A professional gibberish-sounding post about professional gibberish

As note in my last post, Pepsi paid over a million dollars to redesign it's logo. Whether the leak of this work-in-progress document was intentional is debatable, but take a flip through and with just a few pages in, you're ankle deep in "breathtaking" Marketing Speak. To wit:

"The Pepsi ethos has evolved over time. The vocabulary of truth and simplicity is a reoccurring phonomena in the brand's history. It communicates the brand in a timeless manner and with an expression of clarity ... Breathtaking is a strategy based on the evolution of 5000+ years of shared ideas in design philosophy creating an authentic Constitution of Design."

Who does what now? Sure, it sounds vague, it leaves you feeling empty, it begs for clarity, but it's called Marketing Speak and if you thought regular english was hard...

It all started with the Corporate Mission Statement? You'll find them etched into nickle plates outside many offices or in the About section of many websites. A mission statement is a brief statement of the purpose for a company. If you're familiar with them, then you've probably wondered why they sound so random and intentionally vague? Well according to Wikipedia: "In management, by stating organizational goals with opaque words of unclear meaning; their positive connotations prevent questioning of intent, especially when many buzzwords are used".

Sigh. Can't we get a computer to do this? Well, a Mission Statement Generator is a simple program that contains a short list of simple nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs which are randomly belched out into print-ready statements such as:

"Our mission is to continually leverage existing catalysts for change with a high level of employee empowerment."

or...

"Our mission is to establish a reputation as the first choice to network wealth-generating enterprises and delivery inexpensive solutions to our clients."

or...

"Our mission is to seamlessly integrate profit-drive teamwork and network principle-centered benefits."

Congratulations, you have an instant MBA in Pro Gibberish. Sure, at best it's a ramshackle syntax, so overwhelmed with topical buzzwords and empowering business jargon that the end product rings generic and hollow, agreed, and the fact that a computer spewed it mocks the entire industry, but people get paid and paid really, really well to sound fluent in this kind of stuff.

So much of modern Advertising & Design is not what you make, but how you sell it. Word to the wise, learn to do it well, and you're writing your own cheque, tap dancing into the future sipping martinis made with pickled panda eyes instead of olives or onions.

Sadly, the Dilbert model no longer exists but many clones can be googled in it's stead.