Can We Please Just Kill The “Conversation”?

There’s no doubt in my mind that Advertising Week’s biggest, most abused cliché was “conversation.” With all due respect to the Cluetrain, advertisers’ excessive, ambiguous and disingenuous insertion of the word between every other breath became downright difficult to stomach. I’m all for the spirit, but enough is enough. If conversation is important, then stop talking about it and just do it.

Pete Blackshaw weighed in on the issue in his latest ClickZ column, and solicited views from many prominent marketing and advertising practitioners. Not surprisingly, most agree there’s a problem here.

Below is a BlogPulse trend of all blog posts citing “conversation” along with either “marketing” or “advertising.” Hopefully it will begin to trend downward.