High-Tech Tower of Babel (
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The industry's penchant for creating new marketing terms and relying on acronyms that multiply like rabbits in springtime is confusing customers.Until recently, you might have thought an "ecosystem" had something to do with rain forests. But that was before IT vendors claimed the term as their own. Now it has become part of an impenetrable forest of jargon that vendors use to deliver a message intended to sell products and services—ultimately often confusing the customer.
And the fastest-growing market segment—small and midsize businesses—doesn't have the expertise or the time to figure out what all the jargon means.
"It's a problem," said Corey McFadden, managing partner at Philadelphia-based VAR Infradapt. "It creates a bit of a challenge for us. We have to spend more time and effort."
McFadden said it's a front-to-back problem, from the marketing materials designed to promote a product to the instruction manuals that come with it after the deal closes. He blames the problem on rapidly growing companies that hire marketing professionals with little technology knowledge.
"They create brochures that are completely baffling to even the best engineers," he said. "This can torpedo their chances in the market. And it forces us to produce our own marketing materials."
Translation services
This high-tech Babel puts vars in the position of acting as a translator between vendor marketing-speak and customers, according to some in the channel. Customer want to know: Exactly what does this product do? Why should we care? And what are the real benefits to the user or the business?
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Vendors and VARs that don't do a good job of explaining these things stand to lose. After all, how hard will a potential customer work to extract that information from a VAR or vendor before giving up?
Not very, said David Yewman, a consultant on a Sisyphus-like mission to change how marketers tell their stories. Armed with just a video camera, Yewman, the president of Dash Consulting in Vancouver, Wash., travels the country videotaping executives as they talk about their products and their companies. Usually, once these executives see and hear themselves talking, they are converted into clear talkers—cured of what Yewman calls "leading provider syndrome," or, in this age of acronyms, LPS.
"Look at all the press releases and see if you can find a provider that is not a 'leading provider,'" Yewman said. "It has become a sickness. It is like a corporate cancer. Me and my video camera are the antidote." And the two encourage the anecdote rather than the buzzwords.
Yewman has worked with some big names, including Microsoft, distributor Ingram Micro, sporting goods giant Adidas and CNet Networks, as well as a raft of other companies, helping them create messages that are accessible and even entertaining to their audiences.
"As one of my clients put it, 'Videotape is ugly, but it works,'" said Yewman, recounting a Microsoft executive's encounter with his video camera.
Yewman encourages executives to tell stories about their products rather than reduce their corporate messages into boring sound bites. For example, a "multichannel golf retailer" became "like a candy store for golfers."
But Yewman has his work cut out for him, with plenty of potential customers to keep him and his partner busy for centuries.
Uncomfortably numb
From a VAR perspective, the language problem is so widespread that many in the channel scarcely notice it anymore. Most of the VARs contacted by eWeek Strategic Partner for this story have grown so accustomed to high tech's indecipherable language and the need to translate vendor-produced marketing material that they spend little time thinking about it as a problem. Rather, it has become just another task to be performed on automatic pilot, such as brushing your teeth.
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