Bullshit Marketing Terms The World Could Do Without

This is a post I created over in the Lumpy Kingdom of the Microsoft Hamsters a while back, after soliciting participation from people in my network there.

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If you apply the 80/20 Differential to bullshit in marketing and communications, it states that 80% of everybody out there is prone to using bullshit marketing terms and it further states that 80% of those people are incapable of actually delivering on them. These are generally people who operate under the assumption that bullshit baffles brains. Ironically that has proven to be true time and again.
Just understand that more you relate to the terms mentioned here, the more prone to bullshit you actually are. So maybe a paradigm shift will be in order. Oooops sorry. Man, those bullshit terms are hard to avoid, aren't they?
The Initial Proposition:
I want to write a post called 10 Bullshit Marketing Terms The World Can Do Without. If you'd like to contribute your favourite, I'll be happy to incorporate it into the post…
I have to admit that I got a pretty decent response to this, but the weird thing was that hardly anybody picked the same terms. One person was offended a bit by the word ‘bullshit’, but I’m afraid I have always been guilty of calling a spade a spade in business…hence my curiosity about terms that other people think are bullshit.
The good news is that almost every term included in the responses are terms that I agree with, with one or two exceptions. So here’s what all the responders said, and at the end you’ll get my own Top 10 List.

The Responders

Robyn Cauchy: Quick win
Nick Dachris
Deadline. It never works and the bullshit keeps coming!

Catherine Newman (Weaver): ‘Investomer’ is a classic! For a customer that has shares

Matthew Garrity
: One of the most overused marketing works of them all is the word “natural” the technical definition for natural is so open to interpretation, between organic origins, it has ended up becoming one of marketing biggest grey areas.

Carmen Gray
: Marketing strategy (that’s two words sorry).

Matthew York
:Marketecture.

Jasmine Plowright
: Holistic approach!

Cindi Acker-Hein
: Reach out to someone. It’s meant to sound inclusive, but really it’s a way to get someone to do your work for you.

Sue Northey: 
Archetypes - most of the people that use it really do not know what it means.

Brice Johnson: 
Best Of Breed.

Liza Dube: 
I call BS on any use of the word “organic” in marketing.

Dave Jenkins: (LOL)
 Game-Changer, disrupt, paradigm, selfie, seamless, guru, innovative, bricks & mortar. It’s upsetting me just to type them
.
Tsufit ✭: Rebranding, because it implies that it's something that the entrepreneur does when in fact our brand is the label that the outside
world brands us with based on their perception of us. Nowhere was this more obvious than in the old TV show "Beauty and the Geek". The geeks didn't brand themselves that way--the world did.

Lois Creamer: The words I find most offputting in marketing are some of the terms professionals use to describe themselves. My all-time worst...
Life Coach!

Sharon Love, M Ed: 
Think outside the box
Get the low-hanging fruit
.
Stephen Olson: 
Synergy! When we do not know how to say what we want we just make up words and use them until everyone thinks they are real.

Nick Dachris: Ha ha! Nice topic, Jim!
 Word of Mouth! As opposed to what? Word of Nose or Picture of Mouth?
...Color Theory! There is no such thing, only unstable, local stereotypes that change by the time you become aware of them.
..Baby Boomers! 8,640 born every day.

Jeremy Miller
: Marketing Terms
.
Jim Barnet: This has the potential to become a Dilbert cartoon.
 Smarketing...
Customer Relationship Management
...Out-of-box Experience...
Nano-campaigning
...Investomer...
Emotional Branding.
Wendy Ford
: Educate the consumer
.
Jagdish Sonpal
: Offer customers what they NEED.

Andrea Usuelli: 
Engagement …Too vague, not quantifiable. It doesn't mean anything.
James Scott
: Social Proof. What the hell does it mean?

Hammad Fasih: I love this. Here are the ones I am tired of seeing:
 Anti-marketing...
Customer Insights...
Viral/Shareability...
Guru (of anything, seriously, it's a problem on LinkedIn)
.
Janet Pomeroy
: Sustainability Catalyst...
The ‘Sharing’ Economy, which is more of a b.s. business term but it's been thrown around by marketing.

Nancy Slome: 
It's an oldie, but not a goodie: Sticky. (I think Jeremy Miller would have something to say about this)

Roger Mader: 
Added Value.

Mehreen Siddiqua
: Organic growth
...Circle back...
Get your ducks in a row
.
Tim Masters FRSA: I'm going to stick my neck out and nominate Content Marketing, because, obviously, no marketing material has ever had any until recently.

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Having a repertoire of bullshit terminology that you can use on clients who don’t have the same repertoire really can give
you an advantage, because it can make you look like you know what you’re talking about even though you don’t.

I have personally never subscribed to this ‘Bullshit Baffles Brains’ theory, preferring to talk to my clients in language they can understand. This way they know exactly what they are getting, and you don’t have to spend a lot of time making up bullshit definitions for the bullshit terms you use.


My Personal Bullshit Terms Top 10 List (In no particular Order)


1. Join The Conversation: Most conversations in social and business media aren’t that at all. They are just people giving their opinions.

2. Synergy: This is actually a term I use, because I use it correctly. But I could do without it.

3. Content Management: I’ve never been sure exactly how that gets done.

4. Visionary: A lot of people argue with me about the use of this term. I think it’s the height of arrogance. Others don’t.

5. Big Data: This is pure bullshit. Data is data. It’s either useful or it’s not. Also, if there’s big data there has to be ‘small’ data, and I’ve never seen any.

6. Customer Experience: This sounds like something that was made up by some Valley Girl who somehow managed to get an MBA.

7. Guru: I’m with Hammad on this. And it falls into the same category as Visionary.

8. Engagement: With Andrea on this. It would be a good term if only it were possible more than 1% of the time.

9. Sustainability: This is a word I’ve never quite understood. I get what it means but don’t really think it has as much application in the real world as the people who use it a lot do.

10. Thought Leader: I’ve saved the best for last, because not only do I think of this as bullshit, I absolutely hate it. It implies that the rest of us are all thought followers, and I know that’s not true.

Thanks to all the contributors. This was a lot of fun, and really quite interesting.

Jim Murray is a communication strategist, writer, art director blogger and beBee brand ambassador for Canada. His partner, Charlene Norman is a business systems and operational analyst. Their collaboration is called Bullet Proof Consulting, located in St Catharines, Ontario and designed to serve forward thinking businesses in the Niagara and Golden Horseshoe regions of Southern Ontario. Web site coming soon.
You can find out more about us at:  http://tinyurl.com/y9zc9gvx