Journalists reveal most irritating PR jargon!
Journalists across Ireland, the UK and US have revealed the top ten most annoying pieces of jargon they find in emails and press releases from PRs, with “reach out” and “growthhacking” topping the list, according to a small poll conducted by an agency.
For three years, a PR agency has asked correspondents and editors in Ireland, the UK and the US to identify words and phrases that annoy them the most once every quarter.
With some responses going into the How NOT To Guide to PR and some going into PRBuzzsaw.com, a automated ‘jargon removal tool’, Houston founder Hamish Thompson collated a list of the most frequent answers received over the past three years and sent it to Irish, UK and US journalists last week as he asked them to vote for the worst.
Here’s the Houston PR list of the ten most annoying pieces of jargon in order of irritation (from most irritating to slightly less so):
Reach out
Growthhacking
Onboarding
Curate
Circle back
Synergy
Empower
Solutions
De-layer
Ecosystem
Thompson said that just outside the top ten were ‘bandwidth’, ‘robust’ and ‘evangelist’.
He also has a top tip for PRs. “If you are writing to a correspondent or editor, announce that you are ‘reaching out’ at your peril,” Thompson warned!!!
What are your pet peeve buzzwords?
Let us know. We promise not to reach out from our ecosystem in the hopes that you circle back and empower us so we can curate content with great synergy!