Here in the editorial department at Quirk’s, one of our favorite pastimes is to marvel at the wonders of business-speak. As we sort through the press releases that crowd our in-boxes and pore over the links to the new-product announcements and other news in our daily Google and Yahoo! alerts, we’re continually amazed at the ability of smart, successful PR people to come up with masses of comically empty verbiage to describe a new company, product or service.
The marketing realm is particularly guilty on this front, (over)using terms like scalable, disruptive, best-in-class, leverage and mission-critical. A favorite here, one that seems to have thankfully faded a bit, is the use of the phrase “solutions provider” to describe a company’s offerings. What the heck does that even mean?
Here’s a sampling from a doozy of a press release we received last week that was laden with sexy-sounding but ultimately empty phrases:
“…the combination of [a service provided by redacted Company A], which drives strategic custom programs, and [a service provided by redacted Company B], which stems from insight-based design, delivers a fresh approach while demonstrating value across all retail experiences through smart customization. Together, they help you gain a deeper understanding of how best to connect with the shopper, mapping out and effectively executing customized strategies, all resulting in better ROI at retail.”
As I tried to figure out just exactly what was being said in those sentences, it occurred to me that we in the marketing research industry need to make sure that the word “insights” – our newly-popular and seemingly-preferred descriptor for marketing research – doesn’t end up becoming another example of empty business language.
I’m not smart enough to have the answers for how to keep that from happening and so this will end up being one of those blog posts that asks more questions than it answers. I don’t think there is a magic path that will lead us away from the dilution of the word. It’s not a one-time action but rather a daily exercise, perhaps one that requires a little restraint, in the form of not overusing the term or of going easy on the positioning of it as some sort of gift that you, in your infinite wisdom, are going to mercifully bestow upon your needy client or internal audience.
Especially when “insights” is replacing “marketing research” in so many job titles, I worry that if the recipients of those insights stop finding them especially, well, insightful, will they start rolling their eyes when they see the i-word, just as we do here when a press release crows about a new “solutions provider”?