Plain English vs. verbose junk

Every day I read marketing material from other companies. What never ceases to amaze me is the total lack of content in some of their blurbs. Regardless of what they are trying to sell you, whether it is a service or a tangible product they seem to think that “more is better”, ie. if you can say it 10 words then it will probably sound even better in 30 words or more. Shove in a few superlatives for good measure, regardless of whether they actually enrich the content or not. I touched on this “marketing madness” a few months ago.
This evening I was reading over a preview of a new site. It was a really frustrating experience for me as I was familiar with their services and would have no qualms about recommending them to people. However if the new site’s content had been the deciding factor in choosing them for our own business then we would never have bought anything from them.
The other thing that is causing me much amusement at present is some of the IT press releases. I know that we all need to issue press statements and that at times they may not be the most newsworthy, but some of the recent ones I’ve read have been real gems.
One company contradicts their own website in a press release – nothing like consistency, while others manage to spin the most insignificant of events to new levels. I suppose I should congratulate them on one level, but I can’t help laughing at the same time.
Ah well. It’s only business 🙂