Marketing mumbo-jumbo is the real barrier to learning digital
For a generation of reporters in the 1970s, Harold Evans, the former editor of Britain’s Sunday Times, was regarded as one of the greatest journalists of his generation, with his crusading style of investigative articles exposing scandals around the victims of pregnancy drug thalidomide, Soviet spies or challenging the official secrets act.
Today, not slowed in his 90th year, Evans has turned his ire towards an arguably more monstrous beast – the world of business buzzwords, bullshit and office mumbo-jumbo.
Russ Easther teaches Mumbrella’s new Digital Essentials course
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‘… simple concepts disguised by baffling terminology.’
Complex is easy, simple is hard.
Sounds like DataXu needs a new PR agency, or the agency needs to push back harder on the client, that’s what they’re being paid for.
Bullshit words make up for nothing new. It’s just direct marketing with pixels
Well said.
Can’t remember who it was who said, ‘Good writing is not about making the writer look clever. It’s about making the reader feel clever.’
No one wants to work hard to read sales, marketing and PR. Make it easy for them. Use a copywriter who knows what a readability index is. Or use one yourself.
I wouldn’t say that the press release is that hard to understand – Dataxu has a new product, available through their dsp, uses grapeshot (the name of a company) to deliver contextual targeting in safe environments. GDPR is a universal acronym relating to data regulations – calling that jargon is like calling ASIC, WHO or UN jargon.
Just like in finance, the marketing golden rule applies – by over complicating things we came off as more intelligent.
This is how so many professions preserve their status – exclusionary jargon.
The article would be far more convincing if it were not an undisguised attempt to sign people up for a Mumbrella seminar.
Decrying mumbo-jumbo and at the same time flogging a course to decipher said mumbo-jumbo is rather disingenuous.
Oh, and the Dave Trott article linked to is actually about the ability of liars to brazen it out if they are convincing enough.
Something you may wish to consider.
I agree. I think dataxu got treated a bit harshly there.
Where the release suffers is simply being too dense, with too many elongated brand names. That said, contextual pre-bid targeting is a pretty convoluted little phrase that could do with simplifying.
Why even have a digital essentials course? Why not just a communication essentials course? The whole subdivision of “digital” is just an another example of the waffle. (The fundamental rules apply: always, and forever, and regardless of what we’re calling it this year.)
In any case, I suspect the use of marketing gibberish is a shibboleth that identifies you to others as a like-minded person who operates entirely within the system that substitutes process for product.
Moreover, it’s a sign of submission; especially to those who hold the keys to the thing you are trying to attain or maintain… a job, a promotion, an account etc.
Thing is, Dave Trott actually did do a piece on jargon: https://staging.mumbrella.com.au/advertising-jargon-has-become-smokescreen-for-people-who-dont-know-what-theyre-doing-490157
Case of a wrong link, Mumbrella?
Good spot. Yes, it was the wrong link, which I have now updated. Thanks all.