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Yahoo! vagues up leadership reorganization PR with cutting edge gobbledygook

By David Meerman Scott | September 7, 2011

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Yesterday, Yahoo! announced a reorganization of top management. The press release is choked with cutting-edge, innovative, industry-standard gobbledygook.

Check out the third paragraph: Roy Bostock, Chairman of the Yahoo! Board, said, "The Board sees enormous growth opportunities on which Yahoo! can capitalize, and our primary objective is to leverage the Company's leadership and current business assets and platforms to execute against these opportunities. We have talented teams and tremendous resources behind them and intend to return the Company to a path of robust growth and industry-leading innovation. We are committed to exploring and evaluating possibilities and opportunities that will put Yahoo! on a trajectory for growth and innovation and deliver value to shareholders."

Read the full press release here.

WTF?

The release is so full of gobbledygook words and phrases as to be completely ineffective.

The problem with this is that the words chosen in this release are so overused as to have become meaningless. When I last analyzed gobbledygook, “innovate” and related words like “innovation” was the most overused word in press releases. The paragraph above uses the word "innovation" twice.

The information being conveyed in the Yahoo! release is tough. The board sacked the CEO and is looking for a replacement. Yahoo! missed an opportunity to communicate like humans and deliver some real information.

When companies vague up their communications like Yahoo! did, it doesn’t give people reason to cheer. It may even make them wonder what else is happening in that boardroom. Investors might sell or short the stock.

Your buyers (and the media and analysts who cover your company) want to know what specific problems your product solves, and they want proof that it works—in plain language.

Every time you write – yes, even in news releases – you have an opportunity to communicate. At each stage of the sales process, well-written materials will help people understand how you, specifically, will help them.

A big hat tip to David Dalka for pointing us to this press release.

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About David Meerman Scott

David Meerman Scott is a marketing strategist, keynote speaker, seminar leader, and the author of The New Rules of Marketing & PR, an award-winning BusinessWeek bestseller published in 24 languages. He is also the author of the hit book World Wide Rave and three other books. His Web Ink Now blog is ranked by AdAge Power 150 as a top worldwide marketing blog.

He is a recovering VP of marketing for two publicly traded technology companies and was also Asia marketing director for Knight-Ridder, at the time one of the world’s largest newspaper and electronic information companies.

David has lived and worked in New York, Tokyo, Boston, and Hong Kong and has presented at industry conferences and events in over twenty countries on four continents.

Satisfied audiences include: Cisco, HP, Microsoft, The New York Islanders, NASDAQ Stock Market, the Government of Ontario, McKesson, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Marine Corps, SAP, Google, Digital River, Hill & Knowlton, Hanley Wood, Dow Jones, National Investor Relations Institute, Milken Institute Global Conference, America Credit Union Conference, TS2, Giant Screen Theater Association, Realtors® Conference, and many, many more…

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New Rules of Marketing and PR David Meerman Scott

World Wide Rave David Meerman Scott

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