We Aren’t the Only One’s Calling BS on Jargon

Could we be at a BS tipping point? If Xerox’s new marketing campaign is any indication, we might just be. In the ads, a businessman is overwhelmed by a flurry of marketing jargon thrown at him from all directions while Harry Nilsson’s Everybody’s Talking At Me plays in the background. The payoff? There is a better way to work, free of all the jargon.

If you’ve seen our Calling BS series, you’ll know we’re not big fans of jargon, so we certainly welcome the new campaign. And as it targeted squarely at the business community, with print ads from the campaign running in Forbes and The Wall Street Journal, it’s likely that a significant portion of businesspeople may be tipped into the post-jargon world.

Raymond James, with their “Cautious Hat Maker” campaign present a similar idea—further indicating that there might be a growing feeling of too much marketing BS in the air. In their ad, a cautious hat maker does not follow the trendy, buzz-worthy hat designs of the day and instead sticks to timeless hat designs. In the end, everyone’s hat business goes bust but his.

If we are at a BS tipping point, might we be on the verge of a very real economic bubble bursting? It’s almost certain that our economy features more than a few firms based on a house of BS cards.