Businesses and B2B marketers are all about talking to prospects and customers in the most engaging, striking, attention-grabbing ways.
But operationally, they often talk to each other in the most unclear, unnatural, unappealing ways. We’ve been guilty of it ourselves.
The entire lexicon needs a hard reset. So we’ve rounded up some of the worst offenders to keep us honest. See if any of these insights resonate holistically with you in the new normal...
The gross
- Low hanging fruit – you can keep it.
- Sexy – a slightly skin-crawling way to ask for creativity or to describe how someone’s applied their talent and skill.
- Touch base – a strange way of seeking an update (see ‘check in’ below).
‘the end of the day’ is fine, without resorting to the kind of jargon that sounds like military code words for briefing a search-and-destroy operation.
The meaningless
- Level set – let’s set a higher level of communication before we do anything.
- Holistic/holistically – holistically speaking, ‘holistic’ gets a whole lot of hellish overuse.
- Solutions – so vague, but has become a one-stop, catch-all solution for describing almost anything.
- Bespoke – no one’s going to believe you’ve gone to the effort of making something ‘bespoke’, different or unique if you’re saying so in such a lazy way.
- Disruptive – disrupt the jargon and show don’t tell; if you’re really being different, people will be able to tell without you having to tell them.
- Robust – conjures visions of a wannabe Clarkson trying to sound badass while presenting Q3 sales projections at a drab conference suite in Thanet.
The daft
- Here ???? are ???? my ???? top ???? marketing ???? trends ???? for ???? A/W 21 ???? ...and #1 is: personalisation – unworthy of one of those claps, let alone eight in aneurysm-inducing succession. Especially when it’s to tell us something so underwhelmingly obvious.
- To play devil’s advocate – you’re entitled to your own opinion, so have it and own it.
- Mission critical – frustrated astronaut.
- Just flagging – the only flag you’re waving is the white flag of surrender. Let’s raise the standard and drop this one.
- Check in – unless we’re off to the airport for an all-expenses-paid-for trip to Barbados, let’s just update each other instead.
- Close of play – ‘the end of the day’ is fine, without resorting to the kind of jargon that sounds like military code words for briefing a search-and-destroy operation.
You’ve reached the end of play, and we’ve reached the end of our tether. But breathe a sigh of relief: we make every effort not to ambush our clients with acronyms because we’re an agency who tries to do things differently. B2B, but not as you know it.
Interested in finding out more about the way Don't be Shy works, or think you’d make a good fit for our team? Great, let’s touch base – I mean, get in touch!
