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What Did I Just Read?
Old habits die hard. I still get up every morning and read the television trade papers. A story that caught my eye this morning was Hallmark letting go of one of their executives and consolidating her position with another person’s. In this day and age of tight media budgets, there’s certainly nothing unusual about that. What did catch my eye was this quote from the company’s press release:
Hallmark is aligning its consumer-facing touch points, including content, under a single leader… with a focus and expertise in the expression of the Hallmark brand to consumers — from product to experiences and now content, across multiple platforms.
What does that even mean? Is it actually in English? “Consumer-facing touch points?” Is that better than a consumer-facing field goal?
Published in General
William Safire, the Nixon speechwriter who became a longtime columnist, liked to quote choice examples of vagueness and doublespeak. Once he quoted a windy, euphemism-laden warning issued to foreign service personnel, and then translated it into plain English. “Watch Out–the local whores are spies”.
All three of my kids work in consulting. They always have great examples of corporate-speak. I usually can’t understand the meaning. The better you get at business, the worse you get at English, apparently.
Could mean:
An excellent read about it is Less Than Words Can Say by Richard Mitchell.
Consumer Face
Seems to fit with”consumer – facing touchpoints”.
Just to be on the safe side, we should report them for inappropriate touching.
Hallmark has done enough cards over the ages to use AI to generate all the “new” card content. Same for their movies, btw.
It means social media will be under the same leadership as product and content development, including (presumably) their entertainment output. The jargon is familiar, but every company has its quirks.
Sales uses touchpoints, which includes online interaction through the website or social media accounts. There is some theory behind this, that x number of touchpoints results in the consumer buying something. One problem when you have an entertainment division, a greeting card (print and electronic) division, a social media group, and another group for the website is maintaining brand consistency. The more immediate problem is probably poor promotion of their entertainment output and product lines.
The two product development divisions probably aren’t great at keeping the web people informed, so you put it all under the same person and hope for better coordination so release dates are better marketed, etc..
While working in the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation as an engineer, I took a course on business writing. Almost all the examples of poor writing were taken from environmental documents of the sort required for the preliminary design of construction projects. For instance, we were told that one must not say that there was a “finding of no significant impact” for the proposed project, but that the project simply had no significant impact on the environment. Actually, the “finding of no significant impact” (Known as a FONSI) is a very specific sort of document that checks off certain boxes required in the Federal Regulations and must be approved by appropriate authorities. If we did not use the term, our correspondence would be unacceptable to the regulators.
When I pointed out the situation to the instructor, he shrugged it off and said we should do what we have to do, but to avoid this kind of language when it isn’t necessary.
Dammit, some consumer-facing touch point stole my wallet!
That much jargon masquerading as a substantive policy change means that a consummate bull—the just got a major promotion. Expect synergy.
So again, what are touchpoints?
Somewhere in my house, I have a copy of Dilbert’s Desktop Games (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilbert's_Desktop_Games). In it, there’s a Jargonator. You type a normal sentence or phrase into it, and the Jargonator translates it into corporate gobbledygook. I’ll bet Hallmark used it . . .
Perhaps it means that our movies will not have LGBTQ? characters kissing.
Politically Correct term for mammary glands.
I bet you didn’t know that Kamala Harris was moonlighting at Hallmark as their PR person writing news releases.
Too much to hope for! I am really getting sick of that particular addition to just about every film and streaming series I watch.
I’ve never seen that. Perhaps because our television is mostly OFF and I don’t have a subscription to any streaming services. A few weeks ago I started to watch a French film on YouTube that started to introduce us to some such relationships. I never found out where it was going with them.
To be fair, it’s likely that those terms all have meaning to the people who are deeply involved in the corporate content and brand-management business (and in Hallmark’s internal corporate world). It’s jargon, but jargon has a purpose; every profession has it.
The problem here is that they released a public statement filled with jargon terms that nobody outside that specialty can make sense of. Whatever message they wanted to communicate to a larger audience, they should have had a professional writer translate it into English.
There’s jargon, and then there’s jargon. If you were to ask Hallmark what that jargon MEANT, do you think anyone could have really explained it? I’m doubtful. Which means it’s the kind of garbage that Jill Biden used to become a “doctor.”
A Madison Avenue Christmas in The Country (2025)
Synopsis: Hard-charging single gal (~29 but played by an actress who is 40) Ashley has to get the financially-challenged venerable Smith family bakery in Delightfulville to accept a merger proposal from Big Corporation so the popular business name can be used for mass-produced food items. Her PowerPoint presentation to the stockholders (gosh near everybody in Delightfulville along with principle stockholder and Smith family heir, handsome single dad baker actual male model Trevor Smith) goes badly, especially the part about consumer-facing touch points (funny, kindly old Marge says she does not get it, others nod and murmur). Trevor’s nine-year-old daughter is played by a terrible, off-putting child actor who thinks Ashley would be perfect for Trevor even though they seem to loathe each other until a snowball fight/ a cookie baking competition/an evening carriage ride/ a touching speech about the true meaning of the family bakery/ a wise old coot (probably the mayor of Delightville) dressed as Santa gives hackneyed advice that makes Ashley rethink her entire life in a single scene. Ashley’s boss arrives (uh oh!) but surprisingly decides to lose money by investing in Smith Bakery (he loved the cookies as a kid) to allow it to flourish at the expense of Big Corporation in a rather fuzzy partnership. Ashley stays in Delightville to jointly manage Smith Bakery and marry Bob.
Actually, the appeal of those stories to actually-40-and-over women is likely increasing, so they can drop the pretense.
Wait a second, who was Bob? This is his first appearance in the synopsis. @bobthompson ?
Buyer/seller interactions. A few examples are social media likes/comments, maybe using automated chat to help shop on the site, and/or product questions/reviews submitted on the web site. I don’t know how Hallmark is set up, but they might be able to track a user who streams content directly from them and add it to other data that builds up a profile.
There’s a difference between understanding and explaining. Whoever originally wrote those words knew exactly what they meant, and what they were trying to convey. That doesn’t mean they would be able to clearly explain it (and indeed, that text suggests that they wouldn’t).
Unfortunately, the ability to clearly express ideas, or explain them to others who don’t have the same background, is not as common a skill as it should be. (Which is a good thing for me; I’m a technical writer, so I make my living by translating specialized terminology into understandable prose.)
It’s like putting out a press release in Japanese to an American audience. It may make perfect sense to those who read Japanese. But since most Americans do not, the attempt at communication was a failure.
You people are very critical of the wording of a statement of a company in the business of better wording statements.
One of Hallmark’s competitors should come up with a few greeting cards filled with jargon that only 1% of the population understands.
Back in the Apollo days, a scientist being interviewed referred to “the land-sea interface”. The interviewer, whose face I can visualize but whose name I can’t remember, said, “If you mean the shoreline, then please say the shoreline.”