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Top Gobbledygook phrases used in 2008 and how to avoid them

Boston, MA - April 8, 2009 - David Meerman Scott is pleased to announce a partnership with Dow Jones and HubSpot to leverage and focus on innovative solutions for new and improved, next generation, cost effective, world class, high performance, value added outcomes.

Does the sentence above suck or what??

That's how so many PR people write — using gobbledygook-laden phrases that are so overused to have become meaningless.

I have just completed an analysis of all 711,123 press releases distributed by North American companies in 2008 through Business Wire, Marketwire, GlobeNewswire, and PR Newswire. The project looked at 325 gobbledygook phrases from a variety of sources, with the detailed analysis on the number of uses for each phrase done using Dow Jones Insight.

So how do you avoid using gobbledygook?

Easy! Write using the words and phrases your buyers use. You can also run your press releases, web site text, brochure copy, resume or any other document through the brand new Gobbledygook Grader from HubSpot. The Gobbledygook Grader (released today) will give you a score based on how many over-used gobbledygook phrases you use and suggest ways to improve.

Here are the top 25 gobbledygook phrases used in press releases sent in North America 2008.

Gobbledygook terms were drawn from these sources:

- Informal survey of my journalist friends in order to create The Gobbledygook Manifesto, first published in 2007.

- Suggestions within comments on the Gobbledygook Manifesto blog post.

- Seth Godin's Encyclopedia of Business Clichés.

- This Paperclip is a Solution: A survey of general business and trade publication editors in September, 2006 by Dave Schmidt, VP, Public Relations Services at Smith-Winchester, Inc.

- The book Death Sentences: How Cliches, Weasel Words and Management-Speak Are Strangling Public Language by Don Watson

Resources:

- Take a look at the results for all 325 gobbledygook phrases

- Analyze your content using the HubSpot Gobbledygook Grader

- Read my original Gobbledygook Manifesto published in 2007

- Learn more about Dow Jones Insight, which I used for this analysis.

Disclosures: I am on the board of advisors of HubSpot and I provide coaching services to Dow Jones Enterprise Media Group.

NASDAQ Market opening Tweet-up with GlobeNewswire

UPDATE April 1, 2009

Adam Wallace of The Roger Smith Hotel posted a short video of the morning.
YouTube link here

John Blossom, author of Content Nation wrote a very interesting blog post on the tweetup.

Maryann Separovic - @GirlBug - Is traveling all over the world and blogging her experiences. She was at the tweetup and here is her report.

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This morning with a group of 30 people recruited through Twitter, we opened the NASDAQ stock market. It was covered live on FOX Business News, CNBC, and other networks. What a terrific morning.

I really appreciate everyone who took the time to participate with me. What a special morning. Thank you for your enthusiasm.

And thanks to Bradley Smith of Shareholder.com and GlobeNewswire for making this happen.

Here's a great video produced by Devin Dwyer.
Direct YouTube link here.

Note that I signed my name @dmscott after I pushed the button.

You'll find tweets with Hashtag #NASDAQ

An interview with Wall Street Journal / MarketWatch here.

I’ve already seen dozens of photos that people who were there have posted, but here are several taken by Zef Nikolla, the NASDAQ photographer. (Click for a larger image).

Photos © 2009, The NASDAQ OMX Group, Inc. Reprinted with permission.

When lawyers get in the way of PR

I received a press release via email a few days ago from a well-meaning PR person.

Guess what? I can't write about it because at the bottom of the release is this:

NOTICE: This electronic mail transmission contains confidential information intended only for the person(s) named. Any use, distribution, copying or disclosure by any other person is strictly prohibited. If you received this transmission in error, please notify the sender by reply e-mail and then destroy the message. Opinions, conclusions, and other information in this message that do not relate to the official business of AGENCY X shall be understood to be neither given nor endorsed by AGENCY X. Before opening any attachments please check them for viruses and defects. When addressed to AGENCY X clients, any information contained in this e-mail is subject to the terms and conditions in the governing client contract.

Yikes! The notice at the bottom of the press release says I cannot distribute the press release. This is what happens when lawyers get in the way of PR.

Or consider this typical press release from Shell that I found on one of the press release wires. Now, I'm not picking on Shell here, I'm making a general point. I could have chosen any one of a thousand releases for this example.

New Shell $aver Card(SM) Available at Shell-Branded Stations Nationwide

HOUSTON, Jan. 5 /PRNewswire/ -- Shell Oil Products US launched the Shell Saver Card today, becoming the first gasoline retailer to make an electronic check payment method available to consumers nationally. This latest Shell payment option provides consumers with a convenient way to pay for purchases with a direct link to a checking account and savings on each gallon of fuel pumped at Shell stations.

The body of the press release has several other paragraphs and contains 361 words. It is a well-written new product release. But then the lawyers get involved and add a 519 word "Disclaimer statement" (sometimes called safe harbor). The legal crap is much more lengthy than the news and includes minute definitions of things that aren’t even in the release such as these two sentences:

Forward-looking statements include, among other things, statements concerning the potential exposure of Royal Dutch Shell to market risks and statements expressing management's expectations, beliefs, estimates, forecasts, projections and assumptions. These forward-looking statements are identified by their use of terms and phrases such as "anticipate", "believe", "could", "estimate", "expect", "intend", "may", "plan", "objectives", "outlook", "probably", "project", "will", "seek", "target", "risks", "goals", "should" and similar terms and phrases.

Yikes! By including these statements, the press release says don’t believe a word we’re saying. This is what happens when lawyers get in the way of PR.

Over the holiday break I read a great book by David Henderson called The Media Savvy Leader. David talks a lot about what he calls "bad habits" around these sorts of disclosures. David says that the legal people include this sort of language so the company can't be accused of lying. That's a terrible strategy if you want journalists to believe you! David suggests: "Always tell the truth and you won’t need to hide behind an attorney or safe harbor."

Question to PR people: Have you ever had a lawyer ask you to review a contract in order to remove the jargon and legal gobbledygook? I never have. So why does it happen the other way?

I was fortunate when I was VP of corporate communications for several NASDAQ publicly traded companies (before I escaped the corporate world in 2002). I had an understanding with the lawyers and we only put the safe harbor in the quarterly financial releases, but not the others. I'd recommend that you come to an understanding with your legal department and do the same.

For more on this subject, check out David's book The Media Savvy Leader. It is a terrific book because David has been a success both as a journalist and as a media-relations practitioner. He is an Emmy Award-winning former CBS network news correspondent so he knows what it is like to be a working journalist. And as a media-relations advisor and strategist, he has been responsible for such stunning successes as generating massive national media attention on little Branson, MO. And Henderson knows the online world. He writes a terrific blog and knows how online communications fits into the mix.

Weasel words, gobbledygook, jargon, buzzwords, babble, blather, and baloney

I've written about the plague of gobbledygook in business writing for several years now. I first articulated this problem in my Gobbledygook Manifesto, which provided an analysis of gobbledygook in over 388,000 press releases sent in 2006. With the help of Dow Jones we used the Dow Jones Insight product to measure the over-use of phrases like Cutting Edge, Mission Critical, Best-of-Breed, and Next Generation.

People in many organizations are aware of the problem and now actively eliminate gobbledygook. Good for you! However, sadly, ever more industry jargon is being tossed around these days.

In just ten minutes yesterday, I noticed these opening paragraphs from press releases on the wires.

HARTFORD, Conn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sep 15, 2008 - Aetna (NYSE:AET) has been awarded the prestigious "Recognizing Innovation in Multicultural Health Care Award" by the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) for its prospective randomized study to determine if a telephonic culturally competent disease management program can improve the health of African American members with hypertension. Members in the study who received culturally competent disease management outreach and educational materials achieved a higher percentage of clinically acceptable blood pressure levels, increased their frequency of self blood pressure monitoring, and greater medication compliance when compared to a control group of members who received a light support program.

AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 15 /PRNewswire/ -- Campus Advantage, a world-class student housing management and development company, today announced its partnerships with the Student Association for Voter Empowerment (SAVE) and HeadCount, a non-partisan organization dedicated to facilitating voter registration and participation through the power of music, to educate students and their advisors about available voting resources.

DALLAS and DUBLIN, Ireland, Sept. 15 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Trintech
Group Plc (Nasdaq: TTPA), a leading global provider of integrated financial governance, transaction risk management, and compliance solutions, today attended the 2008 Sibos Conference in Vienna to promote its innovative LCM Payments solution developed using Microsoft technology.

Its not just press releases of course. Buzzwords, blather, babble and baloney are everywhere: on government forms, company Web sites, owner manuals, marketing materials and so much more.

Consider these examples, which I randomly gathered in just a few minutes:

University of Virginia Darden School of Business mission statement

U.S. Food and Drug Administration Center for Veterinary Medicine Vision Statement

Verizon Commitment to Service

Gartner Says Users Are Becoming Increasingly Confused About the Issues and Solutions Surrounding Gre

The Blizzrd Group home page

I'll admit that I've fallen victim to using nonsense words myself, particularly in my former life when I was VP marketing at several public technology companies. In my case, the problem emerged because I was so focused on company insiders. Like me (at that time of my career), many people never get off their butt and get out into the marketplace to learn how people really talk so they end up using the language of their own R&D labs, CEOs, and the jargon used in conference rooms and internal meetings.

I've discovered two helpful books for those who want to eliminate the corporate-generated blather in their companies.

Death Sentences: How Clichés, Weasel Words, and Management-Speak are Strangling Public Language by Don Watson. This is a terrific overview on the problem. Watson served as the Australian prime minister's speechwriter for four years and his take on language is both hysterical and sad. He comes at the issue as someone who knows how to write, but focuses on many things he sees as an ordinary consumer of information in daily life. The book was a bestseller in Australia and is worth a read.

Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing by Mignon Fogarty. Grammar Girl is known for her popular weekly podcast that helps smart people tackle some of the most common communication mistakes. The book, like the podcast, is about making the process fun. I'm horrible when it comes to things like "who" vs. "whom." I never know if I'm supposed to write "ten" or write "10"? Hell, I have no clue. But Grammar Girl does. Her clear explanations help me to remember some of the rules. However, like plumbing, car repair, landscaping, and many other things in life, I just want to know enough to not make the big mistakes. I still call in the pros when it really matters. My editors and proofreaders are essential for making my books and magazine articles work.

These two books are very different, but get at the same issue. You can't communicate if people don't understand you.

If you're looking for a paradigm shift in your KPIs and need to benchmark your organization against best practice in generating marketing messaging statements these books are NOT for you.

However, if you want to communicate intelligently, these books are worth the investment.

How egocentric are you?

I am a huge fan of interactive tools as a way to generate a World Wide Rave (when people are talking about you and your company). The best interactive tools tend to be free, are easy to use, and provide meaningful data. And when they do all those things, people talk about them and share them.

For example, HubSpot has two great tools, Website Grader and Press Release Grader. The simple and free tools have been used to grade hundreds of thousands of sites and press releases. And tons of bloggers have talked about the tools, generating thousands of inbound links.

Last week, Douglas Karr released on his Marketing Technology Blog a Tuned In Calculator. The idea is deceptively simple. It takes your RSS feed and analyzes it for how often you use egocentric words like "we" and "our" compared to how often you talk about your readers, your buyers and their problems. As Douglas says, "If you're always talking about yourself, you may not be Tuned In!"

Here is a link to the Tuned In Calculator.

When I first tested this blog, I got a 9 (awesome). But a few days later when I tested, I scored an 8 (caring). I'll need to figure out why the difference! Maybe Douglas tweaked his algorithm yesterday.

Thanks Douglas, for taking an idea in our book Tuned In and creating such a great tool.

Grade your press release (for free!)

HubSpot's Press Release Grader is a free application that evaluates your press release and provides a "marketing effectiveness score". The score is based on the language and content of the release, plus advanced factors from Internet marketing experts at HubSpot such as links and search engine optimization characteristics.

Wow. This is such an awesome tool. You’re hearing about it here first, but my guess is that this will become a popular little application in PR circles.

Press Release Grader is totally free. All you do is copy and paste press release text into the tool, add a few other things like your company name and URL and it takes just seconds to produce a score. But you also get detailed suggestions for improvement.

Press Release Grader even checks for the gobbledygook words I identified in my Gobbledygook Manifesto. How cool is that?

You can watch a short video on the site to learn how it works.

I asked two people from HubSpot - Dharmesh Shah, Chief Software Architect & Founder and Mike Volpe, VP Marketing - why they created it.

"It's unclear whether press releases are effective these days. But, if you're going to be creating press releases and putting them on the web, you might as well get the most value you can out of them," says Dharmesh Shah. "Press Release Grader checks to see if you're (generally) doing the right things. It was created with the same general motivation as our popular WebsiteGrader.com tool. Help people get a quick sense for where they're deviating from best practices. Press Release Grader will not make your press releases more interesting -- but it will hopefully give you some quick tips for getting more value out of them."

"The best way to grow your business today is through inbound marketing – creating remarkable content targeted at your buyer personas, and enabling them to share that content with others," says Mike Volpe. "We have no idea if Press Release Grader will be a big hit, but under the new rules of inbound marketing, you act more like a publisher - create lots of content knowing that some smaller portion of it will be a big success."

If you write press releases, you need to check this out.

(Also note what a great viral marketing concept Press Release Grader is for HubSpot).

Disclosure: I am on HubSpot's board of advisors and I am speaking at the HubSpot Inbound Marketing Conference in September.

The dumbest Public Relations person in the world?

Readers of this blog know that I get hundreds of unsolicited press releases and PR pitches every week. I'm on a bunch of lists because of this blog, my books, and the magazines I write for. Ugh.

I've said before that almost all the crap I get from PR agencies is spam: A broadcast email message sent to a huge number of journalists with the hope that some poor sucker on deadline and will give in and write.

- No, I do not want to buy Viag*ra.

- No, I do not care one bit about the press release announcing version 3.1 (beta) of your flexible, scalable, mission-critical, next generation product.

- No I do not want to share in the $20,000,000 (twenty million US dollars only) that your now dead husband, the former oil minister of Nigeria, had stashed away.

- No, I will not talk to the CEO of your client who has graciously made time next Thursday to speak to reporters about the company’s new initiatives in the dog food business.

[Editorial note: If you have something to say to me personally, great. Please send it. My email is public. You can also reach me on Facebook or Twitter. I do write about things sent to me in my books and on this blog. But it needs to be an idea that you send just to me. Please don’t spam me.]

OK, so let's get to what may be the dumbest PR person in the world...

Yesterday I get a press release sent via email. It's typical – some technology product that is so obscure and inconsequential that nobody, not even Geekster Weekly News would care about.

1. The subject line of the email reads: "News Release: [XYZ Company] enhances line of [blah blah]"

2. The email starts out: "[XYZ Company] is pleased to announce…"

3. Then there is a bunch of jargon-laden, hype-driven nonsense.

4. The sender then says: "Feel free to contact me if you would like more information or images to supplement this story."

5. Then the entire poorly written, gobbledygook-filled press release is pasted into the email.

So far, the release follows the standard (but ineffective) old-school PR agency playbook.

But then this is at the end of the email:

"PRIVILEGED & CONFIDENTIAL- WITHOUT PREJUDICE. Confidentiality Message. This e-mail message is confidential, may be privileged and is intended for the exclusive use of the addressee. Any other person is strictly prohibited from disclosing, distributing or reproducing it. If the addressee cannot be reached or is unknown to you, please inform the sender by return e-mail immediately and delete this e-mail message and destroy all copies. Thank you."

Holy cow!!

Here's some PR spam that has obviously been sent to thousands of journalists (because I got it and I have never once written about this stuff I know it is spam). But the sender says that the recipient of the spam email cannot disclose it. Huh?

You invade my email box with your crap.

You send an identical message to thousands of others.

You want me to write about your stuff.

Then you say that I cannot disclose the information because it is confidential and sent just to me?

WTF?

PRWeb in Plain English: Promoting the solar toaster

PRWeb just released a well-done YouTube video describing why and how companies should publish online news releases. Interesting that this video, which is a little over two minutes long, says most of the things that I said in my ebook The New Rules of PR but it took me 22 pages to say the same thing. My ebook has been downloaded 250,000 times. I wouldn't be surprised to see the numbers of views of this video climb to those levels.

This is worth a watch for beginning users of online news releases to reach buyers as well as experts. It tells the story of a company that "invented the first solar toaster" and how a news release (from PRWeb of course) helps them get the word out.

Nice job PRWeb: One social media company using the services of another social media company to tell a story in a new and interesting way. The new rules in action!

Tip of the hat to HRMarketer for finding this.

Disclosure: I delivered a paid keynote speech at the Vocus / PRWeb user conference in June 2007.

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.

Sun Microsystems shakes up traditional disclosure by announcing its financial results via the Web and RSS first, then via press release

Yesterday evening after the close of Wall Street trading, Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ: SUNW) reported results for its fourth quarter and full fiscal year, which ended June 30, 2007.

But Sun made the announcement in a new way, releasing the news first via the company IR website and RSS feeds and then ten minutes later through a news release sent to one of the press release distribution services.

While this may seem to be a small and obscure change, it signals that Sun takes Web dissemination of information very seriously. I think it also reveals to interested people (media, analysts, customers, and employees) that if you really want to know what’s going on at Sun, the most timely and comprehensive information is available on the Sun site, Sun RSS feeds, and via Sun employee bloggers.

Wow!

After talking for years about how and why marketers and PR professionals need to think like a publisher and create Web content that people want to consume, Sun provides a great example.

Jonathan Schwartz, chief executive officer and president of Sun Microsystems, announced the move on his blog in a post called Truly Fair Disclosure. Schwartz writes: "We will announce our results to the general public via Sun's IR web site before making that same information available through the third party news services that traditionally distribute such information to paying subscribers."

Neil Hershberg, Senior Vice President, Global Media at Business Wire jumped in with a blog post titled SUN'S SOLAR ECLIPSE: A Return to the Dark Age of Disclosure. Hershberg writes: "Sun’s decision to disclose via the web and RSS feeds, followed by broad wire delivery, is disclosure deja vu–a return to the bad old days before Reg FD made an earnest attempt to level the playing field."

In another twist to what this means for disclosure, Newstex, a company that distributes news and blog feeds to companies and third party information services such as LexisNexis announced that it will deliver the earnings release directly by taking it first via Sun's RSS feeds. Since Newstes also distributes PR Newswire, Larry Schwartz, Newstex President (no relation to Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz) writes on his blog the obvious, that some people will receive the news twice: "Newstex will import Sun's Earning Release via Sun's RSS Feed and then distribute it in real time to our customers who receive the Newstex Press Release newsfeeds. Thus our customers will receive it in real time from Sun and then 10 minutes later from Sun via PR Newswire."

I think Sun's move is a brilliant one. I disagree that it is a move backwards in disclosure for a simple reason: Anybody can have access to Sun's RSS feeds directly (or via services like Newstex) just like anyone can have access to PR Newswire, Business Wire, and the other news release dissemination services. The bad old days of disclosure were when select Wall Street analysts got news first, leaving the average investor in the dark. This is different.

However, I do think it is critical that any company who wishes to follow Sun's lead and deliver important information via the Web and RSS ALWAYS use a news release distribution service in addition. Why? Because in order to get the news into Yahoo Finance, Google News, and many other places that people go for timely news and information you must send the press release to one of the wire services.

So while the Sun case example is certainly an important milestone, I don't think it signals danger to the news release wires. In fact I think the opposite is true. As I've said for years, news release wires are a fantastic way for companies to reach people directly because tens of millions of regular people (who are not journalists) read news releases directly via Google News, Yahoo News, vertical market sites and alerting systems.

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Disclosures:
1. I am on the Newstex board of advisors and provide marketing strategy services to the company.
2. I participated on a Webinar and other marketing-related initiatives with PR Newswire and I have delivered presentations for user groups and done other promotional work for several other press release distribution companies.