Recently I’ve noticed a lot of what I consider braggadocio in the marketing world. Of course this is nothing new, but according to the rules of today’s branding etiquette, it seems out of place. I’m not talking about companies throwing out empty advertising claims like, “We’re the Best” or “Our Quality Is Unsurpassed” (all statements that can’t be quantified). No, what I’m addressing lies within the marketing community itself.

As I peruse LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+ as well as other professional social sites I see marketing people describing themselves as Visionaries, Gurus, Luminaries and Pioneers. There are enough people out there labeling themselves as such that I can’t help but think, “C’mon, all these people can’t be Visionaries!” Besides, “Visionary” and “Guru” are such subjective titles—especially when ascribed to oneself. And for whatever reason, most of the people describing themselves with these monikers seem to be involved in the social media arena, which seems ironic.

As far as I know Albert Einstein never described himself as a genius. He left that to others. Read the rest of this entry »

Each year, the American Dialect Society, which is a board of linguists, lexicographers, etymologists, historians, grammarians and other qualified individuals, publishes a list of “Word of the Year” nominations. It can be quite entertaining and it’s generally a good reflection of contemporary American culture. As expected, the trend for the last few years is that the nominations have been increasingly tech-related, especially with regard to social networking. However, at the end of 2009 it was time to decide on the word of the decade.

Here is the list of nominees, who can guess the winner?

9/11

blog

google

green

text

war on terror

And the winner is…

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