This is quite a clever piece of marketing: a campaign to banish cliches from B2B marketing.

IAS, a marketing agency, has set-up a site called 101 cliches that invites readers to submit the worst offenders and vote on those already up.  Connected up through social media channels this could be quite a hit as it asks for participation and is fun.

It is heartfelt for me as I cannot stand stock photography – are so many work forces repulsive enough to buy dull bland images rather than expose them to the public? – I really think it is insulting and poor marketing as you want to see who you are going to be working with: we can all spot stock photography.  I have commented on this before on this site.

(The image is number two of worst offenders at present).

Anyway have fun and thanks to Dr Dave Chaffey – who won’t remember me contacting him in 2000 when he was a marketing lecturer and I worked at Congress, a sales and marketing agency for US Internet businesses looking to get into European markets; I can’t think what my question was about exactly or even inexactly, but Dave was helpful.  Thanks for the tweet.

Mick Greer, a Manchester based advertising copywriter, mentioned a new concept today: digital ghost towns.

(I suspect digital media professionals like Simon Wharton are familiar with this term and I am just pre-empting a comment to that effect).

Digital ghost towns are big corporate websites that are essentially static and dull and receive far fewer visitors than they should.

Mick referred to the Scamp blog, written by a creative from advertising giants BBH, which gives some light on the subject.  But better still there are two awful examples of companies with powerful budgets producing static unengaging sites that are mentioned: Budweiser and Texaco.

Scamp actually mentions BudTV, but I came across the Budweiser UK site first, which I have linked to above and is duller.  I guess it doesn’t help that I like real ale and view Budweiser, Fosters, Carling, Strongbow as tasteless mass produced piss.  Sorry I put it like that, I should be harsher.

The thing that gets me is that content, whether traditional PR, online PR or digital media or pieces that cross over,  is king.  Of course the distinction is not always clear nor can it be most of the time.

I believe we will see more businesses using their web more constructively, especially if we have to fight harder for business.

But there will still be plenty of digital ghost towns, or should I say villages, populating the web for small enterprises that need to punch above their weight in the harder times we have now.

David Brent would be relieved to hear that office speak is alive and well.

The BBC has a funny, perhaps frightening, top 50 supplied by workers who are suffering such torment and had to speak out.

My favourites are :

“The business-speak that I abhor is pre-prepare and forward planning. Is there any other kind of preparedness or planning?”  Edward Creswick, well done you are on my blog.

“The expression that drives me nuts is 110%, usually said to express passion/commitment/support by people who are not very good at maths. This has created something of a cliche-inflation, where people are now saying 120%, 200%, or if you are really REALLY committed, 500%. I remember once the then-chancellor Gordon Brown saying he was 101% behind Tony Blair, to which people reacted ‘What? Only 101?’”
Ricardo Molina, don’t watch The Apprentice it might be too much.

(By the way one of the “idgits” on the show wanted a simbiotic relationship with Sir Alan, that is a mutually advantageous association).

“We too used to have daily paradigm shifts, now we have stakeholders who must come to the party or be left out, or whatever.”
Barry Hicks

“Until recently I had to suffer working for a manager who used phrases such as the idiotic I’ve got you in my radar in her speech, letters and e-mails. Once, when I mentioned problems with the phone system, she screamed ‘NO! You don’t have problems, you have challenges’. At which point I almost lost the will to live.”
Stephen Gradwick

“Holistic”, “leverage” and “synergy” are my bugbears.

Still, it is not an new problem.  I would strongly recommend this piece by the great pamphleteer George Orwell who records some clumsy and turgid prose and gives suggestions how to express yourself clearly.  Is there any better teacher?