A word I coined to describe the fatuousness of most marketing. Blah, bloody blah.
You know it when you see it. We’re passionate about delivering innovative solutions that empower businesses to achieve their full potential. That kind of thing. Words that fill a page without saying anything. Language so generic it could apply to a law firm, a dog grooming service, or a nuclear submarine manufacturer.
Blahketing is what happens when conflict is removed from a business story. When every rough edge is sanded off. When the desire to sound professional overrides the need to sound human.
It’s also — and this is the really tragic part — what happens when businesses outsource their words to people who don’t know them and don’t care. The copywriter gets a brief that says “professional, innovative, customer-focused” and does their best. The result is indistinguishable from every other website in the industry.
The root cause is almost always fear. Fear of saying something specific. Fear of having a point of view. Fear of showing the messy human truth behind the polished facade. The first website I ever built for my digital media company in the late 90s had a fake security camera feed. As the camera panned around, it revealed slumped dead bodies. Was it corporate? No. Was it blahketing? Absolutely not. It was two kids in their twenties being themselves. That instinct — to be something rather than nothing — is what blahketing kills.
The antidote isn’t cleverness. It’s honesty.
The businesses that cut through — the ones that actually get remembered — are the ones brave enough to sound like themselves. To have an opinion. To let their character show. To admit that things aren’t always smooth, that they’ve made mistakes, that they care about something beyond quarterly targets.
If you read your own website and it could belong to any of your competitors, you’ve got a blahketing problem. And no amount of passion or innovation will fix it.
Try conflict instead. Try vulnerability. Try taking a stand that some people will disagree with.
It’s scarier, but it works.