Please stop saying "innovative"

Ha!  I've blogged on here (and complained elsewhere) about the deadening overuse of "innovation" and now the Wall Street Journal agrees with me.

In a nutshell: despite the saturation of innovation initiatives, strategies, teams and collateral,  companies "are using the word to convey monumental change when the progress they're describing is quite ordinary."

I burned out on the term eons ago for two reasons. One, it's the latest buzzword that clients demand to include in collateral even when it's clearly ineffective. Such buzzwords become marketing Godzillas, dominant and destructive to the good content hosting them due to their oversaturation. Nothing is more stale and anesthetizing than a cliche - it's the opposite of good writing, the opposite of fresh and memorable. Yet people who favor a mechanistic formula to developing "good content" often think buzzwords are the most guaranteed formula of all.

The other reason I dislike it is because it often obscures what's actually special and compelling about a business. I sat down for a discovery meeting with a client a few months ago who said, "We innovate" when I asked about her business. I kept asking what elevated them above the competition, asked about their USP, asked how they served their customers - and the answers were all, "Well, we're innovative" or "We look at what people need and we innovate." It turned out the company did have some pretty unique offerings but I had to fight my way behind the innovation curtain to find out the details.

Buzzwords aren't going away and of course a new heavyweight champ will rise to steal Innovation's title. But a smart business will realize that the competition's reliance on such generic marketing provides them with an easy way to stand out - simply by not falling in line. Instead of saying "innovative" (see, you're sick of it too now), tell people the ways in which your business is adventurous, exploratory, inventive, progressive, creative, courageous. Use distinctive language that captures the eye and ear. Because blending in has never been a smart strategy for getting attention.

Oh, and the most annoying part of the WSJ article: "The innovation trend has given birth to an attendant consulting industry, and Fortune 100 companies pay innovation consultants $300,000 to $1 million for work on a single project."  Clearly I'm in the wrong business.