We Are Never Excited by "We are very excited..."

One of the items on my ever-lengthening list of things I hate more than life itself is ineradicable nature of the PR phrase "We are very excited." as in

We are very excited about having the 1st event management company in the North Okanagan!

Somewhere in the dawn of time an extremely retarded writer in "the PR game" got the brilliant idea to put this phrase into the mouth of every executive that was ever so dumb as to actually hire a PR firm in the first place. It was the beginning of one of the worst memes ever to infest the mind of man.

Like the needles into the arm of a meth freak, once this phrase was put into a press release it never came out.

The first link above goes to a Google News search for this deadly phrase and the list it generates is about as exciting as having a three-foot length of rebar pounded down the center of your spine. Some random examples:

"We are very excited to have Trevor move into the Controller role; his background and experience make him the ideal candidate to fill this position."- Ucore Uranium Announces Management Appointment

You can bet Trevor's wife is excited by his raise. Other than that... Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz......

"Eventually, we want to learn how to download the speeches onto phones and iPods so that they can be accessed by the students at any time of the day," Corff said. "We are very excited with where this is going and can't wait to see what upcoming technology has in store for us to experiment with." - Students download their own speeches at Podunk - er, Pioneer -- College

Probably harmless as long as the students are shot if they attempt to upload them as podcasts.

"I am very pleased to announce that Guns N'Roses and I are now represented by the management team of Irving Azoff and Andy Gould," Rose posted to the Web site March 27th. "We are very excited and look forward to working with them and hope our relationship proves beneficial for everyone, especially the fans." -- Pollstar -- The Concert Hotwire

Guns and Roses? I'm sort of excited to know that they're not dead. Unless they are. In which case, I am very excited.

When I worked at Penthouse magazine we'd get more press releases detailing "excitement" in the realms of the dead than we'd get, well, Penthouse Letters. In a way, the loathsome phrase did have its use. As soon as your eye came across it, you knew it was absolutely safe to toss it in the trash that very instant.

And you did.

But despite this well known effect of "We're very excited," rotten PR agencies keep slapping it in everybody's mouth. I imagine it is because nothing gets PR agencies more excited than not having to think for one extra second about what would make, you know, effective PR.

Posted by Vanderleun at March 28, 2008 2:20 PM | TrackBack