Is it annoying? Yes, it is….

It is no secret that marketing directors, media spokespeople and their ilk within technology companies enrol on the same distance learning courses.

How else do they all believe that two marketing dollars is divisible by five PR campaigns? Where else do they get the impression that 5pm is an acceptable time to issue a ‘by the end of play’ request?

The latest incarnation of the postgraduate marketing course in fuckwittedry has left a particularly unsavoury scar across the tech-marketing landscape. It is a self-serving twist on the rhetorical question, whose main appeal is that it allows the self-obsessed orator to pose a journalist a question and then plough on regardless, without having to wait for – or more importantly acknowledge - a response.

For larger companies it has the added benefit of admitting that one isn’t perfect, without opening the debate as to why. Or simply put, it facilitates the consumption of humble pie without the mastication.

“Our aim is to produce the finest [insert application] software in the world. Are we there yet? No. Will we get there?Yes.”

The Orwellian mastery of language is clear for all to see. It sounds so much more comforting than its spin-free equivalent: “What we make isn’t all that really, but hopefully it’ll be better at an unspecified time in the future.”

In its cutting-edge day, it may have been enough to justify wars, but thankfully it’s on a sharp decline towards the patronising “we’re on a journey,” and the woeful “validates our market.” A short twelve months from now it’ll be among the pitiful clichés epitomised by the classic “here’s an opportunity,” that’s so eagerly tripped out by aging account directors as they glance at the clock and grab the nearest account exec....