Shades of the dot com run-up! I haven't heard such great marketing-speak since the spring of 2000! The folks at X-rite have out lingo-ed the best of them...
Yesterday, the Michigan-based company announced their Q4 and year end results for 2006. X-rite appears to show improvement pretty much across the board for Q4 over Q3, yet their results for the fiscal year 2006 took some hard knocks from M&A activity. Divestiture and integration of business units can be expensive! It seems the contorted terminology the company used to explain the increased costs and losses is natural for company "spokespersons"...
From yesterday's announcement we get these creative phrases - in order of best use of marketing-speak:
- "... our revenue performance in Q4 was impacted by integration related disruptions as we prioritized cost synergy goals to build a solid go forward organization."
- "... our sales force productivity was less than optimal..."
- "As we achieve our targeted synergies, we will continue to see the planned improvements in operating leverage and cash flow..."
- "We believe that our very good progress in realizing cost synergies has strengthened our foundation as a combined company. This achievement created some internal hurdles in meeting our sales targets, but we are now well positioned..."
The company's Q3 earnings announcement also contributed a few creative phrases:
- "... we have the opportunity to recognize significant annual cost synergies..."
- "Our synergy plans are on target and synergies from operating expense costs are expected to be $16 million annually..."
You too can produce creative announcements and press releases implementing sophisticated marketing-speak! Take a turn at the Web Economy Bullshit Generator and see what you come up with. Here are a few I turned out:
- We will strategize innovative paradigms and morph world-class convergence.
- We can utilize impactful convergence by maximizing innovative supply-chains.
- By deploying next-generation solutions we will synergize virtual channels.
Your turn - go for it!
Discussion
By Dr Joe Webb on Mar 07, 2007
The NBC show 30 Rock has constant jabs at General Electric's propensity to fall into meaningless management jargon. Much of the show is probably filled with in-jokes that few outside of the company would understand. But one of the best ones I've heard was "upward revenue stream dynamics." Nope, we can't just increase sales anymore, it seems. Whoever wrote the X-Rite release was obviously "synergy" happy, one of the most overused words in all of business writing. And this release shows why. It's not just contorted, it's a torture just to read! Can't anyone write a crisp release that says "We dissapointed ourselves and our stockholders, but we've taken important steps to solving the problems." Writing dense releases and financial statements just makes one wonder what they are trying to hide. In this case, probably nothing, so the worst part about it is that it undermines what they say. If you can't speak clearly about your business, you probably can't see your business clearly either.
By Randy Davidson on Mar 07, 2007
Gail, your post did not integrate bricks-and-clicks vortals NOR did it engage clicks-and-mortar action-items. In the future, if you could repurpose killer architectures to embrace intuitive applications then we could all just seize dynamic systems. :) Ok, too much fun. My comments obviously are from the http://dack.com/web/bullshit.html" rel="nofollow">Dack Generator you referenced. Very addictive...
By Dr Joe Webb on Mar 09, 2007
"30 Rock" had another great one last night: "synergize backward overflow." The episode is about GE's policy of letting go the 10% of its workforce that underperforms every year. In the episode, they do it all at once, but I don't believe that's the way it actually works. Whatever, when you do have a layoff of that magnitude, there is work that will be undone. So I imagine that the reallocation of tasks down the organizational chart requires one to "synergize backward overflow." Gosh, I wish I was back in the classroom teaching this stuff again :)
Discussion
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