Kibbe on Marketing: Jargon, Shmargon

What do you make of this?:

“…leading provider of voice and data infrastructure solutions, including softswitch and session border control products …”

Or this?”

“…enables customers to virtualize and migrate file data to support initiatives such as technology refresh, tiering, consolidation, capacity balancing, optimization and archiving – locally or to the cloud…”

I’m sure they mean something to somebody, but deep, technical phraseology won’t help most of us run-of-the-mill editors in trying to decide whether to use the release.

Here’s a very simple truth of how to capture the interest of an editor: Don’t use jargon. At best, it’s confusing, and at worst, it’s pompous.

Granted, while I culled these examples from press release blast sites, they are indicative of many of the releases I received as an editor. These really aren’t so bad, but they do contain a quite a bit of jargon. Over the years, I received a few releases that were so loaded with industry buzz words, I couldn’t even figure out what they were about. Naturally, I rejected them.

Certainly, some marketers of very specialized companies are working specifically in a niche trade and their releases aren’t really meant for mass consumption. Fine. Jargon away, but don’t send that release to a general publication. One size -- or in this case, release -- doesn’t fit all. Remember your audience and rewrite the release as necessary.

Compare the above to these:

“…a technology leader in the discovery of fully human antibodies…”

“…has just introduced A Really Neat Product, an intuitive new tool that empowers end-users to test their own files…”

These examples are from two companies with highly complex technologies, but their marketers made quite clear who they are and what they do.

When writing a pitch, marketers should have one of their grandparents read it. If they understand it, it’s probably good to go. OK, so I’m being a bit facetious on the knowledge of marketers and editors (and grandparents for that matter), but you get my point.

If sending a release to a more general publication, even one focused solely on business, ease up or eliminate jargon. Unnecessary obfuscation will deem the release worthy material for obsolescence management.



Cindy Kibbe, an editor for a New England business publication for nearly a decade, can be reached at cindykibbe@comcast.net.