Marketing IT minus the “mumbo jumbo”

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Marketing IT minus the “mumbo jumbo”, jumbo, marketing, mumbo, minus.

Long before NASSCOM coined the encouraging new term –emerging companies– for small and medium enterprises, Subject Matter Experts (SMEs!) were littering the technology space with jargon. Acronyms and technalese have raised the bar for all senior executives who are already grappling with the issue of adapting rapid technology advancements to business needs. What kind of help do they get from vendors and service providers? Sadly, the marketing of information technology is so replete with technical terms that the marketer, who originally started with the four Ps and Cs, is now spewing an A-Z alphabet soup that no one, including him/her, can actually digest.

To get the best out of the deployment and use of technology, both vendors and customers need to be aware of some general trends in technology speak. Once they recognise these currents, a deliberate and conscious effort to fight habits that have made jargon the bane of this industry can be tackled at every level.

If you want to walk the talk, you will need to speak the talk too:

Real Answer: People Can’t Memorise Computer Industy Acronyms

If you are leading an organisation with an increasing global market and are looking for secure and reliable communications, you may well come across marketing brochures offering you an ultimate solution which boasts of features like: “VPNs with IPSec with 3DES encryption and MD5 authentication and PPTP connections for secure and remote access for site to site and teleworkers respectively.”

You will however need the assistance of a networking professional to decipher the above techbabble which actually means: Instead of investing in leased lines for wide area communication, you can use public network like the Internet safely and securely. As an extension of the existing point-to-point protocol of the Net, “private tunnels” can be set up to extend the Company’s network to a “virtual private network”, for the benefit of workers in remote offices as well as for those who work from home.

The problem is two-fold here. The non-techie, who learns to deliver the technology solution verbatim, is seldom able to answer a question on how it actually works. The customer who seeks information from a professional and understands the general concept also picks up the terms. Soon both are speaking geek and Latin, though none among them would be able to explain the nitty gritty if asked. “I am not a technical person,” would be the unabashed, if ironical response.

As marketers jump online, there is a mix of business and pleasure giving rise to a new lexicon. This includes terms like viral marketing (marketing through social networking), webinars (custom branded seminars held online) and adgets (local advertising through micro-sites linked to online newspapers).

Lingo misuse and alteration in meaning is adding to confusion

As technical terms are internalised by the IT sector, terms like bandwidth, drivers, and ecosystem have come to mean entirely different things.

Bandwidth for instance is not just about data transfer from point to point in one second. It also means the capacity (in terms of time and resources — physical, mental and emotional) one has to deal with something. Example: “I don’t have the bandwidth to handle this.”

A driver is not only a software programme that helps computer programmes interact with a device. And while you may have once been excused for mistaking the word for the chauffeur of your Company-gifted car, you had now better look around for “change agents” as they are the key drivers of business.

With tech-speak merging into business speak, a new entrant is the word ecosystem. It has lent a somewhat universal connotation for an industry: a company is not just part of an industry, but a central entity in a vast ecosystem — with partners, consumers, competitors and onlookers all around – each of whose actions impact the Company’s topline, bottomline, online and what have you.

Some words have been bandied around for so long, that people have stopped noticing that they are being used to express a diametrically opposite meaning. Surely you have come across executives who say “quantum leap” as if it meant a giant stride when in fact it only means a tiny change.

Some terms have now become an object of ridicule as actions have seldom backed them. As Vijaya Mahantesh, an independent IT professional points out, “It is in the pipeline” does not mean much as one is never too sure what is the length of the pipe and the length of the line! “Seamless Integration” has come to mean “occasional irregularity”, points out D J Buell, Director, IT, Lithia Motors Inc, Oregon.

Constant abuse of words like value add, value proposition and paradigm shift have rendered them mere platitudes. And of course, just as technology turns obsolete, so do tech terms. Zip drive is out, memory stick and iPod are in. Electronic mail and floppy disk have been replaced by email and flash drive.

How to live with jargon and make the most of it

Can we really wish jargon away? If one were to answer the question honestly, the answer is, “No.” For despite its negatives, there are some qualities of technical buzz words that can actually help market an enterprise and its offerings. A technology-savvy image is important for any vendor operating in this space. Here are some pointers on how to survive serving gobbledygeek:

* Before a potential client hires a vendor, he checks out the credentials of a potential service provider and your online presence is where he would start. What does your website suggest? The best-of-breed vendors would definitely have a smattering of technical language in the description of products and services. Wherever possible, hyperlink the technical terms to throw up explanatory boxes at the click of a button. While most companies choose to go on an ego-trip, populating the site with brand names, trade-marked terms and other IP-related declarations, try the opposite. Bring in the buzzwords of the industry and let the reader/client discover what your Company has to offer in that space, by clicking on a hyperlink.

* While the customer is no fool, he/she can do with some education. Several enterprises devote certain sections of the website to float mini-tutorials on technicalities. Do this as a matter of routine. It means you, as a vendor, are not averse to educating customers. This will earn you their trust. It will also give a touch of expertise to your profile.

* The external image is just the first part. Next, take a closer look at your company as a whole. Is it functioning in a componentised manner? Is marketing a “department” in your company? Some of our best companies consciously build better interaction and co-ordination between the “marketing men” and the “developers”. Especially in the technology business, marketing will never succeed if a handful of marketing reps are trying to push a product that just came in through the conveyor belt.

* Spend some time with the men who market the product or service to the outside world. How do they get out of tight situations? If they are constantly saying, “I will circle back to you on that,” when asked for “How Stuff Works” kind of details, then some education for the marketing team may be needed.

* At the same time, don’t be fooled by the marketer who is adept at rattling off strange sounding specifications. Scratch the surface to check the depth of his knowledge. If he is mixing up or clubbing words like speed-feed and feature-functions, you can be sure he has learnt the stuff by rote! Such people are a perfect giveaway!

Having said all this, one does not intend for the marketing folks to morph into computer engineers. The customer only needs someone to translate why the product or service is the best answer for his needs. So the marketer has to explain what the technology does, not what it is or how it functions. In other words, the instruction manual is not his marketing tool. He should be able to explain what the client can do with the product/service, not all that the product is capable of doing.

Always remember that your customer requires both marketing and technology help, but can discern between what is empty spin and what constitutes genuine technology talk. If your client is spending the money, he will learn to differentiate between a tech-intensive offering that is being “sold” to him and a “tech-friendly” product that he wants to buy.

To help you make this differentiation, Prayag has compiled a dictionary of technology terms. The compilation aims to help both marketers and consumers de-jargonise IT and demystify IT terms. But before you click on the links, here is a test:

What does PCMCIA stand for?

Answer: Personal Computer Memory Card International Association

Real Answer: People Can’t Memorise Computer Industy Acronyms

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