Throughout the churn of ever-changing priorities and products at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, or at any trade show for that matter, there is one constant: slogans. To be more specific: big banners printed with meaningless corporate gibberish.
This is where the world’s surplus of words like “enabling,” “future,” “innovating,” and “together” go to die, like orange-skinned retirees to Florida.
This year, all buzzwords were present and correct, allowing the Congress to earn its seventh Buzzword Compliance Award from the EU Commision — a feat only equalled by the Blue Sky Out Of The Box-Ivation conference held in Reachout, California throughout the 1990s.
The only hot buzzword we didn’t see was “disruption,” presumably because the suits are — in reality — terrified of such a thing. So, without further delay, let the mocking commence:
We’ll start with a classic from Hitachi. Next and Inspire have been rendered completely impotent by overuse, and yet they still seem to be able to excite the men in gray.Ford promotes burning even more gas. Good job!This is what happens when Google Translate meets company creativity: Corporate Chinglish.“The Beer of Barcelona.” This comes from the Damm brewing company, maker of the blandest, gassiest suds in the city.Not content with losing the market for PCs, mobile devices and probably even printers, HP is also years behind the cutting edge of corporate copywriting. Hey HP! 2005 called and it wants its vapid nonsense back.Not strictly part of the buzzword bingo game, but this sign wanted you to touch your NFC phone to it’s surface to pick up directions to the closest WC. That’s right: tap your phone on this hoarding at tell everybody that you need to pee.Oh man. This CEO sounds pretty unreliable. Also, this picture gets bonus points for the extra slogans in the background. See if you can collect them all.Again, not a corporate slogan, but this is likely the only place in Barcelona that you’ll see these dietary options. Outside of some filthy hippie restaurant, anyway.And we finish with another classic from Intel. Can anyone tell me how “Sponsors of Tomorrow” differs from Hitachi’s “Inspire the Next”? No. Because it doesn’t.
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