Everyone knows that if you want to sound impressive, you must optimise your utilisation of buzzwords. Today, I’m going to take you through some examples of writing that will impact you like a slap to the face with the sheer robustness of their commitment to innovative buzzword utilisation optimisation.
Let’s start with this copy from an ad for an educational institution. The brief, we can only assume, was to cram as many clichés into one sentence as possible – and I think you’ll agree that they NAILED it.
Job ads are always linguistically optimised too, so identifying the buzzwords in them is like shooting fish in a barrel. As a fun exercise, see how many lifeless, bloated, bullet-ridden fish you can find in this barrel.
You’ll notice that both of these examples have featured the word ‘innovative’. This is a crucial lesson (sorry, I mean learning). Whatever you’re writing about, it must be innovative. Cars, watches, soap, toilet paper. You name it. It’s innovative.
But if you want to take things to another level, try pairing up ‘innovative’ with the all-purpose ‘solutions’.
Annoyingly, you can’t always limit yourself to adjectives when you’re writing. Sometimes you need a noun. That’s when you use ‘innovation’. (But don’t forget to keep ‘solutions’ in there too.)
In some situations, however, a single mention of innovation is simply too subtle. And two ‘innovations’ may not have the requisite impactfulness either. So if you’re in any doubt whatsoever, mention innovation five times. Yes, you heard me: five.
Now that you’ve mastered the use of ‘innovation’, you can put it into what we call a ‘buzzword salad’. Throw everything in there, and be sure to give it a good toss. Be the Champion of Buzzwords.
But if you really want to be a buzzpreneur, you need to create your own buzzwords (a process called ‘taking ownership’). Stuck for inspiration? Simply take a word that already exists, and add ‘ification’ on the end. Like this…
Need more advanced learnification about writing? Give us a buzz.
By Ryan Wallman, Head of Copy at Wellmark.
Connect with me on LinkedIn
For more buzzwords and bull, try:
Dr Ryan Wallman,
Executive Creative Director at Wellmark.
Connect with me on LinkedIn
