The Gobbledygook Manifesto – revised and updated with new data

Oh jeez, not another flexible, scalable, groundbreaking, industry-standard, cutting-edge product from a market-leading, well positioned company! Ugh. I think I'm gonna puke!

Just like with a teenager's use of annoying catch phrases, I notice the same words cropping up again and again in Web sites and news releases—so much so that the gobbledygook grates against my nerves and many other people's, too. Well, duh. Like, companies just totally don't communicate very well, you know?

Alert readers of this blog and my book The New Rules of Marketing & PR will recall that in late 2006 I created The Gobbledygook Manifesto to analyze the enormous number of meaningless phrases that appear in corporate marketing and PR materials. You know what I mean (and like me, you may occasionally be guilty of writing like this: "Company X is a leader in providing flexible, scalable, mission critical solutions for improving business process using cutting edge, next generation technology").

If you haven't read the original analysis, I recommend you check out this recently published version: ChangeThis The Gobbledygook Manifesto by David Meerman Scott.

I wanted to see if there were any differences to the data in another time period. So with Dow Jones Factiva, we did another analysis for recent nine-month period. The original analysis was from January 1, 2006 through September 30, 2006 and the new analysis from November 1, 2006, to July 31, 2007.

The analysis by Factiva uses text mining tools to analyze news releases distributed by the major news release distribution services such as Business Wire, Marketwire, PrimeNewswire, and PR Newswire sent by companies in North America (a separate analysis was also conducted for Europe). For the revised analysis, Factiva analyzed each release in its database that had been sent to one of the North American news release wires it distributes for the period from November 1, 2006, to July 31, 2007.

Gobbledygook Analysis for North America. Click chart for larger image.

It turns out there were more releases sent during the period. A lot more. In the first analysis (Jan 2006 through Sept 2006), 388,000 press releases were sent in North America while in the new period (Nov 2006 thru July 2007) 440,500 releases were sent. Good news for the press release distribution companies! I'd like to think that I've played a role in goosing the number of releases because more than 250,000 people have downloaded my ebook The New Rules of PR: How to create a press release strategy for reaching buyers directly.

The percentage of releases containing at least one of the gobbledygook phrases went down slightly, from 19% to 17.5%. Clearly these phrases are still overused.

The words mentioned most often were similar to last year’s analysis. In North America – next generation (10,427 mentions), robust (8868 mentions), flexible (8515 mentions), and world class (7887 mentions) were the leaders.

The words mentioned in Europe were virtually identical in their frequency compared to North America.

Comments

[Patsi Krakoff, The Blog Squad]

Dude, it's like totally true!

[Ed McLean (www.SalesItch.com)]

And one of the very worst :

"In today's competitive marketplace"

Aaaarghhh! I've been complaining about jargon too...

[Jeff]

Here's another one that seems to be ramping up...

"ecosystem"

Suddenly everything "is" or "is part of" and ecosystem.

Jeff

[David Meerman Scott]

Jeff and Ed -- So true on both of yours!! I'll have to run another analysis with some new words.

Cheers, David

[Peggy Jordan]

Alas, too true! Thanks for furthering the cause of straight talk. It's so daunting to sit down with a new client (I'm a copywriter) and try to somehow figure out what it is they do or sell when all you get are phrases like "...we maximize shareholder value through implementation of optimized strategies..."

[Elaine]

David, I read your analysis with a sense of discomfort--despite our best efforts, my company talks like this. The trouble is, some of it seems unavoidable. For example, how else DO you say "next-generation"?

[Dave Ferguson]

Going forward, it's important to think outside the box and drive your business by inflating the implied performance of what you do through the strategic deployment of pretentious language.

At the end of the day, though (which usually comes around evening), people are likelier to be unthinking than Machiavellian -- so they use this tiresome, predictable marketese because they think it helps, or because they think it's required, or because they haven't got the time or inclination to come up with an original expression.

It reminds me of the Austin Lounge Lizards song Big Rio Grande River, filled with phrases like "high up on Table Mesa," "past history," and "as the evening sun sets in the west."

[David Meerman Scott]

Elaine,

You should be using the language that your buyers use when you write materials to reach them.

If they are saying "I want a next generation solution" then it is fine for you to use that language too. But if "next generation" means nothing to your buyers and is just for your own company's ego, then it is gobbledygook and not helpful.

Thanks for reading.

David

[Dianna Huff]

Gobbledygook makes my brain hurt -- because you literally have to translate it.

[Diana Bourgeois]

Thank you Thank you Thank you for your post! As marketers, we often forget that we are actually talking and selling to real people. About a year ago, a magazine for marketers crossed my desk (and I am so impressed by the materials that I find there that I dont remember the name of it!) with a list of the TOP 15 new words marketers should be using in the coming year. Sure enough...those words were everywhere! As marketers, shouldnt we be LESS likely to fall prey to bad PR than MORE likely? And...what does "interoperable" really mean to a potential customer? I remember that was on their list because it meant absolutely nothing to me. Really...talk sense already!

[Colin Warwick]

I love the way you worked with HubSpot to include this info in their PressReleaseGrader.com site. See you at the InboundMarketingSummit.com !

[CD Dimensions]

This is really a 'scalable' and 'cutting edge' post ;) darn if I had only read it a few years ago I would have had a 'turnkey solution' that was 'best of breed'. I'm keeping a screen shot of the graph so I can catch myself in my 'next generation' copy ;) I have new rules.." on order. thanks I'm a recovering Gobbledygook writer