Marketing buzzwords to avoid, Part II

Hey there.

The overuse of the em dash has compelled me to write today’s newsletter. While not technically a word, it’s become the latest part of the English language to be overused and misused by everyone’s ChatGPT writing assistant.

Welcome to Marketing Buzzwords to Avoid: 2025 Edition — our second annual roundup of words (or other parts of language) that need to be taken out back and quietly retired from your comms stack.

Last summer, we shared a list of marketing terms that had either lost their meaning or never really had any to begin with. Since then, not much has changed, except for the thing writing most of them.

AI has gotten better. With the right inputs, it’s actually pretty helpful. Outlining ideas, drafting emails, punching up a deck. I still wouldn’t hand over the full keys (yet), but it’s more useful than it was a year ago.

Quick aside: Last week, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that all the people saying “please” and “thank you” to ChatGPT have cost the company tens of millions of dollars. Apparently, being polite to ChatGPT creates longer prompts, which take more compute, which burns more energy. OpenAI is footing the bill for our manners.

I fall squarely into the “polite out of fear” camp. A recent study found that 12% of AI users are nice to it just in case it remembers later. That tracks. (I, Robot has really stuck with me, even 20 years later.)

The New Offenders

AI has improved. But the language it generates still has a certain… emptiness to it. Not unreadable, just lacking something. You can feel it. My belief is that the best copy and creative writing will only become more valuable as it gets easier and easier to replicate mediocre writing.

The biggest casualty of the past few months? The em dash.

Not technically a word, but everywhere. Once a smart, stylish piece of punctuation — used sparingly to create a pause or shift in thought — it’s now been hijacked by AI as the default connector between whatever just got typed and whatever’s coming next.

Rolling Stone recently dubbed it the “ChatGPT hyphen,” which sounds about right. It’s my latest sniff test for AI-produced content, and this is a shame. The em dash deserved better.

I still use the em dash. But it’s officially on watch.

The Three Re’s

• Reimagine
• Reinvent
• Redefine

These used to suggest ambition. New ideas. A real change in the way things work. Now, they mostly show up when a company is making an incremental improvement on a previous product or the industry status quo.

I was at HLTH last year in Las Vegas and counted 11 different company booths using one of these three words in their main slogan. On that same trip, I also made a quiet promise to never use the phrase “the new standard in [X]” again, after seeing it printed on two different company backdrops at booths beside each other.

Every other brand these days is “reimagining productivity,” “reinventing wellness,” or “redefining communication.” I’ve used all three: taglines, copy, decks. Guilty as charged. But I’m working on it.

You’re allowed to just say what’s new. What changed. What got better.

Also yes, the comic at the top of today’s newsletter was generated by AI. The new image tools mirror the improvements in writing. Much better, but still kind of soulless.

Last year’s list of words to avoid is still very, very relevant. Foster, delve, realm… avoid, avoid, avoid.

Need help getting your messaging dialed in? If your brand, comms, or positioning needs a sharper edge — or just a little re… working — please don’t hesitate to reach out.

Yours in marketing,
Jeff