Junk the Jargon: An Interview with Deloitte’s Brian Fugere

Brian Fugere, partner and former chief marketing officer at Deloitte Consulting, recently sat down with ITSMA to talk about his new book, Why Business People Speak Like Idiots: A Bullfighters Guide. Brian shared his ideas regarding what technology marketers can do to “fight the bull” and let customers know what their companies really do.

ITSMA: This book is a pretty searing commentary on the state of business communications. What inspired you to write it?

Fugere: I’ve been in the consulting industry my entire career, and one thing that became very clear is how much hype and doublespeak there is out there. In 2003, Chelsea Hardaway, Jon Warshawsky, and I wanted to do something to address the jargon problem. So we developed a software program called Bullfighter, which helps you find and eliminate jargon in your work.

We were completely unprepared for the response we got—Bullfighter became a media phenomenon! Four hundred thousand people downloaded the software, and we thought, gee, we’ve really struck a nerve here.

But there’s so much more to the problem than just eliminating jargon. It’s an epidemic, how insincere and obscure business communications have become. We wrote the book because we wanted to bring some authenticity back into the business arena.

ITSMA: Why do you think business communications have become such, for lack of a better word, bull?

Fugere: It’s funny, because it’s so much harder to pull the wool over people’s eyes today, thanks to the availability of information on the Internet. You’d think companies would be on guard against the kind of corporate-speak that’s come to characterize business communications. But really, business-speak has gotten even more obscure as a result of the litigiousness and political correctness of our society. Fear has companies erasing any sign of personality from what they say.

ITSMA: Are you seeing any backlash?

Fugere: Absolutely. People are really attuned to the problem these days. Look at how quickly blogging has taken off. Blogs are an extension of normal, open, honest conversation—the opposite of corporate-speak.

But the real reaction people are having to all the bull companies are feeding them is that they’re simply ignoring it. They’re tuning it out. And in marketing, we know that being ignored is the worst fate imaginable. Being ignored means irrelevance, and irrelevance means death.

ITSMA: What are some of the worst offenses you’ve seen?

Fugere: Pick up one of Enron’s letters to its shareholders as it was getting deeper and deeper into trouble. Those guys hid behind obscure language to make sure that nobody knew what was really going on, and to avoid taking responsibility for it.

Or pick up any press release from just about any technology company and it’s going to look like a disaster. They’re horrible because they take jargon that means something in their company and expect everyone else to be able to understand it. News flash, guys: We don’t.

We have some good examples of bad tech communications on our blog. For contrast, take a look at Google’s communications, or Amazon’s—you can’t find any crummy language anywhere.

ITSMA: What can technology marketers do differently?

Technology marketers have some hills to climb, that’s for sure. They need to constantly ask themselves, what are we really selling? What do we really do? How is this going to benefit the user? They’ve got to put themselves in their customers’ shoes and keep asking these questions, then answer them in clear, straightforward language that the customer can understand.

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