Andrew I love your writing and I've been reading your stuff for years, but the sheer amount of grammatical mistakes in this piece was so distracting I quit halfway through. I don't think I'm being nitpicky, just a single proofread would have eliminated most of these.
I agree with the argument against corpospeak, but there's a flaw in this argument: marketers are your strawman, but they're not only at fault for corpospeak.
Legal, exec's themselves, and office politics all play a role. Creativity is often stifled to ensure it doesn't upset LPs, draw too much attention for "the wrong reasons," or upset the team lead "who owns" the output.
That's a good point. Maybe "corpospeak" is what you get when you look in the center of a million overlapping Venn diagrams. This is marketing reducto ad absurdem.
Corpospeak is intended to be dehumanizing. It's fun to talk to some corpobro dork by using profanity and slang and watch him be irritated at having zero of his own communicative freedom. The robot crap just doesn't hold a candle to organic, authentic communication.
This piece resonated with me except I was surprised to see “Quantity beats quality.” Quality seems paramount, always, as a first principle (no?!). I’ve seen the mentality of “something is better than nothing” result in subpar work.
"Finally, thank you for your time. We hope you enjoyed this content and that it reflects our innovative and thought-provoking values. You are sincerely appreciated in this regard. :)"
I'm the longtime CPO at Intercom and am now running most of Marketing where I'm completely changing how we work and what we do. I have a lot of thoughts on the future of marketing :) I wrote them up at the link below.
A lot of consistency with your post. I have 6 big changes.
I believe there is a version of this post for every organization in a company. There is a flight to safety and a fear of making mistakes that drives this behavior for marketers, sales, engineers and even office managers. You highlight founder led companies to combat this in marketing but the cultures they create can permeate across the business and build confidence to swim upstream with more confidence.
- The protocol droids in legal have an outsized influence on external communications. One of the examples in this article has cost his companies millions in legal and regulatory fees. The language of marketing communications is crafted to prevent this.
- Most people are absolutely atrocious communicators. They can’t even communicate with their domestic partners or their colleagues. In the tech sector, not being able to communicate with others is often seen as a badge of honor. You can’t have those people communicating with the public.
Execuspeak is an evolutionary, not an engineered, development. It’s a highly specialized defensive adaptation that can’t change unless the environment changes. Considering how tech now relies on legal means as much as on innovation to drive growth, language that minimizes liability is more important than ever.
I would add to the list of recommended practices: Never use new slang words and expressions such as "trad" to try to sound young and clever. Corpospeak has been around forever, and marketing agencies have long been focused on liberating their messaging from such sclerosis. These days, as has always been true, throwing in the occasional "sus" or "trad" is like waving a "trying too hard" flag. Skilled creators have a better ear for real authenticity.
AI is enabling workflow-first content creation. But those workflows and the human wisdom therein have the potential to shrink the gap between builders and audiences.
Andrew, curious, Gary Vaynerchuk obviously saw all this coming and has shaped the transition for some of the biggest brands in the world at Vayner Media, where do you see that work within the network you’re describing?
Andrew I love your writing and I've been reading your stuff for years, but the sheer amount of grammatical mistakes in this piece was so distracting I quit halfway through. I don't think I'm being nitpicky, just a single proofread would have eliminated most of these.
Comes with being authentic :)
I agree with the argument against corpospeak, but there's a flaw in this argument: marketers are your strawman, but they're not only at fault for corpospeak.
Legal, exec's themselves, and office politics all play a role. Creativity is often stifled to ensure it doesn't upset LPs, draw too much attention for "the wrong reasons," or upset the team lead "who owns" the output.
That's a good point. Maybe "corpospeak" is what you get when you look in the center of a million overlapping Venn diagrams. This is marketing reducto ad absurdem.
Corpospeak is intended to be dehumanizing. It's fun to talk to some corpobro dork by using profanity and slang and watch him be irritated at having zero of his own communicative freedom. The robot crap just doesn't hold a candle to organic, authentic communication.
This piece resonated with me except I was surprised to see “Quantity beats quality.” Quality seems paramount, always, as a first principle (no?!). I’ve seen the mentality of “something is better than nothing” result in subpar work.
Hilarious:
"Finally, thank you for your time. We hope you enjoyed this content and that it reflects our innovative and thought-provoking values. You are sincerely appreciated in this regard. :)"
This is excellent Andrew.
I'm the longtime CPO at Intercom and am now running most of Marketing where I'm completely changing how we work and what we do. I have a lot of thoughts on the future of marketing :) I wrote them up at the link below.
A lot of consistency with your post. I have 6 big changes.
1 Adaptable beats Consistent
2 Fast beats Approved
3 Raw beats Polished
4 Show beats Tell
5 Public beats Private
6 Technical beats Simplified
https://fin.ai/ideas/marketing-in-an-ai-world/
It's a new world.
+1000. Really enjoyed this.
I believe there is a version of this post for every organization in a company. There is a flight to safety and a fear of making mistakes that drives this behavior for marketers, sales, engineers and even office managers. You highlight founder led companies to combat this in marketing but the cultures they create can permeate across the business and build confidence to swim upstream with more confidence.
Execuspeak is the natural outcome of two forces.
- The protocol droids in legal have an outsized influence on external communications. One of the examples in this article has cost his companies millions in legal and regulatory fees. The language of marketing communications is crafted to prevent this.
- Most people are absolutely atrocious communicators. They can’t even communicate with their domestic partners or their colleagues. In the tech sector, not being able to communicate with others is often seen as a badge of honor. You can’t have those people communicating with the public.
Execuspeak is an evolutionary, not an engineered, development. It’s a highly specialized defensive adaptation that can’t change unless the environment changes. Considering how tech now relies on legal means as much as on innovation to drive growth, language that minimizes liability is more important than ever.
I hate corpospeak and the general corporatization of the company with growth.
Like the topic but the writing bears the hallmark style of AI still. I've shared with a senior creative friend nevertheless.
I would add to the list of recommended practices: Never use new slang words and expressions such as "trad" to try to sound young and clever. Corpospeak has been around forever, and marketing agencies have long been focused on liberating their messaging from such sclerosis. These days, as has always been true, throwing in the occasional "sus" or "trad" is like waving a "trying too hard" flag. Skilled creators have a better ear for real authenticity.
This was a timely reflection.
AI is enabling workflow-first content creation. But those workflows and the human wisdom therein have the potential to shrink the gap between builders and audiences.
Andrew, curious, Gary Vaynerchuk obviously saw all this coming and has shaped the transition for some of the biggest brands in the world at Vayner Media, where do you see that work within the network you’re describing?
Love this. Thank you.