One of the greatest joys in building a marketing campaign is looking at the product, and trying to come up with words that truly exemplify the experience the customer will have with the product. Unfortunately, there is a tendency to return to the same well, and pull out several of the same words. There are plenty of lists out there of overused advertising buzzwords, and we aren’t going to make another one.
Instead of creating a similar list, what we are going to do is help you become more descriptive. If you click on this link, you will find an excel spreadsheet to download. Once you download it, you will see that there are six bingo cards filled out with words pulled from a list of 100 most overused words in Press Releases.
This is one game of Bingo you don’t really want to win.
If you’re reviewing your soon-to-be-released PR package, and it stands a chance of winning a game, you have too many buzzwords. This means that there is a good chance the average reader of your release will immediately think “Sales” and Pitch your copy directly into the cylindrical file.
The solution is to look at each of those buzz words, and examine them from the customer’s point of view. Domino’s Pizza’s brand image relaunch would have gone horribly, if they had said, “Domino’s crust is New And Improved”. Instead, what caught the general public’s attention was “Domino’s crust is cardboard and no one likes it.” Then, they explained that it was new, and improved. The fact that the buzzwords were implied, and not surrounded by bright flashing lights, made this campaign a huge success.
Writing smarter doesn’t mean use bigger, better buzzwords. It means connecting with your audience more effectively, so they have a better understanding. Write in a way that illustrates to the reader that you care about their needs, and are here to serve them, not just to WOW them.
(buzzwords for the cards were taken from a great blog, listed here:http://www.adamsherk.com/public-relations/most-overused-press-release-buzzwords)
