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Following our article Writing to buyers – An analysis of Gobbledygook, here is a small follow-up taken from the same book, The New Rules of Marketing and PR, by David Meerman Scott, about the overuse of words in news releases and company-authored articles.

Dave Schmidt, VP for Public Relations Services at Smith-Winchester, Inc., has conducted a survey about the overused words and phrases he’s seen, and wanted to find out if editors agreed that these phrases were actually overused. Here are the three main results he found:

• “Leading” (used as an adjective): 94% of editors think this adjective is overused. “Since everybody wants to be the leading something, there are no longer any true leaders.”
• “We’re excited about/pleased/thrilled”: 76% think this phrase is overused, and not very appropriate for a company’s spokesman quote. “You need to quote your spokespeople with words that you would like to see in print”.
• “Solutions”:  68%. It is now probably best avoided.

Every time you write, you have the opportunity to communicate and to convince people. At each stage of the sales process, well-written material combined with effective marketing programs will lead your buyers to understand how your company can help them.

This article has been inspired by David Meerman Scott’s excellent book, The New Rules of Marketing & PR, which we recently had the pleasure of reading, and strongly recommend.

Do the phrases scalable, world class, robust, easy to use, flexible, next generation sound familiar to you? Have you ever gotten bored of these redundant and extremely standardized phrases? If so, it’s hardly surprising, as these adjectives are likely to be found in most marketing websites nowadays. David Meerman, with the help of Factivia (from Dow Jones), conducted an analysis on approximately 388,000 news releases in a nine month period, and found out that  over a fifth of them contained at least one of these words (the winner being “next generation”, which had been used 9,895 times).

Meerman invented a name for these boring adjectives:  gobbledygook.

How did we get to such poor writing?

To Meerman, it can be summed up in a few words:

“Marketers don’t understand buyers, the problems buyers face, or how their product helps solve these problems. That’s where the gobbledygook happens.”

By not using a closer approach to the buyer, these companies deprive themselves of the opportunity to convince people that their product is the right thing to buy. Also, it doesn’t make any of them stand out from the crowd.

The phrases above denote the vocabulary used by a certain kind of business. But the lesson is for all types of companies:

“Avoid the insular jargon of your company and your industry. Instead, write for your buyers.”