Success sans jargon
Tucked away into one of the by lanes of Ahmedabad is a nondescript building that houses Paras Pharma. Not many know it as the company behind products such as Afterbath Freshness Cream and Livon. The company has not just introduced new products, but products that have created categories by themselves.
Run by a couple of people who are very hands-on, it is quite fascinating to watch them function at close quarters. The reason why I find it fascinating is that they seem so divorced from the jargon-filled world that has come to so typify modern marketing. I am yet to hear phrases such as ‘brand essence’ or ‘brand positioning’. Maybe it is also because there are no MBAs in the system. They do not seem to be doing badly by any far stretch of imagination.
Something that I have been pondering about – Are MBAs necessary to run a crack-marketing outfit?
posted by Mani Kadayam at 10:20 PM
1 Comments:
Jargon creeps in when the speaker is already sure of his money and either does not care what the audience thinks or knows that the audience is impressed by things that they dont quite understand.
There is also jargon when like talks to like. Philosophers right upto 16th or 17th century wrote intelligble language. Around this time they probably realised that nobody was reading them except other philosophers. There was then no need to waste effort in stating things from first principles. Your readers are at your level. So the writers freely used shorthand common to them and the readers. This has happened in all expert fields. Jargon here does not have the pejorative connotation which you ascribe to it.
I am sure that in advertising when Lintas is talking to HLL both the agency people and the client people come from the same B-schools or Mudra or wherever. What is called jargon is the language among 'people like us'. I am sure the jargoners are capable of speaking English to 'people not like us'. They know their markets alright.
Nothing wrong with MBA jargon if you know your stuff, as many of them do. Being an MBA is may be not a necessary condition but certainly not a disqualification either.
-kumar mama
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