buzzwords "1to1" is a framework that helps clarify the concept. So beneath the flag of a buzzword, you criticize one?
Don't get me wrong. I used to write for Don and Martha back in the late 1990s, before your time, and I certainly wish them well. And I know the business world is full of BS bingo...
My concept with "viralsourcing" was not to breed yet more silly linguistics, but instead to show that the a dynamic of crowd creation + marketing propagation is indeed taking off with the advent of social media. The concept is a bit complex -- crowds can create, and then also spread messages -- so like the old IDIC framework behind "1to1," I used a simple term to try to explain it.
Perhaps it is silliness. But then, most marketing frameworks do recast the obvious. In a complex world, frameworks can be useful, so it may be worth a second look.
Yours, 1to1,
Ben Kunz, author of the BusinessWeek "Viralsourcing" article
Director, Strategic Planning
Mediassociates
www.mediassociates.com
www.thoughtgadgets.com
Thanks everyone! Not only for sharing the multitude of torturous buzzwords/phrases -- anything '2.0' or anything beginning with 'tw' seem to be the leading sources of annoyance -- but also for all the interesting perspectives on the roles buzzwords/phrases should and shouldn't play in business.
I'll certainly have to "leverage" your insight when trying to "optimize" 1to1's "customer experience"...
I am guilty of using these but it's getting tougher to use them...
Least favorite
Leverage, optimization, rationalization, anything 2.0 (other than Great Depression and Routing), cloud, -sourcing, dovetail, green, all words that start with 'Tw', latitude, earmark, sweat the assets
Recent favorites
Great Recession, Great Depression 2.0, variable buoyancy,
Well... after careful examination of varying e-sagacity on the subject of the gadfly usage of buzz words... my only contribution is to reinvigorate two old, tired and frankly in my opinion forgotten buzz word acroynms and pile on... "USP - Unique Selling Proposition" and "FAB's - Feature Advantage and Benefits"... I bring these marketing pillars to the center of this e-conversation as a backlash to the multitude of wasteful advertising dollars on television which abate these two standard bill of fare marketing weapons... For example: FreeCreditReport.com (why oh why)... or better yet, the commercial for the new Blackberry which starts and stops with a wedding scene in the rain for 27 seconds with a flash of the product at the tail end for a 3 second announcement about push to talk on the phone as if there are no other features on the phone... as if there is no other competitors selling cell phones or no other cell carriers... As if all consumers already know some or all of the other valuable "features" of the phone and or carries service... Ad agencies must believe, based on the majority of ads I view, that consumers today live in a 1960 time warp... that we are daft to understanding, appreciating or delineating varying forms of mobile, business or home technologies... and we can only be motivated towards core demand or brand infatuation by deliverying metaphor after metaphor, silly nonsense, instead of deliverying consumers the dignity of knowledge, the speeds and feeds of consumer value, product differentiation... Commercials can surely be jaunty in spirit and nature and can also include the "FAB's" of the product... can include an array of "USP's"... but please, let your ad agencies know "we won't take it anymore... we are intelligent consumers... please let us know why we should buy your product or service and if you surely do... we will buy faster, bigger, more often and then suggest our friends to do the same"... As all suggest, enough with all the multitude of buzz words... but, indeed, let's get back to basics with a few key buzz words we should use in my opinion as the foundation of our advertising, marketing and communications... let's drive demand and brand prowess through exposed USP's and FAB's deliverying ROI opulence...
Whoops, is ROI also over used as a standard "buzz word"? I'll bet your CFO's and clients don't think so... :)
Peter Weedfald
For me it's always been the words that don't really mean anything....optimize, utilize, and crystallize are the three that come to mind. And in general any word that looks out of place except when it's on the SAT's; all those phrases that businesspeople use to sound professorial instead of just professional.
Best-of-Breed.
I couldn't believe this when I read it the first time as applied to something other than an animal, in this case, a software application.
Who came up with this?!?!?!?!
Yuck
Buzzwords based on buzzwords - sounds like a derivative.
Isn't that how we got into trouble with the financial meltdown?
I agree with many others having "2.0" as their least favorite. Pretty close second is "cloud". Just getting used to SaaS.
Personally, I think Buzzwords are acceptable if used intelligently to illustrate a point...no different to how an image used in a presentation can help crystallise a concept a speaker is making.
However, there is nothing worse than listening to someone that spews out an avalanche of buzzwords which leaves the listener battered & bruised and ultimately none the wiser.
Here are my over used buzz words:
social CRM, #scrm, hash signs in general, Web 2.0, data points, SEO, socialize, point of view, social media, demand generation, marketing automation, rationalization, simplification, facebook, twitter, LinkedIn, tweet, bailout, downturn, customer 2.0, contact center, call center, acute, customer experience, CEM, voice of the customer, BI, data mart, data warehouse, mission critical - I think I am running out of buzzwords.
I have to agree that the 2.0 and 3.0 (please don't go there yet) terms are so commonly used and applied that to everything and anything that it loses any impact or deeper meaning.
Of course that doesn't mean I don't use the term from time to time (and plenty of the other terms from that bingo sheet you linked above Ginger) - guilty as charged :)
"Cloudsourcing," "Tweetalitarianism" and "analysales." Okay, I just made those up, but I already hate them.
One word: guru.
Ginger, this is easy for me. Customer Experience is my least favorite BW. It goes back to Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore's excellent book, "The Experience Economy" in which they told us we needed to upgrade our products and services to experiences -- things so memorable to the customer that they serve as differentiation even in a world of very similar offerings. Instead of that higher and harder to accomplish definition, we've settled on the literal definition of the customer experience. That is, whatever the customer experienced, especially in relation to the call center. These are not close to the same and the latter strikes me as a defensive position whereas the original definition is a way to play offense in the market.
At any rate, I am sick and tired of hearing about this bastardized definition as if it had any real place in CRM. It doesn't.
An evergreen of a topic if ever there was one!
I'm with Lior - social media is suffering from an acute case of overuse and overly-broad application. In the same way the 'green' trend led to much greenwashing, I think we are already deep in the heart of socialwashing.
As the originator of a new '2.0' phrase (Routing 2.0), I guess I have to plead guilty for perpetuating the torture that some of you feel. Oddly enough, I'm OK with '2.0' but find the use of '3.0' way too precious. Just my own quirk?
I also have a communications industry analyst specific bugbear: CEBP. Enough with the rebranding of everything and anything as CEBP. Then there are the 'we have to be different' variants: CBPA, CEBT, etc. Ugh.
Ok... Guerilla Marketing is a term that really gets to me, because I start thinking about getting attacked by people I don't care about with messages I don't care about. Actually I think about getting attacked by gorillas I don't care about with messages I don't care about....and they're throwing bananas at me to boot. And I don't like bananas much either.
That I could do without.
I am so sick of hearing the buzz word "Rightsizing," to justify job loss. There is nothing "right" about that.
Blogroll is one I come across often and it makes me hungry along with spammer. There is also feedblitz and cookies, can you see where I am going with this? Lunch!
I really enjoy when I go to gmail to clear out my spam box and see the latest spam (meat, I think?) recipe shown, talk about relevancy? Not quite but entertaining.
I still have trouble with acronyms CRM, CEM, SFA, BPO
This is fun stuff for a Friday. I hate the phrases that businesses have adopted that really mean something else: burning platform, look under the kimono, etc. From a pure buzzword standpoint, I'd offer anything twitter-related as annoying. Tweeting? Really?
Anything with "green" before it and "2.0" after it.
Ginger,
Buzzwords are buzzwords when they lose any meaning. I am personally facsinated by the different ways you can title a brand such as brand fabric or brand tissue. Can anyone point a finger to one and explain it. Make it real.
The next thing for me is social media. This one is on its way to over hype and it will break all records of time to over hyped status.
Hey Ginger. Good Friday fun here. Interesting that CRM pops up on Marketing Buzzword Bingo. Guess that's "one to grow on" (remember NBC's One to Grow On PSAs? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KObQo65j6Y ). Anyway, suppose I'm stuck on classics like "take offline" and "leverage." Still use them from time to time, but it could be worse! From a social Web standpoint, although I love Twitter, I'd have to say anything with a "tw" in front of it is wearing: twinterview, twebinar etc.
Whatever "2.0" is my least favorite buzz phrase, though the annoyance with it that I'm exhibiting with it is my least favorite discussion about things 2.0.