Welcome to our new website. We hope you like it.
We’ve spent a while developing the look and feel of it, even longer coming up with the content. We’re used to writing for other people but when it comes to writing about ourselves…
How exactly do you pin down what it is that you do? What words do you use to define yourself? There’s a lot of pressure when your website is your shop-window – how do you convince someone that you know what you’re doing without coming across smug or cocky or desperate?
Like any creative profession, much of our work is born out of experience and instinct, which can be difficult to articulate. It’s incredibly easy to fall back on jargon and cliché. In our industry there are certain words that are bandied about so frequently that all their meaning has been worn away. Here are a few:
Integrated
Juxtaposition
Innovation-led
Solutions
Forward-thinking
Passionate
Holistic
One-stop-shop
Fusing
Paradigm
Bespoke
Real-time
Platform
Redefining
Pro-active
Once you’ve got a stockpile of these impressive sounding words, it’s easy to link a few of them together to form sentences:
Zammerchat is an innovation-led agency offering a bespoke, fully integrated service to redefine the paradigms of your business.
or
We are passionate about providing holistic, forward-thinking solutions to ensure that your company is pro-active across real-time platforms.
A phrase like that might fill the tricky ‘about us’ section, but what does it actually mean?
These types of ready-made phrases show that you haven’t searched hard enough for the right words – they’re quick, easy, vague and ultimately lazy. By using them you might save yourself some mental anguish but you sacrifice precision and clarity.
Words should be picked for their meaning and imagery should be used to enhance that meaning. It’s not enough to say that you’re ‘innovation-led’ or that you offer ‘bespoke solutions’ – if you’re putting yourself forward as a creative agency, these things should be pretty obvious already.
In writing this website we made every effort to ensure that we were thinking clearly about who we are and what we do. That’s why, when we were writing this site, we banned every word on the above list.
If you happen to spot one we’ve missed or you come across any other hackneyed turn of phrase that gets on your nerves, please let us know. We’ll add it to our list.
Leverage!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
going-forward
going-forward Zammerchat’s integrated innovation led approach is a one-stop-shop pro-actively redefining bespoke real-time platform solutions by fusing a juxtaposition of forward-thinking, holisitic and passionate paradigms.
You can see who taught Sophie how to write
Going-forward we will use our leverage to put your words on the list.
Simon, post us a clichéd sentence with ‘leverage’ in and you’ll get a pint on us.
Mark & Soph
Getting it wrong is not an option – it is vital to select an advisory partner with the knowledge to deliver and a business model based on expert advice, not leverage of an expensive bench.
Now I feel really guilty. I stole that. It’s a cut and paste job . . . it’s just . . . I don’t know what it means. Soz.
(See how low I’ll stoop for a free pint)
Stakeholders – why would anyone want to conjure up visions of cloaked men with pointy sticks? And users. Normally associated with people with substance abuse issues.
“Brand Disintermediation” I first heard this phrase when researching for my dissertation. Two weeks ago I heard it again @VisionBristol 2011. I still think it is unlikely that anyone in the audience knew what it meant…
First seen context of use: “In our increasingly networked and wireless society, brand disintermediation can only intensify. If your new, networked manse comes with a “smart” refrigerator that talks to your supermarket and manages to get the milk delivered, you’re not likely to change that refrigerator.”
That’s a brilliant one, we’ve not heard anything like that before.
Definitely going on the list.