Welcome to planet Jargon. I know you’ve always been taught that we live on Earth, but that in fact is no longer the case. The almighty Oxford Dictionary has opened up, and some influential terms have been added. What do jargon and the Oxford Dictionary have to do with each other?

Lexicography. Although I intended to write a ridiculous sounding word, and then tell you it’s not a word, after a quick Google search, I was wrong (The Oxford Dictionary describes lexicography as “the activity or occupation of compiling dictionaries”).

The language that we use, that companies use whether in communicating to clients or in naming their products or services can have a significant impact on how persuasive we are, or how your clients speak about your products.

This summer between your staycations, you may have missed jargon generators in the news. I have two favorites, The Bullshit Generator and the Web-Economy Generator, which is extra juicy. In case you missed it, these simple tools take a verb, an adjective and a noun randomly from each column and put them together to create a so-called marketing phrase. The generators are a clever idea, and a good way to vent your past marketing bitterness.

Some of my favorite buzz-sayings from the Web-Economy Generator:

• Reinvent e-business convergence
• Strategise virtual relationships
• Exploit interactive users
• Synergise one-to-one ROI

These websites are perhaps holding a mirror up to society and saying a few things:

1. You’re using words that we don’t understand to describe processes and concepts that we really don’t care about.
2. Because we don’t understand what you’re saying, it must mean that you don’t know what you’re talking about.

I’m sure a few comics got a great deal of fresh summer material on the wave of the press attention that these phrase generators have been getting this summer. I also think that they do serve a purpose, maybe even to make us think about some of the terms we are using with our clients, and with people who didn’t study business from a textbook.

The following list is a selection of the words recently added to the third edition of the Oxford Dictionary, let’s take a look at some of the words recently added.

• Staycation
• Microblogging
• Social Media
• Netbook
• Dictionary Attack
• Paywall
• Tweetup
• LBD (This means Little Black Dress!)

Even from this selection, our level of familiarity and comfort with these words and terms varies greatly. Where do these words come from? A word like staycation was most likely either first used by someone in the travel, marketing or media industries. There are digital related words like paywall, microblogging and tweetup that if you said in series “a paywall microblogging tweetup”? could confuse even the most astute tuned-in digital guru.

Although the jargon generators are making comedic what happens every day, and are being extremely harsh, if you don’t understand a word or a meaning, the words no longer matter. As someone not very technical, I would be as equally confused with a techno speak generator, as I’m sure many people would be.

The words that we create and that then stick become real words. From a business or competitive advantage perspective, having your product name become the noun for the product or product category is quite an achievement. The Oxford Dictionary has added Netbook to mean a small computer, when this word is in fact derived from the product name Netbook, which is a small computer by Psion.

Twitter related words are now a part of our every day language (I am attending a tweetup this Thursday evening), and what a feat it is for Twitter, who is actually a company just like lots of others, whose terms have been so widely spread and generalized that are now officially words in the dictionary, literally.

Although by no means do I mean to compare the meaningless phrases that come out of the jargon generators to the pop-culture corporate terms that have now been added to the dictionary, but I do want to stress the importance of remembering your audience, whomever you are communicating to. What is their level of comfort with the language you are using? How effective is your presentation going to be, no matter how impressive-sounding it is, if no one in the audience really understands what you’re saying?

It seems from Steve O’Hear’s  “Is Anyone Out There?” article posted on TechCrunch last week, that yes a lot of companies now know about the importance of social media and everyone understands that using social media to engage with audiences is beneficial. The article notes that “90% of UK tech companies featured had a presence on two or more social networks”, but of all these brands on Twitter, “43% of brands had never replied to a single tweet”.

What’s keeping all these companies from optimising their Twitter and Facebook initiatives? The new expectation of customer service is that within a few hours of complaining online, someone perky and powerful from the company will respond, and offer to solve your problem. I am actually impressed that a lot of companies are doing this, and I have had a few personal examples. I was delighted the first few times my queries or concerns were addressed on Twitter (within a few hours), and was very satisfied that the companies were listening my concerns. Moving forward, these few companies have raised the bar for customer service, and for anyone who has filed a complaint on Twitter, this is now the standard.

The author noted that many companies are responding to complaints on Twitter, but are not actually following through with fixing customer complaints and concerns. It seems as though the team charged with responding to social queries have no power, although in many cases customers will feel satisfied that their concerns were simply acknowledged.

That the team of interns charged with responding to social queries actually have no power, although in the end customers may feel better about their experience and about the brand, simply because someone was listening.

Why are companies not responding to follower’s tweets, as the article suggests? There are two reasons. Firstly, no one has time to log on to the Twitter account, and the social engagement queries are not deemed priorities. Secondly, the benefits of engaging with audiences in social media are not fully understood. Yes, Twitter is a useful means of sending targeted messages to an engaged audience in a one-way stream. Twitter is also useful in gaining sales leads, networking and engaging with customers. If someone called your office with inquiries about your business, would someone return their call? Yes. Is there a difference?

Have you ever had any experiences with customer service in social networks? I once read that in terms of customer satisfaction from hotel stays, if the customer or client has a bad experience and the hotel goes above and beyond to correct the problem, that the customer is more likely to book and stay at that hotel again than if there hadn’t been an issue in the first place. Will the same be true for complaints vented in social cyberspace?

While browsing in a local Oxfordshire shop last week, I was trying to decide which washing-up liquid to purchase, because mine had run out. It just so happens that I place a high value on helping the environment, and when I am deciding which products to purchase, I usually don’t mind paying a slight premium for products which are organic, derived from plants, and/or will have a minimal impact on the environment.

Interested in moving away from purchasing a leading brand, I considered the various options neatly displayed on the store shelf. Upon a quick glance, one alternative was in a clear/greenish container, had an illustration of a plant on it, and had some sort of ‘eco’ messaging on the label. I grabbed it, put it in my hand basket, and kept walking. Just for curiosity and because I was in no rush, I decided to actually read the label of the washing-up liquid, to see how much better this eco-branded product was than the other leading brands. Without revealing too much, it turned out that the eco-branded product that I had just been prepared to pay a premium for, was actually no more natural, and no more eco-friendly than any other product on the shelf.

My shopping companion who is already very skeptical of ‘spin’, found it very deviously satisfying when I discovered that the eco-friendly looking label on the bottle meant that I could recycle the package (as you can with all bottles of washing-up liquid). Also, when looking at the back and reading the fine print, the list of ingredients was no different than any of the other brands. After a careful search- (after all, I was eager to not only purchase eco-friendly washing-up liquid, but to prove to my shopping companion that there was some fact behind the eco packaging) I was not able to find a single justification on the packaging, other than the world “eco”, the color of the bottle and a picture of a flower on the front, to justify any bit of eco-friendliness. The cute illustration of a plant, it turns out, was just communicating that the product had been ‘inspired’ by nature.

As described in the last post on competitive advantage, appealing to consumers who have a particular value set creates an area of uniqueness, of differentiation. The brand of washing-up liquid that I was drawn to did have what appeared to be eco- branding, and perhaps actually was more environmentally friendly, or natural, than the competition- but the package certainly didn’t communicate that. This is an example of how not to do it. I am forever cursed to read each, last label to determine how eco-friendly a product actually is.

Social media and green-living agency Max Gladwell presented their research on the four types of green-teen social media consumers:

1. The first type of green teen is one who is ‘living green’. This teen eats organically, shops in vintage and thrift shops and genuinely wants to make the world a better place, one used sweater at a time.
2. The second type of green teen is a ‘core fashionista’. This teen is in a powerful social position and is not a trend follower, but buys from eco-friendly brands.
3. A ‘walking-green’ teen feels a sense of belonging to a green community and is a trend follower for this lifestyle subculture.
4. The fourth and final group is the ‘spending green’ teen. This shopper views eco-friendly purchases as a luxury not a sacrifice, and feels a sense of exclusivity when enjoying eco-splurges.

By no means are these categories mutually exclusive or definite, and are based on the research of this firm only. However, these teen consumer profiles do give us a slight insight into some of the motivations of green consumers, and who these customers might be in ten or twenty years. Not being a teen, and not wanting to box myself in to either category listed above, I do wonder would these teens read the label of the washing-up liquid as I did? Is having a green image enough?

As someone who has spent a great deal of time learning about branding, a little piece of my heart gets chipped away each time I see a product image or brand that is clearly not an accurate representation of the product or service. It’s a shame, because I do know that there are many companies who are making genuine efforts to be environmentally friendly and who want to provide these types of products and services to their customers. As this market grows- no matter if you are targeting none, one or all of the green-teen consumer profiles listed, are you accurately communicating your message and your brand identity to these customers? Will they put your washing-up liquid back on the shelf like I did?

Curious? Why not start tracking one of many eco-hashtags on Twitter, like #EcoMonday, #green, or #eco-friendly and see what motivates this audience.

Well, it’s finally here. Google is now integrating real-time results from Twitter, Facebook and Myspace into it’s search, giving users the most update information on any given subject. This is sure to give social media a real awareness boost amongst those yet to embrace them, especially Twitter.

Watch this short video about Google real-time search:

What does this mean for brands and marketers?

Although in constant use by the technorati and celebrities galore, Twitter has yet to fully enter the mainstream. As marketers we know the potential of Twitter to reach out and engage, but for most people, its still an unknown. At MTD, we look to create innovative ways of integrating Twitter into our campaigns. Our recent Christmas campaign for Jarlsberg allows anyone to post a message about their best bit of Christmas on the Jarlsberg Sweet and Nutty Season website via Twitter. This encourages a deeper interaction with the brand and keeps the website fresh and interesting.

Real-time search will also encourage brands to start using Twitter more as a channel in its own right to promote products and services. Twitter, of course, knows this. It’s soon to launch a set of paid for business services which should hopefully make it a more professional tool for marketers.

Follow MTD on Twitter >>

I’m always on the hunt for new music. It’s what fuels me. When I discover a new band I normally track down their MySpace page and check out their tunes. MySpace band pages let you listen to a few select tracks, although quite often the latest single is limited to only thirty seconds or so – pretty annoying.

But now I use Spotify. Lovely Spotify allows me to listen to all the tracks available by the artist, in their entirety, for free. What’s more it’s fast, uncluttered and very easy to use.

If Spotify can secure its future via subscription based mobile apps (most importantly that of the iPhone) it will not only challenge MySpace Music but other internet-radio services such as Last.fm, Blip.fm and Pandora. They’ll have to rely on their social networking attributes to stay in the game. More traditional niche internet-radio stations such as NME.com could also be affected and they’ll need to maximize their original content and new music credentials to retain listeners. The other potential loser in this is, of course, Apple’s iTunes – although a significant number of people will always want to own the music they listen too, rather than just subscribe.

I’ve always been a fan of MySpace, but if it’s to survive, I believe it needs to offer better integration with Twitter and Last.fm type services. This would help the pages achieve more repeat visits by making them a hub for everything related to a band. Improved design and a good clear out of the clutter that plagues the artists’ pages wouldn’t go amiss either. But the most pressing issues such as access to more music and shorter load times would vastly improve what is increasingly looking like a tired web format. MySpace Music could also do more to help break new bands through a ‘new music’ streaming service – now that’s something I’d listen to!