What are the overused buzzwords this year? Industry players have their say

As the world continued to be impacted by the pandemic in 2021, the marketing and advertising industry got riddled with a slew of buzzwords that - admittedly - we have a love-hate relationship with. The team at MARKETING-INTERACTIVE recently shared the top buzzwords we've had enough of (though we're just as guilty of using them too). This time, MARKETING-INTERACTIVE spoke to marketing and PR professionals in the region to find out what they think are the top overused words or phrases this year. Here's what they had to say:

Chan May Ling, CMO, KFC Malaysia

Overused words: Unprecedented and pivot

"Unprecedented" is most used word second to ‘"pandemic" as the world was mapping themselves through uncharted territories and being in situations that didn’t have a playbook. Meanwhile, a simple sentence such as “Having the agility to pivot during unprecedented times," already contains the three most common buzzwords. I am often guilty of using pivot as I believe it drives transformational thinking and often a self-reflection of where we stand. Definitely a more ‘red way of work’ jargon.

Anish Daryani, founder and president director, M&C Saatchi Indonesia

Overused words: Can you hear me?

This year was the year of working-from-home for most of us. We relied on Zoom, Teams, Google Meet, among other platforms to keep in touch with our teams and clients. Almost every time, someone’s WiFi would give way, and then you’d ask…"Can you hear me?"

Nikhil Rao, senior director of marketing, Southeast Asia, Mondelēz International

Overused words: New normal

The elusive recovery from the pandemic where things will be better if not the same as before. It has led to multiple PowerPoints on predicting possible scenarios ranging from hallucinated views of success to doom and gloom.

Tanushri Rastogi, marketing lead, Asia Pacific, Popeyes

Overused word: Greenwashing

So many companies said that sustainability is at the heart of everything they do, that they started to sound as if they were reading from the same greenwashing manual.

Lars Voedisch, MD of PRecious Communications

Overused word: AI-powered

AI-powered is one of the most overused buzzwords – basically being used for anything using a computer or programme. And way too often, it’s not even a new approach or breakthrough invention, but just a new marketing band-aid to revive existing solutions.

Shufen Goh, co-founder and principal of R3

Overused words: Metaverse, and anything that references making things more "human”

As a person who appreciates the magic of in-person experiences, talking about the metaverse is like eating plain rice when what you really want is a feast at Maxwell Road Hawker Centre. Yes, it's the future, but it's not going to satiate our immediate hunger for connection and expression.

This brings me to any phrase or marketing idea that suggests that we are making progress by making things more "human". If this is what it's come to, we've already lost our way and stopped thinking about what's good for ourselves and society at large.

Daniel Hagmeijer, chief customer officer, The Body Shop Indonesia

Overused words: Digital marketing

There's no such thing; there are different channels that we should select based on our overall marketing strategy. In the past, some of these might have been digital, and some analogue. Today, you can't make a distinction anymore by using the word digital. Most TV is digital by now, even if they are still TV channels.

It's time for marketers to go back to basics by ensuring their marketing strategy is based on proper local market segmentation, and a combination of channels will flow out of that to be used in the promotion "P" of the marketing mix. And when you look at the technology behind the selected channels, I bet you most of them would be digitised by now. Let's retire "digital marketing" and go back to just "marketing".

Cheryl Lim, head of marketing, Viu Singapore

Overused word: Pivot

With COVID-19 coming out of the blue in 2020 and continuing in 2021, "pivot" is the name of the game. The pandemic has likely accelerated and weeded out some businesses temporarily and others, permanently. To survive and to thrive, we must pivot quick enough, deep enough and collectively enough.