Marketing #Fail Report from Mobile World Congress 2018
20 years ago I wrote a bi-monthly column for CTIA. 1998 was just at the cusp of the mobile revolution. Localization, customization, globalization… the list of promises was legion!
The mobile industry has come a long way since then and Mobile World Congress in Barcelona is the perfect place to witness all the glory of a global-connected-localized world — customized for absolutely everyone — and no one.
I thoroughly enjoyed my time at MWC but I have some stark feedback for the thousands of vendors who stretched across the vast Fira Gran Via convention center: Gadgets are cool but in the end, words matter.
The marketing phrases, taglines, banners, and headlines I saw at MWC 2018 were almost unreadable. Below are some examples and critiques.
To avoid hurting corporate sensibilities I’ve hidden the logos behind the offending pitches.
Seamlessnesses
I actually love the word seamless for marketing tags but the key is to retain some originality when you anchor it in a phrase.
The moment you couple one overused market-speak word with another banal group-think mark you’ve vacated your right to influence anyone.
Enable is so overused I’ve nearly banned it on my marketing team. Put all of that together and add a “we-are-the-world” target for the predicate and the phrase means nothing because it means everything.
Networking Redundancy
Anthropomorphism is one of my favorite Scrabble words. Making your brand “come alive” is really what tech marketing is all about. I saw some fantastic fails at MWC attempting to do just that. Per the above image, the “living network” is an interesting phrase but it would be better as a stand alone tag. Adding “TOGETHER” makes the phrase a bit pedestrian. Rule of thumb: adding “kumbaya-ness” is lazy and blends your pitch noiselessly into the background.
When Everything is Smart, Nothing Is
The image to the left was on a wall of a massive booth adjacent to our own. The colors they chose weren’t even a part of their own company’s schema; the serif font they chose is a mismatch for the tech they were flaunting; and the message seems — off.
Good marketing answer questions. Bad marketing leaves you with questions:
What is smart? Are they there already at the smart place? Are they chasing smart things?
Ambiguity is the enemy of marketing taglines. This one fails to convey anything.
Mouthful of Marbles
The banner above was my favorite fail of the conference.
If your marketing hit reads like a scientific paper headline you’ve lost your audience. Good marketing is like a fine sauce redux: sweet and rich and sticky. The head and sub-head seem like they were written by Yoda after sendin him to engineering school. Also, if you’re keeping score that’s a 5-syllabic word in the middle there. None of this rolls off the tongue with ease and all of it is awash in awful marketing speak.
Acronym Hell
Look, I get it. If you’re in the industry you’ll know what all of these acronyms mean. But you don’t lead a market by leading with acronyms. This was the phrase they chose to put on the outside of their two-story booth facing one of the most trafficked areas at the event. Save your prime real-estate for the best of what you want to convey.
The Spectrum of Infinite Possibilities
Ugh. To borrow a phrase from the comedian Brian Regan — this is the epitome of hyperbole. By definition, if something is “infinite” there is no spectrum. Read it again and try to make heads or tales of it.
In short, real marketing pitching at conferences is hard but these examples show that the fine vendors at Mobile World Congress and not trying hard enough.
Justin Hart is Chief Marketing Officer at TeleSign.
