hot air

Do you believe the information that companies tell you when you’re interested in buying a product, service, or technology for your business? Do you believe the marketing information that includes some of these words: advanced, best-in-class, cutting-edge, disruptive, extensive, flexibility, game-changing, highly skilled, innovative, leading, meaningful, next-generation, one-of-a-kind, performance-driven, revolutionary, state-of-the-art, technique, unique, value-added, world-class?

These bloated words have been used so many times by so many companies, they’ve lost all meaning. Better to say nothing. And, yet, here they are—day after day—in web content, product information, case studies, white papers, press releases, and videos that companies send out into the world to convince another business to buy their stuff. 

These words are like the hot air from your lungs filling a balloon, except in the case of the balloon the hot air keeps the balloon afloat. In marcom, the hot air deflates the communications, mostly preventing the content from soaring into the right person’s office or home office or coworking space, into their mind to launch the sales cycle, beginning the buyer’s journey that, often, is a circuitous route to the promised land of a sale.

Given the long sales cycle in many businesses, you’d think marcom teams would want to capture the prospective buyer’s attention immediately, anything professionally creative instead of boring someone right off the bat. These words are no different from someone sticking a pin into the balloon and watching it deflate crazily onto the floor, resulting in the death of the communications. Message sent, but not received. Who wants to buy hot air?

These words tell the prospective buyer everything they don’t need to know about a product, service, or technology; that is, how great it’s supposed to be, but not how great it is at solving the prospective buyer’s primary pain point. The business problem. Solving it in a way that no other company can—as in differentiating the brand from all competitors and the only reason the buyer would want to do business with a company in the first place.

The hot-air words are only speaking to the marcom teams and companies that send them out into the B2B world, hoping against hope that someone will find something in the content to engage them. This kind of content is known as company-first marcom instead of customer-first marcom, which is the essential point of all B2B marketing information: “This is how you’re going to make more money or save more money by working with us.”

Copyright © 2025 Bruce Goldfaden and LSV Communications LLC. All rights reserved.