A “Visionary” in Press release Writing (with random Capital letters)

*blinks* gawd – erm, sorry, it put me to sleep.

I’ve heard the use of this “Visionary quadrant” / “MGM Magic Quadrant” before to describe this CMS.

But yes – release just needs to have a guy holding a crystal ball.

A translation follows:

Dear everyone,

We write great software. An organisation that specialises in identifying the players in a given market reckon we’re the best in both how we understand what we’re doing, and our ability to actually deliver stuff that relates to what we’re doing. So please give us all your money.

Love,
Orbis Global

Looks like “Completeness of Vision” and “Ability to Execute” were copied from report headers, just so they could ‘include’ them.

“The worldwide MRM market is maturing rapidly as marketers seek to drive greater volumes and results from their limited resources, especially in light of recent staff and budget cuts” – Companies cut staff, lose profit. Hire contractors instead!

-_-

Note to self. Don’t leave the first draft lying on the lunchroom table.

That may be the problem Hannah…this guy is definately playing witrh his crystal balls

They have a thing… and it’s totally awesome! And fully buzzword compliant!

Sigh…

When will these people realise that real, human language, and a product that actually does *something* is what will attract positive attention?

As the CEO of Orbis Global, I’d better add some comments here. Firstly, I completely agree with the original question and the subsequent comments from the readers. We’ve made a mess of explaining what we do; why we exist, who Gartner is and why their assessment of us means anything. There was some information on Gartner at the end of the release but this doesn’t appear above. Anyway, we’ll take these comments totally on board and do it better next time! For what its worth, let me try here to do a better job:
Orbis Global is a provider of a software system that helps marketing departments of (usually) big companies manage their program planning and calendaring; allocate money and human resources across all their activity; automate a whole bunch of creative production processes; track spending commitments; track ROI; and report on the whole lot of that in real-time. Our clients are massive brands, and we usually have hundreds of staff at each company (and their agencies) using the software on a daily basis. Orbis Global was founded in Sydney 13 years ago, is still HQ’d there, with operations in Singapore, UK and the US.
Gartner is the world’s leading IT analyst firm. A lot of businesses around the world pay them to tell them which software vendors they should look at to solve fulfill their IT needs. They produce a product called the Magic Quadrant, where they track vendors in a specific software category, and basically validate their strengths and weaknesses. In this case Gartner deems us to be a “Visionary” (one of the four quadrants), which more or less means we have a strong vision for a broad scope of solutions to solve marketing managament challenges. Potential buyers can take that as an indicator of our ability and credibility, and hopefully we can back that up through a direct evaluation by the potential client.

It was good of Grant to clear that all up! And wonderful to hear another Aussie IT success story. However he lost me at “automate a whole bunch of creative production processes”. Without wanting to criticise Grant per se, maybe his software program is partly responsible for the dull, risk-averse, uninspiring creative output from (usually) big advertisers? Hope not but just a thought.

i can’t wait until the year 20101

A google search of this Marketing Magic thing tells me the four quadrants are: Leader, Challenger, Visionary and Niche.

Surely Leader beats Visionary? Or is like a horoscope, where there are no losers and everyone’s a winner?

Did they win an Oscar? That *must* be it

Hi Tim Nicolas: on the contrary, our software frees marketers up to be a whole lot more strategic and creative. Marketers in big companies are laden with administrative burden – like chasing up lawyers for sign offs; telling less experienced staff what happens next in a 70 day DM development process; filling out cost accruals reports for finance etc. Any reader here who has worked in marketing in a big company understands what I’m saying. Orbis Marketing software removes many of those admin tasks (in fact thousands of hours per annum) so that the marketers have more time to spend with their agencies understanding their market and developing better creative.

I would suggest that if marketers, as you contend, are producing dull, risk-averse advertising then this is due to other factors, and not the software they use at work. I’ve got views on what might be causing that but these are best saved for a piece on that specific topic.

Thanks newag. I will never look at a crystal ball, heck a pair of em, in the same way again.

Crikey Tim you have a go a working on a tech title where this kind of nonsense comes across the desk three or four times a day.

Incidentally, the message hidden in this little gem is:

HELP, WE BADLY NEED A NEW PR COMPANY.

Rae asks “Surely Leader beats Visionary?”

No, this is like rock-paper-scissors. Visionary beats Leader and Challenger because he can see the future; Leader beats Challenger because, well, he leads rather than just challenges; and Niche actually doesn’t beat anything but it sounds rather impressive.

I’m just impressed that a press release that DIDN’T work still found its way into the media via such a highly-regarded fellow as Tim Burrowes! For better or worse, the adage: “as long as they’re talking about us” is alive and well!

Next step for you Grant, sack whoever wrote that! Turning jargon and complex ideas into simple laguage for the Joe Bloggs reader is 101. This is a big fat fail, I’m afraid!

One trick is to image you have long plats (men and women) and live in England before 1066.

The language you would use is called Anglo Saxon – and it’s is the core of modern English. The words are short and are understood by nearly everyone.

Using it (instead of gobbidy-gook) actually makes you sound smarter.

Tony, would we spell ‘plats’ as you had it or as the, possibly more understandable, ‘plaits’?

Grant – you should write your own press releases.

Comprehending it was beyond my competency area.

I often wondered what happened to the guy who wrote speeches for George Bush

Terrible press release but Tech journo’s would have understood it. Gartner have all sorts of weird methodologies..

Take their “hype cycle” which describes the cycle of hype around new technologies. It’s funny and actually quite accurate.

1. Technology Trigger: Someone announces new technology.
2. Peak Of Inflated Expectations: Media picks up new technology and tells everyone it’s the new big thing. It’s a cycle of hype that everyone get’s on board with. Familiar? Anyone?
3. Trough of Disillusionment: Said product actually didn’t meet these ridiculous expectations that the consumers were expecting. The hype simply fails to live up to the reality.
4: Slope of Enlightenment: Some people stay with the product and actually realises it has some use.
5: Plateau of Productivity. People use this product. It’s productive and improves with further releases.

iPad anyone?

@Alister – brilliant. My mum says thanks as well as she also now gets it.

I think it’s a bit out of order for Mumbrella to shame PRs like this. It’s unprofessional. Okay the release isn’t great but sometimes Australian journalism leaves a lot to be desired.

Katie – a press release is exactly that.. a release into the public domain in the hope that journalists will pick up the information and write about it…. so nothing out of order. Plus, its a shocker

‘calendaring’?

Kill me now.

Come on Ed – you’ve never verb-alised before? What’s your trade?

Whoa! As a seasoned marketeer in the software space (going back to the 80″s) , this is the biggest load of @#$*&^ I’ve ever read. If you don’t get your message understood in the first 4 lines of text – you;ve lost ’em!

Orbis look like a great solution provider but they’ve lost it here in translation by trying to be buzzword-compliant. I say go back to the old school and tell it like it is. Tell the real world what your real world solutions can do. Not bullshit with a bunch of buzzwords that you think will attract a wider audience? These guys will be slated …not to mention totally ignored … for this badly written press release. Shame as they seem to have some good stuff!

Hmm..careful about bashing the PR. I’ll put a tenner on the fact that it’s ‘company speak’. Grant (God bless him) can’t put his message into 3 succinct sentences either and one would win that tenner ’cause Grant would have signed off any release with his name in it!

“Orbis Global, designer and distributor of software solutions for the marketing industry has won the recognition of ‘visionary’ in the Gartner MRM Magic Quadrant for 2010. Its innovative software delivers extraordinary administrative efficiencies for corporations managing their marketing in conjunction with external agencies.”

oops, only 2 sentences!

Crystal Balls… ahh thats why Gypsies walk funny…. 🙂

Who wouldn’t trust Orbis? These guys are working at over 30 other IT companies worldwide, simultaneously!

http://www.tineye.com/search/d.....14f49ad74b

That’s the real benefit you’ll get from such extraordinary administrative efficiencies gained while employing Marketing Resource Management (MRM) – you can be employed at at least 30 full time jobs worldwide and still have ample time to think up visionary press releases that stump even Robert Langdon!