Don’t you think it strange that someone you never heard of with not the slightest talent – just a desire to make a fool of themselves in a show you’d never want to watch – is called a “star”.
Yet such was the case when yesterday I was ploughing my way through my copy of the free paper, Metro. It referred to a participant in the exceptionally nasty TV show Big Brother.
I call this linguistic inflation and it’s everywhere.
It’s what they used to call hocus-pocus: words used to make things seem more important (and therefore valuable) than they are.
Take the new army of the overpaid. Senior bean-counters have become Chief Financial Officers. Managing directors are now Chief Executive Officers. The closest parallel I can think of is the uniformed commissionaires who used to stand outside cinemas – such a joke they were the staple of cartoonists.
Or take this new thing you’re aware of – even an old fogey like me is aware of – where you point your phone at a tag and find out about something.
It’s been around for quite a while but only now is it becoming really important as it depends on enough smart phones being around – with enough people who know how to use them (count me out for the moment; I’m just learning).
But if you were to believe something I read last night this is so much more. It means I can “engage in a richer, more immersive experience than was previously possible in today’s highly efficient commerce environment.”
It sounds like one of those dunk the whole body baptism jobs, don’t you think? But with a little less general ecstasy.
I’m actually planning to test it myself for something I sell, but I’m pretty sure that sort of tripe does more harm than it helps.
I think you're talking about QR codes, right?
I was talking a seminar recently and had one up on the screen sending the peeps to an optin page. Worked pretty well.
I've also seen them in Cork on the outside of shops, offering a competition where the teeny-boppers can hit the website, leave their details and enter a draw to win a supermarket-sweep style thing, grabbing clothes instead of baked beans.
Already used them in business cards. You can put an entire V-Card info in one QR Code, so it can be used to transfer your contact data to a mobile phone automatically. But it's already used in advertisement campaigns in some interesting ways. I believe that soon many other strategies will be explored using this technology. I'm eager to know how you will use it…
Sounds good for capturing and imparting information. But it is just one of the many new 'routes to market' that are taking up so much of the young marketers' time – they love new technology, rather like a lorry driver is interested in new roads. Logistics rules. Meanwhile the practical old-fashioned craft of selling stuff is ignored.