Harness user-contributed network effects with data-driven tag clouds
David Meerman Scott this week published the“Gobbledygook Manifesto”, a ranking of the most overused meaningless hype terms included in press releases. David first surveyed PR execs and journalists to compile the master list, then turned to Factiva to mine their news content to see which terms were most overused.
In the analysis, he found that roughly 20% of the nearly 400,000 press releases analyzed used at least one of the phrases. Leading the list was “next generation” with almost 10,000 mentions, followed closely by “flexible”, “robust”, “world-class” and “scalable”. The term “groundbreaking” was used more than 2,700 times; it’s a wonder that there’s any ground left to break.
We’ve all been guilty of using these types of buzz words in our marketing communications over the years. In many cases it’s out of laziness. When trying to describe a product or solution, the gut reaction is probably to add a few adjectives. Instead of simply using an adjective like “scalable”, we should provide quantifiable examples, such as “supports 10,000 concurrent users on a single server.”
In the meantime, if you’re concerned that your press releases have too much substance, and are looking to add more unsubstantiated hype and buzz, try the Web 2.0 bullshit generator. It helped me create the headline for this post.
Barry, at first I was puzzled by your headline. Then I read to the end. Ha! - How cleaver. I hadn't seen that generator before. And your sentence "The term 'groundbreaking' was used more than 2,700 times; it’s a wonder that there’s any ground left to break" is a classic. Many thanks. David
Posted by: David Meerman Scott | October 17, 2006 at 02:14 PM