Lately I’ve been noticing an unlikely contender for New Business Buzz Word: around. Like a bodysnatcher, this little word has been subtly taking the place of most other prepositions.
Usually, business buzz words are a bit more spectacular. I mean, Around doesn’t really hold a candle to bleeding edge, impactful, or ping. But around has moxie—it can take out most other prepositions with extreme prejudice.What makes around such a buzz word badass is its ability to create instant jargon, language that suggests that the speaker has a specialized knowledge that the reader/listener does not know. Here’s an example:”We need some more dialogue around this new project.” What the speaker really wants to say is “We need some more dialogue about this new project.” But around gives this run-of-the-mill sentence a whiff of jargon: There’s something special and important going on and we’re not quite sure what it is.
This reminds me of the old Miller beer ad campaign focused around on “cold-filtered,” which was the big selling point of Miller’s Genuine Draft beer.
My fellow scholars and I did a lot of research on the Genuine Draft offering, and we never really knew what the “cold-filtered” thing was all about, but it sounded good: pure and cold—that’s what you want in a beer, right? Unfortunately, my late night Miller studies also led to my keen interest in other brands, like Excedrin and Pepto-Bismol, but that’s another post.
Marketers: Use your jargon selectively. At its best, it can be effective language and hint at some important qualities of a product or service with just a few, choice words. But when the desire to create fascination and mystique starts to seep into your daily use of prepositions, such as around, watch out—you might be diluting the power of your language rather than making it stronger.
See you around,
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