Buzzwords – Digital Marketing Mumbo Jumbo

The next time you see the need to integrate mobile, social, and real-time channels, or personalize customer engagements by all means do it. Just don’t rely on buzzwords to tell everyone what you are going to do.

According to Jennifer Chatman, a management professor at the University of California-Berkley Haas School of Business, people use buzzwords “as a substitute for thinking hard and clearly about their goals and the direction they want to give others.”

Surveys canvassing workers’ views have identified the use of buzzwords as a major irritant. Junior executives and office workers in particular feel intimidated and excluded by superiors’ obscure and pretentious language. They also suspect that this is often employed to conceal incompetence, or disguise unpalatable decisions.

You don’t need to use buzzwords to build walls or exclude people when you’re confident in your message. Confidence in your message, generates a passion and pursuit for everyone to understand.

More critical than “talking the talk” of digital marketing and technology, is the ability to walk the business through which of the myriad strategies in these areas will properly apply to its specific goals and core competencies.