[Sussex] Do we confuse you?

Geoffrey J. Teale gteale at cmedltd.com
Fri Apr 8 12:41:02 UTC 2005


Mark Barber <mark.barber6 at virgin.net> writes:

> Geoff sorry to have to 'flame' but you really shouldn't say things
> like that about marketing people. They may not think the same as you,
> but without them you probably wouldn't have a job. They are  a vital
> part of any successful business.

No need to apologise, I live and die by the sword, so to speak :-) 

Accepted, marketing (or Business Development as it seems to have
rebranded itself these days) is an important part of generating income
for most companies.

I actually did two terms studying Marketing when I was at Uni (I have
joint honours in Business Studies and Computer Science).  It didn't
make me respect the profession, but it did teach me how to confuse
people with new buzzwords like "The Boston Consultancy Group model"
and "cash cow" :-)

> I would actually argue the opposite - since they do not have enough
> up top' to make them up they tend to accept any Three Letter Acronyms
> offered without question so that they do not appear stupid. And where
> do the TLAs come from? The product people of course who are
> predominantly...technical.

Well, your experience is very different to mine then.  I have before
now been explicitly asked to make up TLA's by marketing staff in
consultation with advertising agencies because they feel that things
don't sound hi-tech unless you can coin an acronym and put a lovely
little (TM) after it.

It happens everywhere I go.. even here, the BD team are going around
telling people that what we have it is an IDAM system.  The
development team had never even heard the expression until well after
they started using it.  I've no clue what they mean by it, but I can
only imagine we're gonna shrink-wrap the product in red wax :-)

-- 
Geoff Teale
CMed Technology            -   gteale at cmedresearch.com
Free Software Foundation   -   tealeg at member.fsf.org




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