A webinar is essentially conference call combined with a PowerPoint presentation. Of the dozens I receive a month, few meet my rigid criteria: educational content, straightforward delivery. It’s usually easy to tell from the email if it’s likely going to be some kind of lame marketing presentation.
Speaking of which, here’s an invitation I received on Friday for a webinar this morning:
We invite you to reserve time to listen in on how [we] are transforming mission critical computing based on industry standard technologies and modular/converged infrastructure.
Hear directly from [six-figured vice presidents representing each company] on how businesses can leverage next generation [...] technology into business performance that can improve your bottom line. [Our products] meet the needs of mission critical workloads for the next decade into the most resilient, easily scalable, and completely integrated virtualization platform that delivers mission critical business outcomes every time. Learn more about the new processor platform that delivers a big leap in mission critical technologies, standardization and longevity.
When I read this the first time, I immediately had sympathy for the poor marketing communications person who was forced to send this. They probably started off with something simple like:
Our new [product] will run Microsoft Word 7% faster than the previous version.
With each review, the sentence was tossed in a blender with a random New York Times Business Book Bestseller and set to Frappé until it had enough “pop” (or, perhaps, one “mission critical” for each six-figured vice president involved). I imagine the ideal recipients of these marketing messages also speak in tongues. If the email address was from a human, I would send in the Mystery Matador.
HA! No, but I could have. Seriously, I would *hope* I can write better than that. OMG. I mean could they have fit any more clichés into one paragraph? Let me count:
1. Transforming
2. Mission critical
3. Industry standard
4. Converged infrastructure
5. Leverage
6. Next generation (yes, sadly, it’s a cliché)
7. Bottom line
8. Scalable
9. Integrated platform
10. Big leap
Well, I guess they could have fit in a few more. But they would have had to cut some of the fawning redundancies like “We invite you to reserve time to listen in on how”
Good marketing copy is art. I still feel dirty, but it’s an artful kind of dirty . . .
You get dozens of these every month? Are any of them of use, or are they all effectively spam? I get such messages very occasionally — certainly not at the frequency you do!
Thanks for the hilarious links, by the way. I just spent a good chunk of time browsing the Oatmeal site. I forwarded the web design comic to my web designer friend. This one was laugh-worthy, too: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/facebook_suck
Also, I love the Matador. :)
@Kiri – yes. About half are from industry-specific companies, and those are okay. The other half are from InformationWeek, IEEE, and others selling my contact information. Typically I’ll receive a cold call from inside sales person thinking “Jim Carson, Most Exalted Product Manager”* is a chief something officer with a massive IT budget and a yearning for [insert solution here]. The first several times, I tried being polite, returning their calls or email and telling them they’re mistaken. As that hasn’t helped, I just ignore them.
*It’s fascinating to watch the list propagation of this alias.