The 7 deadly clichés — strike these words from your thinking. (Part 2)

In our last exciting episode, we covered 3 relatively new, but tiresome words that are drummed into our heads every business day: “millennial,” “innovation,” and “content.” Now we’re going to take on four more candidates — words that make you … GAG!

And the nominees are …

4. Disruption

It all started in the 1940s with Joseph Schumpeter’s “creative destruction.” The idea was simple; technologies that shake the system improve societies and create dynamic economies with new markets. So far, so good. But business today is bedazzled with the romance of disruption and this belies some important truths.

We all know that the internet didn’t create as many jobs as it took away. Retail is fighting for its life. The magazine business is dead. People buy cars online. Who wants to negotiate with a dealer anyway? Creative disruption, you gotta’ love it. Can’t wait to see what AI will do. Sign me up for my UBI now!

All this turmoil makes the word “disruption” sound like a platitude, especially when used to describe the latest celebrity lipstick. No doubt, as Schumpeter wrote, “profit is the payment you get when you take advantage of change.” But what happens when change takes advantage of you? Welcome to the world of disruption.


5. Best Practices

How many times have you been asked to provide a list of these when you’re assigned a new project? And it’s understandable. Like algorithms, best practices can deliver powerful results. The problem is that they are derived from the history of your marketing, so if you follow them religiously you’ll be stuck in the past and miss potential breakthroughs. Add to this the fact that the digital economy changes a lot more quickly than the old analog one. So, what was a best practice yesterday may be obsolete today.

Take email, for example. The old “best practice” was to avoid depending on visuals for impact, as email platforms would edit these out. The recipient would be greeted with a communication that had big, square holes in it. Then one day, marketers noticed that, contrary to the prevailing “common sense,” illustrated emails were getting the biggest lifts. Their audience was either clicking “allow visuals,” viewing them in their browsers, or their platforms were simply accepting them. Now you’re more likely to receive emails that are dominated by visual elements rather than just copy.

Business is a graveyard of best practices. Remember when Power Point was the preferred presentation platform? Then came Prezzi and Keynote, sure to replace ppt, but we still have 60—100-page Power Point decks. Remember the flash banner? Best practice until mobile devices and Chrome phased it out. And what about the idea that blog posts should be no more than 500 words? Best practice until longform came back into vogue. Imagine — readers actually wanted substance for a change!

So, here’s a “best practice” — maintain a healthy skepticism toward all your best practices.

6. Stakeholders

We used to call them partners, vendors, clients, customers, consumers, our audience, competitors. In other words, they used to be human beings — people you communicate with, do business with, sell products to, entice, seduce, entertain, especially take money from. Stakeholder sounds like stock investor, or someone dressed in a spread sheet. The term is used for everything. Conceptually, it carries the same danger we mentioned in connection with the word “Content”: it’s too impersonal. Especially when coming from a brand that wants to engender loyalty.

That’s why, as storytellers, we never ask “who are the stakeholders?” Rather, we want to know who are the people we are trying to reach? What rocks their world? How does this product or service make a difference — not to a stakeholder, but to a human being?


7. Listicle

Allow us to be self-referential and postmodern for a moment and condemn listicles … by writing yet another listicle. That’s the thing about business clichés; you can’t help parroting them even though they earn your disdain. If you’re still with us, you’ve read the 7 business clichés you need to avoid. But, the fact that you’re reading this post points to the worst cliché of all — that you should use clichés because they work.

Sometimes they do. But increasingly they don’t pass the laugh test. Even if they’re “scannable” and “snackable” like a list is meant to be. Anything that the culture overuses eventually dies. Anyone who frequents social media knows that the list is the most overused trick in the book. To the blogger who invents the next “can’t miss” format goes the spoils.

Good luck!

Join us in our battle against business-speak. Come visit Jerome & Brooke Storytellers here.

The 7 deadly clichés — strike these words from your thinking. (Part 1)

How often does this occur to you when sitting in a business meeting?

“If I hear that word one more time, I’m going to strangle somebody.”

 Why is it that we speak in normal parlance in everyday conversation, but in our work lives turn into robots — spitting out clichés that we can all live without? It’s weird when you think about it. Today’s business culture prizes individuality and creativity, yet at the same time, there’s more groupthink and talk than ever before.

With the current demand that all things be grounded in “authenticity,” isn’t it time to ditch the jargon? For starters, let’s all try to eliminate these 7 words:

1. Millennial

There have been so many ridiculous overstatements written about the supposed psychographic profile of young people that when they hear this word, they must roll their eyes. It’s one thing to say that people who grew up using certain devices have more facility with them, but what about all the demeaning pop psychology assumptions applied to this entire group? It is said that Millennials are both narcissistic and socially aware. In other words, they just think about themselves — except when they’re obsessed with helping others.

Millennials are referred to as snowflakes, in need of safe spaces and prizes for simply participating. Yet the new economy, led by tech companies that hire young people almost exclusively, is characterized by a rough and tumble work ethic, where employees are on call 24/7. In other words, this is a lazy generation except when they’re working round the clock.

Finally, there’s the idea that Millennials live in their phones because they are addicted to social media. But, according to Pew research, this age group is more likely to use devices to look at educational content and apply for jobs. In other words, Millennials are out of touch with reality except when they use their phones to explore it in depth.

For those trying to create a marketing “experience” for young people, it makes more sense to refine your demographic. Pay more attention to the data and toss out the contradictory stereotypes.

2. Innovation

This word has been so overused, that today there’s nothing less innovative than innovation. Think about it, what is innovation? Isn’t it about doing something really big? Like iTunes, which figured out how to get people to pay for something they were getting for free (remember Napster?). Or how about Spotify, which many say is putting iTunes out of business? Then there are craft beers. By going local and custom, they shook up legacy brands, forcing the big guys to buy them out.

The point is, innovation forever changes the way things are done. More than just providing a “solution” (there’s another cliché), it creates new ones, especially today when technology is moving faster than we can keep up.

To all who use this word on your website, in your collateral, in your sell sheets and white papers … try something innovative. A new word!

3. Content

Once upon a time, there was copywriting, art, video, radio, broadcast, music, tradeshows, movies, film scripts, lyrics, poems, novels, comic books, tutorials, webinars, podcasts, collateral, direct mail, catalogs, pornography, photography, dialogue, monolog, analog, speech writing, street fighting, corporate training, mansplaining, brainstorming, house warming, non-conforming ….

And then one day, it all ended.

Somebody came along, took all of the above and threw it into a bucket. They mixed it up and poured out the result. For some reason, the mystic, the magic, and the music are all gone. What are we left with?

"CONTENT"

All the sexy, expressive disciplines became generic — like Hamburger Helper for the communications industry. What have we done to ourselves? It may have something to do with the attempt to quantify the qualitative. But we shouldn’t let the bean counters make us forget that communication is a human function, not a robotic one. By framing the way we connect with each other so abstractly, we run the risk of impersonality. And that’s bad for business. It makes everything we say sound phony.

Check in next week for part 2.

In the meantime, come visit Jerome & Brooke Storytellers here.