These days, even cleaning the loo offers no escape from corporate jargon. This company doesn’t just make bleach, it “delivers” all sorts of corporate clichés, such as “innovation”, “long-term sustainabillity” (short-term sustainability being what, I wonder?), and “commitment“.
They should have stuck with the copywriter who came up with “Spray & Wipe”.
The one thing you can say about corporate types is that they’re not commitmentphobes.
In fact, it seems that every other company is committed to something – whether it’s quality, excellence, innovation, success or, in the case of PepsiCo, “Performance with a Purpose”.
What’s clever about the “C” word is that it’s a pledge about where you’d like to be, not a statement of where you are. To the delight of your Legal & Compliance team, it has an element of postponement that gets you off the hook from actually being what you claim to be.
Actually, the commitment cliché has become such a staple of the corporate lexicon that I don’t think people really know they’re doing it. I urge you to think twice next time you’re tempted to pledge your to commitment to some spurious corporate value.
Below are my top three offenders – do you recognise your company here?
