Best of Breed

The other day, I started thinking about companies who use the term “best of breed” to describe their products.  I had a chat with a colleague recently and we debated over the use of the statement in marketing material.  I took the position that using this statement in marketing material is like telling the girl you love her on the first date…that it doesn’t really mean all that much since most of the software industry likes or has likened to use this term in the past.

So what does it really mean to have a product that is “best of breed”?    Well the Wiktionary defines best of breed as “any product thought to be best of its type”  So who determines that the product is the best of its type? The company? The analysts? The customers?  IMHO..probably all.

Marketing folks like to use industry buzzwords to describe their company’s products and for very good reason…..it should garner attention.  To me…who’s attention does it garner?  As the token marketing guy for Monolith, I prefer to leave the marketing buzzwords out of  product literature.  The reason I say this is that our target audience for our products are smart people and they can see through marketing fluff.  Give me a great case study where the customer implemented the solution and an educational article,webcast or white paper which explains a specific problem and uses a solution to solve that problem any day.

The use of marketing buzzwords might get the attention of some, but its the products, customer and technology behind them that make the buzz, not the words used to talk about it.

As we launch our new site in the coming weeks, I think you will find that our content is refreshing for the enterprise software market. It has very little marketing fluff and it pretty much devoid of marketing buzzwords describing our solution set.  However if you feel differently, I would welcome your comments and suggestions.

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network monitoring, network management, BSM, SLM, business service management, service level management, technology management, best of breed, marketing, marketing buzzwords, software marketing