Daily Archives: April 13, 2020

Marko-babble from Sterling Brands.

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Over the weekend I was cruising the web and came across a company I used to drive past daily in Garden City, NY. The building was a dirty tan and was probably nicely designed in the 70s or 80s – spherical corners and angles as I recall. The sign read Sterling Brands. The latter word caught my attention being a brand guy. But for the live of me I couldn’t tell what the brands were. Not from the sign on the outside of the building. CIA?

When I came across the brand on the web, I looked them up on my phone. For some reason, my Pixel 3 showed a bunch of flash-like type animations and no pictures of the brands. Today I checked again and this time the pictures resolved. Sterling owns Stoli and Krispy Kreme.

Over the weekend, however, not knowing the brands in the portfolio I read the website copy and was completely lost. It was one of the poorest assemblage of marko-babble I’d ever read. It’s why I coined the term marko-babble. Read on:

Sterling Brands

In today’s world culture shifts at the speed of a scroll, tap or tweet.

We design human brands that are human-centric, relevant and responsive.

Brands that inspire people to think, feel and engage.

We design living brands.

Got that? Sterling, which, if memory serves, used to sell knives and kitchenware, now designs brands for people. (And actually, Krispy Kreme and Stoli were not designed by Sterling anyway, they were purchased by Sterling.)

Here’s my point. Just as I couldn’t tell what Sterling did from the sign on the building, I had no idea what they company did from the web copy – sans pictures. The copy had not a lick of endemic category explanation. Okay, they are made for people. (When robots take over they may have to change the copy.)

Please, please please… everybody stop writing senseless marketing poetry. Stop the brand effluvia. People want to know what the product is. What the product does. What makes it different. And what makes it better.

Stoli and Krispy Kreme deserve better from their holding company.

Peace and health.