10 October 2006

Highest level of bullshit alert...

This morning, dear viewers, the TWL security forces have taken the unprecedented step of raising the tech PR industry's bullshit alert setting to "double red with bells on". The reason? This recruitment ad from Waggener Edstrom.

Now we know the PR industry is prone to the odd bit of, umm, creative language in its recruitment advertising...we've posted about it before. But this...well, words almost fail us.

But not quite. For a start, the ad's over 1,000 words long which, given it's for an account executive position, is probably more than the successful candidate is going to know. Crikey, we're not even sure we understand some of it ourselves. Check this bit out, which comes under "Preferred Experience":

Managed a complex, information-rich “relationship of persuasion” over time towards an overarching, non-transaction-oriented business goal

Eh?

And in true tech industry fashion, they've come up with a couple of new acronyms. The position advertised is within a newly-formed account team in WaggEd's London office called MEG...this stands for Market Expansion Group, which has "the goal to define a strategy for expanding new and existing markets with technology". Which I think means winning some business.

The next acronym is my favourite though...it defines the key target audience for the position. They're called ITANTIs.

Read that and tell me what you think it might be. Perhaps it means the group within society that is not in favour of information technology. Interesting...turn all those "antis" into "pros" and the market's much, much bigger...in fact the Market has Expanded! It all makes sense...very smart.

Oh, no...it's not. ITANTI in fact stands for (you'll like this) IT industry Analysts and Non-Traditional Influentials. As if "Influentials" wasn't bad enough on its own, they've gone and stuck it in an acronym.

Utter tripe. If you were an AE looking for a new job you'd run a mile from this one.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oooh I must go and get some ITANTI comment about this Google YouTube acquisition. Utter nonsense

Anonymous said...

I know I prefer the Weber ad in PRWeek! I wonder if Bazza from finance and Trev from IT was ever asked to have their pics taken...

Anonymous said...

unbelievable - but, I expect Mr Westaby will be along in a minute to tell us that whoever wrote that ad has forgotten more about writing PR recruitment copy than any of us will ever know.....

Anonymous said...

You really don't like Wagged do you. What's the deal? Did they win some business from you?

....the world's leading.... said...

I don't like gibberish like this ad from anyone.

But WaggEd hasn't had any more that it's fair share of coverage here on TWL, has it? And in the main we've only been reporting what others have said about it...such as:

http://theworldsleading.blogspot.com/2006/08/ruperts-ed-slags-wagg-ed.html

http://theworldsleading.blogspot.com/2006/09/who-needs-enemies.html

Anonymous said...

"As this position is located in London, a key success factor for this position is an ability and willingness to serve as the day–to-day integration contact for the US-based team."

Translation: you'll be up until midnight most days on conference calls with your US colleagues who won't want to talk to you before 4pm their time.

Anonymous said...

What a bummer - the Plain English Golden Bull Awards 2006 closed for entries on Sept 30 - still, this one will surely be a contender for 2007.

Nominations here:

http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/goldenbulls.htm

Anonymous said...

Doesn't 'Private Eye' have a column for this kind of stuff..?

Anonymous said...

the ad's gone...what a shame

Anonymous said...

All

Whoever wrote that ad has forgotten more about writing PR recruitment copy than any of you will ever know.

Mark Westaby

Anonymous said...

....the world's leading.... said...
I don't like gibberish like this ad from anyone.....

"we've only been reporting what others have said about it"......

Oh I see, you are only saying what others said first. Hmmmm. Seems Wagged is a touchy subject, eh?

....the world's leading.... said...

What are you going on about? WaggEd's no more an interesting subject to us than any other tech PR agency.

figgis said...

"....the world's leading.... said...
I don't like gibberish like this ad from anyone.....

"we've only been reporting what others have said about it"......

Oh I see, you are only saying what others said first. Hmmmm. Seems Wagged is a touchy subject, eh?"

Hmmm with such impactful logic as that are you perhaps the same Anon that got a tad burned with the cruncingly poor attempt to promote a WaggEd blogging seminar on the Wild Geese post?

http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=28401170&postID=115953731241030994