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December 20, 2006

Buzzword Bingo

I once had a coworker who sent "Friday Humor" e-mails each week. This is back in the early days of the Internet when those jokes were still fresh. Once before a company-wide meeting he created a "Buzzword Bingo" page and passed it around to a few of us quietly. I played a little game of buzzword bingo in a meeting today, and if "differentiator" was in every cell, I definitely won. It was said (not by me) no less than 10 times. I also got a head start during an interview yesterday. "Differentiator" may be the word of the week, but there's others. Do I need to mention a few? Paradigm, Web 2.0, buzz, relevancy, effectiveness, impactful, and one personal favorite phrase overused by boss at a previous job: "low hanging fruit."

Warning: Whether in a briefing, internal meeting, or sitting around the dinner table, overuse of these words causes them to lose their "effectiveness." Yes, I used a buzzword, it's OK, sparingly. When we talk to companies, it's our job to hear about a product, service, or event and cut out all the jargon. Very often these words don't make it into our articles, and sometimes at the expense of an otherwise insightful quote.

Posted by Enid Burns at December 20, 2006 3:04 PM

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