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Pure corporate propaganda at its best

Yesterday I received an email from a well-respected executive in a financial services company who had read “The Death of Propaganda – B2B Buyer Behavior Has Changed. Now it’s Your Turn.”, co-authored by me, David Hoskin and Michael Best.

The executive explained that the book’s message had made quite an impression on him, which naturally, was great to hear. And he wanted to discuss the ideas further, which is something any author is keen to do. But his message left me with a problem. You see, he had seen a definite need to reduce the amount of propaganda in his (otherwise successful) company’s marketing approach. And, once I had visited the company’s site, I was in agreement. Here’s my problem: the company’s website is the perfect, the penultimate example of full-on corporate propaganda that I have long been seeking, and I feel myself wanting to plaster it all over every presentation I give – and this blog – as a warning to others on a similar path.

However, since the executive is now in dialog with me about the problem, I can only limit myself to sharing some of the priceless strings of pure propaganda that follow…

  • (COMPANY) offers innovative solutions with unrivalled comprehensive functionality, flexible implementation and a truly global reach.
  • Unmatched implementation success, excellent customer base, thousands of satisfied users
  • All our solutions are configurable, sustainable, stable, scalable…
  • (COMPANY) is global, future-proof and offers a shorter time to market…
  • …ensure that our solutions meet and exceed your business requirements.
  • Evovling (sic.) and Innovative
  • Adhering to market technology standards while constantly looking into new business trends
  • Striving to be recognized as market leading future proof…

Good stuff, don’t you think? In their defense, the company does also provide customer testimonials on its site – with names of the company and contact person. The difficulty with these is that they are all highly positive, lacking the rounded opinion (the good and the not so good) that improves the credibility of each testimonial.

To illustrate my point, imagine you are searching Travel.com for a hotel for a two-day visit to Chicago. You’re reading the customer reviews, of course (Voice of Customer), and you subject each one to a credibility test – is this review for real or is it an orchestrated litany of lies produced by the hotel itself or its agency? Chances are, you’ll trust reviews that mention negative experiences as well as positive ones. And you’ll feel confident in choosing a hotel when you can see that the overall experience of each customer has been a good one.

Crafting such testimonials in a business world requires skilled hands, of course, and is best left to experienced communicators (even when the basic content is genuinely customer-generated, which we always recommend), but the point is clear: polished propaganda belongs firmly in the last millenium.

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Jonathan Winch

I’m Jonathan Winch, partner at cylindr and BBN International and a B2B marketing enthusiast. I've participated as a strategic and creative resource in the marketing and communication sphere for over 25 years, making contributions to the strategies and communications of companies of all sizes, the best known of which include Cisco, Hewlett-Packard, Danisco, GN ReSound, Hempel, Nokia Siemens Networks, LEGO, Coloplast, and Johnson & Johnson. My mission? To help B2B companies make the most of the value they create for the world. My hobby: Nutritional science, particularly sports nutrition.

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