I thought most of the awful, high tech, buzzword-laden marketing copy had gone the way of the VCs that spawned it. Guess not, according to a funny note just in from SherpaBlog subscriber Lisa Dilg of PerkettPR. She writes:

My co-worker and I went to the Detroit ITEC a few months ago and we would stop at booths and say, ok, read that company description, and tell me what they do. We almost never could. Even though so many in the press have complained, "just tell us what you actually do, don't tell us you are a solution, next-generation, a leading XX or you do something in real-time," companies' boilerplates and web sites, continue to say nothing.

Today put me over the edge. I was going to the web site of a company my cousin works for to see what they do. You tell me:

'XX is the leading provider of Total Business Integration solutions -- delivering infrastructure software that lets companies seamlessly integrate every aspect of their business in real-time.'

Then I went to their PR's web site, and found they are a perfect match:

'XX fields multi-disciplinary teams of technology PR and marketing professionals who use the XX Lifecycle methodology to create market-specific, stage-appropriate communications programs and services.'

Whose responsibility is it to stop this? PR pros, marketing pros, the companies themselves?"

Well Lisa, my input is that the buck stops at whoever pays the bills for that bad PR -- i.e. client-side. Here are two helpful sites that can help PR clients everywhere doublecheck the work that's being done for them: buzzkiller.net and buzzwacker.com. You can pretty much bet if your press materials (or site) have words listed at these two sites, then journalists will think you look stupid and boring. 'Nuff said.