Business Clichés and Unoriginal Marketing

I was reading one of my favorite marketing blogs, Seth Godin’s and came across this gem.  It is his complication of business clichés

They are fun to read, because we all use them and hear them everyday. We all know empty-suit types who live on these clichés, and would have nothing to say without them.  Seth feels people use empty clichés to avoid the truth and well, lie. I look at it a differently and think that people use them because they are easy and require no thinking.  It is easier to mail in a comment with a cliché than actually think originally and use the language as it was meant to be used. 

I’ll take this list one step further—nothing gets to me more than when these clichés are used in marketing and ad copy. It is painful to see phrases like: “A leading provider of”, “seamless integration”, “best of breed”, “value add” in an ad or Web page. When marketers take the easy and unoriginal route, they are saying nothing of substance, and not creating a meaningful dialog with customers and prospects. You have invested a great deal of money to get a prospect to come to your site or read your ad; so you need to say something meaningful with that opportunity. It is always harder to be original, but the rewards are worth it.

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