Moments Later: Cliché

I work in a global marketing job and talk with my colleagues in Europe almost every day. Recently, we were discussing the printing on wine corks (that’s the industry I work in) and one friend kept referring to the printing plates or marks they make as clichés. Apparently the word for printing plates or moveable type is clichés and it comes from a French origin. According to Wikipedia, it was also called a stereotype. It is also suggested that the repetitive clicking sound that a metal plate made on a press is part of the root of this word to- from the French cliquer. Who knew?

Clichés are those things in English that are often repeated and seem trite. They have been so overused that they have lost their original meaning. But how does something become a cliché that recurs over and over again?

Are your creative messages as boring as mayonnaise?

Stereotyping our French friends

In your content marketing, you want to review the full list of these clichés and make sure they don’t show up in your blog posts, your website, sales letters, email communication or advertising. I am listing a small sample of these but you can find the complete list at this link. http://suspense.net/whitefish/cliche.htm

Between a rock and a hard place

The customer is always right

We are here to serve you

It's all in a day’s work

At the end of the day

Best thing since sliced bread.

Marketing clichés exist because we get lazy.

We decide it is easier to just stay the course, follow the beaten trail and why rock the boat? If you want to get my attention, your copy needs to JUMP off the page and your message needs to have a message that I haven’t heard before. It should be filled with personality and humanity and should reflect the true values of your brand.

My daughter Fanny is an incredible foodie. She has a blog called FanFareFoodie. She was struggling with a creative tagline and kept coming up with dull and boring ones that sounded like anyone could use them on a food blog. One day she came up with the phrase...

"Get your Fanny in the Kitchen"

She used something unique about her (her Fannyness- i.e. her name) and the play on words. I know I am biased but it is a great example of something unique, ownable and human. It is a descriptor from a real person named Fanny who loves to cook and it illustrates a non-cliched approach.

http://fanfarefoodie.wordpress.com/

If you are a marketer who keeps yelling at the consumer (BUY THIS) and that you won’t be undersold, then all I know about you is that what you sell and how you do business is a cliché. It is not different than the next guy and you sell a commodity.

Find language that you can own about your business. Invent words- create special content that reflects the personality of your business.

Break the mold and don’t blend into your category. Be original. Don't settle for the obvious. Go the extra mile to find your own voice.

Hey, it ain’t rocket science.