A few weeks ago, a couple of us road-tripped down to Kansas City for the National Agri-Marketing Association‘s annual conference. If you’ve never been there, it’s possibly the most talented group of results-oriented marketers around (and I’m only slightly kissing up to some of our clients who may be reading this).
The keynoter was a guy named David Meerman Scott. The guy knows marketing – both the good and the bad. In fact, he’s written more than a few books that I intend to dig into in the near future. One of the topics he discussed was something he coined as “Gobbledygook.” 
This is basically useless copy, jargon, hype and cliches used to puff and fluff everything from ads to to brochures to news releases to mission statements. In a nutshell, it’s lazy copywriting.
It doesn’t matter if you’re writing for a website, an annual report or a print ad, if the copy is bland, boring and predictable, that’s what people are going to think about your company. If it’s worth writing, it’s worth writing well.
Scott was so adamant about this that he worked with a web company called hubspot to develop a site that actually lets you copy and paste the text from your marketing materials and generate a report that grades you on how much “gobbledygook” is in your writing. Check it out here.
And, if you aren’t getting at least a “B”, hiring a good copywriter would be a smart investment.
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That’s a useful, albeit terrifying, resource tool. At first, I thought, “Jesus, the jig is up!” The Gobbledygook Grader assured me, however, that my web copy is virtually Googledygook-free (SEO speak), and requires at least a tenth-grade education to comprehend. Phew! Thanks, David Meerman Scott!
- Joe W
Yeah, we had to run our own home page copy through it to make sure we were okay! Fortunately we scored just fine.
Funny thing: if you go to the “Our Approach” page, we don’t score so well. We think you’ll see why (www.lessingflynn.com/en/our_story/our_approach/ )
I didn’t know that you saw David Meerman Scott! How lucky. I used his “The New Rules of Marketing and PR” as a text book in my Internet Marketing class at Drake. Want to borrow it? Word.
Would love to. Bring it by next time you’re in the ‘hood.