Marketing Technology Letter
The information avalanche
that hits us everyday is bad
enough. We shouldn’t add to the
confusion by using hollow ex-
pressions, complex abbrevia-
tions and technical jargon, but
rather use our imagination to
make the dry world of technol-
ogy more friendly and more
understandable.
Well crafted words or
expressions can be very
powerful
17,576 unique TLAs can be built
using the 26 letters of our alphabet.
Yet, TLA.hypermart.net had identi-
fied over 53,000 of them at the time
we wrote this paper.
So, many duplications and a lot of
confusion!
CONTACT US : IC3 Limited
February 2002 – NO.
Black Holes & TLAs
The other day we received an e-mail attachment called “BS Bingo” (where BS is the
acronym for a common word describing, among other things, the droppings of a
major member of the Bovidae). This bingo card is used during boring meetings by
cynics who check how many of the fashionable business terms are used and re-used
by the speaker.
It is true that we all tend to abuse and wear out expressions that become meaning-
less and hollow. Examples include best practice, client focus, competitive
advantage, sustainable differentiation, win-win, value added, 24/7, 360, and so on.
Yet, simple words or phrases are important to help us grasp complex phenomena or
concepts and communicate about them. Very few people really understand what
was the big bang or how black holes behave. Yet we all have a reasonable
understanding of what they are because smart communicators created the two
expressions.
There was a time when acronyms were helpful abbreviations such as RADAR (Radio
Detecting And Ranging). Most computer programmers have heard about COBOL
(quite a few still use it) but few know what the acronym means. When it was still
known as DP, the IT industry coined a few simple acronyms, such as DB and PC,
that are widely understood and have become common names.
Then came the TLAs (Three-Letter Acronyms). In the early 1980s, the phrase
desktop publishing was a brilliant way to describe the combination of a personal
computer, a laser printer and page layout software. However, its abbreviation as
DTP created one of the first TLAs and started a growing flow of guru garbage. In the
technology domain, TLAs spread like the plague. About ten years ago, BPR created
the first salvo with ERM, SCM, IEA and CRM.
With the Internet, from WWW and .COM, we escaladed to four letters (HTML, SMTP,
.CO.UK, ..) and started to slap an ‘e’ in front of commerce, business, procurement,
banking, and so on.; in addition, leveraging our experience with SMS on our GSM
phones, we invented ‘hybrid’ TLAs such as B2C, B2B, P2P, etc.
However, borrowing from the real world, the Internet has also generated more col-
ourful expressions such as browser, portal, electronic wallet, collaborative com-
merce and web services. Although they often have a very specific meaning they
mark a return to some common sense.
The Internet has also permitted the creation of new companies with names as
imaginative as Apple, yet without the me-too attitude of picking another fruit name.
Names like Yahoo, Google, and Amazon are more friendly than ABC, NBC, CBS, and
BBC; they are also more likable than new, ‘serious’, but esoteric names such as Lu-
cent and Infineon; and they are more memorable than inane names generated by
computers, committees or employee contests (one example only, Accenture, to fall
out with just one company).
Fortunately, some reason starts to prevail and the TLA tide seems to be going out.
Even the standard’s world becomes friendly by coining names such as Bluetooth and
by renaming IEEE 802.11 WiFi (Wireless Fidelity).
What should we, marketers, take in from all that? Overall, let’s focus on meaningful,
simple communications and keep the hype to a minimum. Let’s avoid confusing our
audience with complex terminology and, when we use acronyms, let’s spell out their
full meaning (we didn’t do that here for all TLAs used as examples). And let’s use
our imagination to instil, why not, some poetry or some humour to the dry world of
technology. And, maybe, if Accenture spins off new companies, they will be called
Acute, Grave and Circumflex (since we have put our foot in it, we may as well stir
it! ;-)
PS: we had not discovered the above medicine when we named our company IC3 !!
www.IC3marketing.com tel : +44 (0) 20 8339 0709 e-mail : Henri@IC3marketing.com
Copyright  IC3 Limited 2002 – All rights reserved