When Everyone's a Leader, No One Is

I've read tens of thousands of press releases in my nearly 20 years as magazine and newsletter editor. When I read stuff like this, I get annoyed. Here is just the first half-sentance of a press release I read this morning (modified to protect the guilty):

XYZ Corp, a global leader of CAD solutions, today announced that the XYZ Release 12 continues to gain momentum as the industry's leading CAD toolkit, and that it signed licensing agreements with market leaders...

What's wrong?

How can they use leader (and its variations) three times in half a sentance!

Solutions: What's wrong with calling software "software"? Some years ago, several of us CAD editors got sick of reading "collaboration" in press releases, and so we went on strike, calling it instead the "C-word." We need to start calling "solutions" the S-word.

Continues to gain momentum -- meant to convey a form of "join the bandwagan" propaganda, but instead makes me wonder:what happens when full speed is reached (ie, the momentum ends). Does this company also feel inertia? And will they be able to stop in time, should the need arise.

And then I want to know answers to questions, like:

* How do they know they are the "global leader"?
* Who determined that their toolkit is the industry leader?
* Why are companies that sign with XYZ also industry leaders?
* Would XYZ consider signing with any company that was not an industry leader?
* Who writes this purple prose? [I know the answer to this one: a PR person has to write this stuff under the guidence of her (it's usually her) client.]

BTW, announcements about the signing of licensing agreements are rated by me at about the second-lowest on the press release Snooze-O-Meter. That's because these agreements are really important only to the companies signing them, and to no one else.

Comments

[Paul]

Come on, Ralph, give the marketeers a break willya?

I mean, if they weren't spouting meaningless words at us they'd probably be screwing up our order at McDonalds - which is worse in your opinion?

[Mark at Swim]

You said: "these agreements are really important only to the companies signing them" - actually it is probably more one-sided than that. I suggest they are little more than Vendor propaganda (sometimes with surprisingly little real substance to 'the deal').

There's not much that the licensee company stands to gain - unless they are a multinational giant that needs to start softening up it's supply base to yet another expensive change of technology.

[Rachael Taggart]

yeah ralph, you're sure right. From now on I will cease to describe any of my clients as a leader in anything, because it's not like we think it through and try and determine where their competitive advantage lies or anything like that.

Oh and if they are simply ' a vendor of X' then the readers of that press release will start asking 'yeah, that's fine but what are you *good* at?'

I understand that you are tired of reading a 'leader' in this that and the other, but until we find a better word than leader to explain how the company feels about themselves, you're going to be stuck with it.

rach