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Calling all sellers! Get ready to (yes, that’s one of them) disrupt your digestive tract with marketing clichés that will make you gag. These marketing terms are polluting creative minds everywhere, and there might even be scientific evidence linking these cringe-worthy slogans to Millennials’ intense feelings of “I don’t want a desk job.” It certainly is possible. However, for everyone else, can we make a pact?
As fellow marketers and creative professionals, please retire (or extinguish) these irritating phrases so that we can all evolve beyond this “noise” that saturates our industry. You are with me?!
1. Interruption
First, let’s be clear. “Outage” is really more of a business term. Describes a market condition that occurs when an existing market collapses and a new one emerges. It’s actually very similar to “Disruptive Innovation,” which occurs when a new market comes to full fruition. Uber could be a great example of both, depending on how you look at it.
However, when this “Wall Street” phrase ended up seeping down all over Madison Avenue, “disturbing” and “disturbing” became overused, watered-down terms that essentially began to mean nothing.
Certainly “creative disruption” could have a place, as it refers to exposing business model flaws and promoting big changes in consumer behavior (in the creative sense). However, I can’t help but wonder if some agency account director just throws out “disruptive” terms just to win a big account. Well then. Interrupt what? Isn’t it our job as marketers to change consumer habits and get attention?
2. Growth Hack
Okay, I realize that “hack” is supposed to mean “encode” in this sense (not reduce), but this phrase sounds like an oxymoron to me!
Popularized by Sean Ellis and other technology experts in the early 2000s, the term was intended to describe non-traditional ways of achieving growth through experimental marketing strategies and emerging technologies. READ: This is also a glorified way of describing low-paid bootstrappers (oh, but with equity, of course!) trying to unlock the key to “mass culture” (yawn).
Maybe growth hacking was a relevant and meaningful term 15 years ago, but not today. Most marketers are expected to (magically) grow with technological brilliance and creativity because it’s our job. Sounds like a lot of pressure? Well, welcome to marketing.
3. Just Mo
Oh no no If her ears haven’t yet been marked by this irritating term (in what seems like “slow motion”), it stands for “Social-Local-Mobile” like it’s a cool concept or a secret to be relevant. So please don’t use this slogan. Ever.
4. Actionable information
Actionable? As opposed to “Well, we learned something today and we’re not going to do anything about it.”
I mean, am I missing something? Where do you look for “actionable insights”? Is this something people need in addition to regular knowledge? For example, if I’m comparing landing page performance in The Marketing Manager and I see one campaign outperforming the other, I think I know what action to take. You?
5. Seamless integration
If you work in the tech sector, I bet you’re emphatically nodding “yes.” This terrible term is about as common and meaningless as your vendor saying “we have an API” when asked “does your product (xyz)?”.
In fact, let’s add a few puzzle pieces to visually convey (because we’re idiots) that our software seamlessly integrates (throw up) boredom and clichés. After all, we need to “scream” that every piece of our boring app actually works when it interacts with some other random technology.
And while this style of tech marketing seems terrifyingly common (rather ubiquitous), to me, it feels pretty ironic. After all, I’m pretty sure the puzzle pieces have noticeable jagged edges. It’s not like that?
Also, there is no such thing as a “perfect” integration. It takes work and maintenance to make two tools “talk” to each other, and you (the consumer) pay for it. There you go.
6. Turnkey (and everything “turnkey” in general)
Let’s be honest. If someone offers you a “turnkey”, “out of the box” solution, does it make you open your wallet? Personally, he turns me into a glazed zombie. Why? Because even if something is difficult, a brand will never admit it or sell you the “turnkey” solution (rigor mortis).
Now of course I understand that this term was once synonymous with “effortless”. However, it has since become a useless adjective lazy salespeople use to describe blah blah blah with blah blah blah. That being said, I propose that we enclose this useless adjective (pun intended).
In fact, as long as we’re stuck in clichéd door analogies, can we stop saying [anything]door to describe a conspiracy theory? Maybe it’s unreasonable, but I’d love for people to coin something new. After all, the key (cringe) to creative marketing is to explain concepts in a meaningful way. That’s why “turnkey” is no longer descriptive; tell me WHY something is so simple, in an attractive and concise way. Does this sound difficult? Well it is. That’s why creative people have jobs.
7. Content is king
Yawn. “Content is king” and “(whatever) is queen” sounds like one big gay party, but everyone is really bored with it.
It’s no mystery. Live sports and fan favorites like “The Walking Dead” keep cable TV in business. After all, those cable bills are expensive! Perhaps that is why this irritating and embarrassing phrase just won’t die; decision makers in the media universe are ignoring the fact that modern consumers are stingy with their time. How else can we explain this endless sea of boring content?
Maybe I’m wrong, but here’s my understanding of modern consumers (who have ADD built in)
AWESOME Content = I will only tolerate ads if they cannot be blocked. And if I really hate ads, I WILL PAY to have them blocked, so please stop forcing these painful pre-rolls and what seems to me like 10 minute commercial blocks.
BORING Content = I hate you for wasting my time aka “get out of my inbox” syndrome by emphatically clicking “spam”.
Assuming the media gods don’t agree with me, I think this painful phrase will still be around.
8. Advertising
Talking about “content is rubbish”, marketers make up stupid terms like “advertainment” to make it sound like they are solving a huge cultural problem, but they are not.
“Advertainment” is essentially just an annoying way of explaining “branded content,” product placement, or fancy marketing in disguise. I get the concept, but here’s the rub: If you call your own work “entertainment,” you sound like a pompous fop.
Don’t get me wrong: some marketers have managed to make advertising very entertaining, including Red Bull with their adrenaline junkie videos and AMC with their Walking Dead and Mad Men apps (aka “gamification” which could theoretically be on this list). ).
However, does the “advertainment” really solve a problem? I guess so, but can we please not call it that?
In all seriousness though, if you’re a seller who somehow figured out how to move product around without bothering people, congratulations. This is an achievement. I’m serious.
9. Ecosystem (to describe everything)
Are we a bunch of ants trapped in a science class diorama that demonstrates seamless integration (see term 5 above)? Silicon Valley seems to think so.
We hear this word a lot, especially when some “thought leader” (yawn, might as well be on this list) isn’t prepared to answer a tough question in a meeting.
“Well, you see [insert CEO name here]our next step in changing consumer behavior patterns is to move social conversation into the Internet of Things ecosystem,” said the slightly hungover marketing executive recovering from last night’s vendor spree.
Sight. We’ve all been there, but the use of the word “ecosystem” is starting to feel out of control. In a way, it could be said that everything can be an ecosystem, including the Chia Pet that they sell at Walmart. See what I mean? Germination. Photosynthesis. What. And it all takes me back to where I started: my seventh grade science class.
10. Snack Content
Doesn’t this phrase make you want to vomit? I personally find it nauseating, but here’s some “food for thought”: the term “content consumption” is actually the mothership concept that spawned this ugly duckling buzzword. All it means is that time-hungry consumers prefer concise headlines, bullet points, easy-to-read lists (unlike mine), and pretty much the opposite of heavy, plain-looking text. Make sense.
However, isn’t it amazing how unappetizing this hackneyed phrase sounds? In fact, I almost threw up (in a good way) when Grant Higginson of Welby Consulting tweeted it to us during our “Tweet the Most Annoying Marketing Buzzword to Win a Drone” contest. Needless to say, he won.