Circumlocution and euphemism: The talking-around methodology in political, economic, and industrial communication – Image: Xpert.Digital
“Holistic”, “AI-supported”, worthless: Why decision-makers no longer trust corporate language
The talking-around trap: How empty marketing slogans are endangering Germany's industrial base
“Holistic transformation,” “synergetic ecosystems,” or “AI-driven excellence”—anyone reading annual reports, trade fair brochures, or LinkedIn posts from industrial companies today is often drowning in a sea of impressive-sounding but ultimately empty buzzwords. Behind this polished corporate language lies a phenomenon known in communication studies as “circumlocution” or “corporate doublespeak.” Instead of speaking plainly, B2B companies in particular resort to euphemisms and vague promises. But what at first glance appears to be highly professional marketing reveals itself upon closer inspection as a very real economic threat. When the trust of buyers and decision-makers erodes through insubstantial buzzword bingo and greenwashing, sales cycles lengthen and multi-million-dollar deals fall through. The following analysis reveals why the inflation of empty words not only harms individual companies but also endangers the entire industrial sector in the long term – and how brands with real substance, authenticity and thought leadership can regain the trust of their customers.
When words say everything and mean nothing: The great silence behind corporate language
Anyone reading trade fair booths at the Hannover Messe, white papers from leading mechanical engineering companies, or LinkedIn posts from industrial corporations today will encounter a peculiar language. It sounds competent, feels significant, and yet conveys shockingly little. Terms like "holistic transformation," "synergetic ecosystems," or "sustainable innovation excellence" dominate the communication—and ultimately say nothing about what a company actually delivers, what it stands for, or where it is headed. In communication studies, this phenomenon has the precise name of circumlocution—in other words, talking around the issue or paraphrasing. In the industrial B2B context, it has developed into an independent communication methodology whose economic consequences have so far received little systematic evaluation.
Circumlocution and euphemism: When language becomes a fog machine
The term circumlocution comes from Latin – “circum” (around something) and “locutio” (speaking) – and refers to the practice of expressing something in unnecessarily many words instead of naming it directly. The technique is ancient: politicians, diplomats, and lawyers have used it for centuries to avoid commitment without outright silence. In a business context, circumlocution has been reinforced by a second mechanism: euphemism. A euphemism replaces an unpleasant or negatively connoted term with a more euphemistic, mitigating description – classic examples from the industrial sector would be “release from duties” instead of dismissal, “restructuring” instead of job cuts, or “optimized resource allocation” instead of cost-cutting measures.
Both phenomena – circumlocution and euphemism – have merged in industrial communication into a third: so-called corporate doublespeak. This term, coined by George Orwell's critique of language and later popularized by William Lutz's analyses, describes a form of communication that deliberately obscures, confuses, or misleads while superficially demonstrating professionalism and competence. Corporate communication, to put it succinctly, has perfected precisely one task: making bad news sound like good news and presenting problems as strategic opportunities. The result is language that is technically correct but devoid of substance.
In industrial communication, this development is particularly consequential because the target group – purchasing managers, engineers, managing directors, technical decision-makers – unlike consumers, places higher demands on precision and substance. Anyone awarding a mechanical engineering contract worth several million euros wants to know what they're getting. The "talking around" methodology, on the other hand, provides them with words that feel good but don't offer a reliable basis for decision-making.
From technical term to empty marketing slogan
The prime example of a concept being transformed into an empty buzzword is the term "Industry 4.0." Originally coined in 2011 by the German Federal Government as part of its high-tech strategy, it precisely described the integration of cyber-physical systems into manufacturing processes, horizontal networking across value creation networks, and vertical integration into production systems. The term was conceptually precise and technically sound. Within just a few years, it had become a ubiquitous marketing term used for virtually every digital measure – regardless of whether it actually changed industrial production or not.
The same applies to terms like "digital transformation," "AI-supported processes," "sustainable value creation," or "supply chain resilience." They have all undergone the same dilution process: from precise technical term to inflated buzzword that means everything and nothing at the same time. CIOs and technical decision-makers regularly confirm this pattern. The term "digital transformation" tops the list of the most frequently misused IT buzzwords because it is now used for every tiny digital change—even when only an analog form has been replaced by a digital one. The consequence of this conceptual inflation is a communicative devaluation: Anyone who labels everything "transformative" renders the term meaningless and loses the trust of the target group that still understands its original meaning.
The situation is particularly serious in the area of sustainability communication. In a comprehensive analysis, the European Commission found that 53 percent of all environmental claims made by companies across Europe are vague or even misleading. Terms such as "climate neutral," "environmentally friendly," or "sustainably produced" are used without clear definitions, independent certification, or verifiable criteria – a phenomenon known as greenwashing. A court ordered the confectionery manufacturer Katjes to explain its claim of climate neutrality, as consumers could otherwise mistakenly assume that the company had actually eliminated all emissions instead of merely offsetting them. This ruling exemplifies how talking-around in its most extreme form – greenwashing – can have legal consequences.
The psychological and institutional driving forces
Why do companies resort to indirect, obfuscating communication at all? The reasons are manifold and range from individual psychological to systemic institutional factors. On an individual level, beating around the bush serves to protect oneself or the company from criticism. Those who remain vague cannot be precisely refuted. Those who formulate facts euphemistically protect the face of all involved – the sender as well as the receiver. In hierarchical organizational structures, which still prevail in many German industrial companies, there is the added factor that clear negative statements – for example, about product defects, delivery problems, or competitive disadvantages – are perceived as a loss of face.
At the institutional level, corporate speak arises through a mechanism that could be described as communicative conformity pressure. If all leading companies in an industry use the same buzzwords, the impression arises that not using these terms could be interpreted as lagging behind or a lack of innovation. Anyone who doesn't communicate "AI-supported automation" at the 2024 Hannover Messe risks being perceived as technologically backward—regardless of whether their product actually contains relevant AI functions. This pressure creates a spiral of buzzword inflation: More and more companies adopt the same jargon until it becomes completely devalued and has to be replaced by the next buzzword.
Another institutional cause lies in the organizational fragmentation of marketing and sales. When marketing departments communicate using buzzwords, while sales has to sell technical specifications, a structural inconsistency arises that confuses customers and undermines trust. Furthermore, many communications managers in industrial companies are under considerable time pressure and tend to rely on tried-and-tested templates instead of developing precise messages. The result is communication that is formally complete but interchangeable in content.
The economic dimension: What talking-around costs
The economic damage caused by indirect and unsubstantiated communication is difficult to quantify, but by no means marginal. At the immediate transaction level, poor communication significantly lengthens decision-making processes: If potential customers cannot glean from press releases, websites, and product brochures whether a product meets their specific requirements, they have to ask questions, compare, and ask follow-up questions – steps that, in the complex B2B world, are associated with considerable transaction costs. Studies show that jargon and a lack of clarity in corporate communication directly lead to misunderstandings, which negatively impact individual and organizational productivity as well as profit margins.
Even more serious are the long-term losses of trust. The Edelman Trust Barometer has been tracking the development of institutional trust worldwide for 25 years and documents a steady erosion. The findings from the 2025 report are particularly relevant for B2B players: Decision-makers are bombarded with exaggerated promises, inflated ROI figures, and jargon-laden messages. The result is growing skepticism, which damages trust even in substantive statements. The most trusted brands are not the loudest, but those that communicate most transparently, consistently, and clearly. Trust functions as a fundamental economic factor: It enables more frequent proposal invitations, facilitates deals, opens up cross-selling opportunities, and allows for higher margins.
A striking example of the dynamics of trust is provided by sustainability communication in German industry. Two-thirds of the German population believe that companies are only moderately successful in fulfilling their self-imposed climate commitments. Seven out of ten consumers say they would turn away from a company after being accused of greenwashing. Even more alarming: Although only 56 percent of those surveyed are familiar with the term "greenwashing," distrust of companies' sustainability claims is already structurally entrenched. What began as a communication strategy to avoid negative statements has thus produced a societal trust deficit that burdens the entire industry – including those companies that are actually making substantial progress in sustainability.
Talking-around in practice: Anatomy of a meaningless message
Concrete examples illustrate how the talking-around methodology operates in industrial communication. A mechanical engineering company that reduces production downtime could communicate directly: "Our predictive maintenance software has reduced unplanned downtime by an average of 34 percent for customers X, Y, and Z." Instead, one often reads: "Through our intelligent, AI-supported maintenance solution, we holistically optimize the availability of your assets and create sustainable added value along the entire value chain." The content of the second formulation is not theoretically incorrect – but it provides no verifiable information, no concrete performance statement, and no reliable basis for a purchasing decision.
Similar patterns can be found in fields such as cybersecurity, logistics, automation, and energy technology. Phrases like "We are a global leader," "groundbreakingly successful," or "exceptional depth of innovation" are used without providing evidence. Euphemisms are also prevalent in earnings calls and investor presentations: research shows that at least one euphemism is used in more than 70 percent of all corporate conference conversations—a linguistic strategy designed to influence investors' perceptions of company performance. When a CEO describes stagnant revenue growth as a "phase of strategic consolidation to enhance value," they haven't technically said anything wrong—but they have packaged essential information in such a way that its true meaning remains hidden from many recipients.
The rhetoric of vague pronouncements employs several characteristic mechanisms: the nominalization of verbs to obscure responsibility (not "We decided," but "A decision was made"), the passive construction to diffuse responsibility, the excessive use of Anglicisms as a distinguishing feature without adding any substantive value, and the accumulation of abstract nouns intended to intellectually impress the reader without providing concrete information. Vague statements like "We need more appreciation for our product developers" allow for an interpretation so broad that almost any measure—from salary increases to renovations of the break room—could be considered a response.
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The silent danger for "Made in Germany": Talk instead of action costs billions
The breach of trust as a systemic threat to the industrial location
The consequences of the "talking around" approach extend beyond the individual company and touch upon systemic questions concerning the competitiveness of Germany as an industrial location. The concept of trust has a clear economic function: it reduces transaction costs, accelerates decision-making, and enables long-term business relationships. Where trust erodes, the costs for verification, due diligence, and contract drafting increase. When German industrial companies systematically blur the lines between appearance and substance in their external communications, they undermine precisely the reputation for quality, reliability, and technical precision upon which the success of the "Made in Germany" label has been built for decades.
This is particularly evident in international competition. While Chinese suppliers in mechanical engineering and automation technology are increasingly emphasizing concrete performance data and reference projects, many Western European companies communicate with a plethora of buzzwords that are becoming less and less convincing internationally. The Bitkom report on Industry 4.0 from 2025 illustrates this internal contradiction: 96 percent of German industrial companies consider Industry 4.0 essential for international competition, but only 24 percent believe they are already succeeding in actually leveraging the potential of artificial intelligence for their own business. There is therefore a significant gap between what is communicated and what is operationally implemented.
This gap isn't just an operational problem – it's a communication problem. When companies promise AI-supported production processes but haven't yet implemented them, they fall into a credibility trap: Customers who make purchasing decisions based on this communication and then experience the reality of the product feel deceived. This not only damages the customer relationship but, in the age of social media, review platforms, and networked purchasing committees, rapidly erodes trust, extending far beyond the original contractual partner.
Psychology of consumers and decision-makers: Why talking-around (still) works
It would be analytically incomplete to consider the talking-around methodology solely from the sender's perspective. On the receiver's side, there are factors that explain why unsubstantiated communication can be successful, at least in the short term and in certain contexts. A Vaude study, conducted with the market research institute Appinio among approximately 1,000 respondents, found that around 75 percent of consumers rate sustainability claims from companies that assert they are environmentally friendly as rather to very credible – without external verification. Independent certifications influence only 25.3 percent of respondents in their opinion-forming. The initial trust that companies enjoy thus allows the talking-around methodology to operate largely unchallenged in the short term.
This initial trust, however, has an expiration date. The Sinus Study 2025 shows that while people in Germany recognize sustainability as an important issue, they increasingly feel overwhelmed by morally charged or abstractly formulated sustainability marketing. The message for industrial communication is clear: those who want to remain relevant in the long term need to communicate not more loudly, but more authentically. Positive visions, practical solutions, and authenticity are more crucial than polished phrases. This is especially true in the B2B context, because purchasing committees, which work with evaluation tools and supplier management systems, are increasingly able to compare communication promises with operational reality.
Furthermore, AI-powered information retrieval is fundamentally changing the dynamics. B2B buyers already conduct a significant amount of their own research long before the first sales contact. The more automated tools are able to compare and assess the substance of communication from different providers, the more transparent the discrepancy becomes between empty promises and actual performance. Trust thus becomes a measurable market variable – and unsubstantiated communication a quantifiable competitive disadvantage.
The spectrum of counter-strategies: From authenticity to thought leadership
The realization that talking around is economically damaging has already led to a counter-discourse in parts of the B2B communications industry. This counter-discourse revolves around concepts such as authenticity, transparency, and thought leadership – and it actually provides operationalizable alternatives to empty buzzword communication.
Authentic communication in a B2B context doesn't mean self-criticism for the sake of principle, but rather the courage to honestly present complexity, contradictions, and interim results. A communication strategy that recognizes decision-makers aren't buying a flawless facade, but rather the competence to repair flaws, captures the essence of this development. The MBLM study "The Trust Gap" confirms that consumers no longer automatically trust brands—they examine, feel their way, and decide based on authenticity rather than advertising promises. The more polished the communication, the more skeptical the target group—this pattern is empirically sound and applies to markets from the DACH region to France.
Thought leadership is another counter-strategy that Edelman identifies in its Trust Barometer 2025 as a key instrument for building trust in B2B. Effective thought leadership is characterized by six key attributes: addressing content-related "white space"—that is, topics not yet being communicated by everyone—relevance to the specific challenges of the target group, a long-term vision, demonstrable trustworthiness, concise content, and clear attribution of messages. According to Edelman's data, companies that practice thought leadership according to these criteria achieve measurable double-digit differences in brand perception and sales performance. Interestingly, only 30 percent of companies systematically link their sales leads with specific thought leadership content—suggesting that the potential of this strategy is far from being fully realized.
Benefit-oriented communication, known as value-based selling in the Anglo-Saxon context, presents another alternative. It focuses on the question: What does a customer ultimately gain from our offer? Stylistically, this begins with clarity, vividness, and brevity – to facilitate understanding and improve memorability. Concrete results, verifiable references, and transparent service descriptions are not a weakness, but rather a differentiating factor in a market saturated with empty phrases.
The paradox of obfuscation: When complexity becomes a hiding place
A particularly interesting phenomenon within the talking-around methodology is what could be called the complexity paradox. Industrial products and services are indeed complex – they require technical expertise, functions that need explaining, and often years of implementation processes. This inherent complexity is strategically exploited by some stakeholders to conceal unsubstantiated claims behind technical jargon. The more technical and abstract a statement sounds, the harder it is for the recipient to verify its content. "Our cloud-based, AI-native platform utilizes federated learning and a zero-trust architecture for proactive cyber resilience" sounds impressive – but what does that actually mean for the operation of a medium-sized manufacturing plant?
This mechanism is particularly pronounced in consulting firms and software providers that try to impress decision-makers with technical jargon, without giving them the opportunity to validate their claims from a technical perspective. This reflects an implicit power asymmetry: whoever controls the language controls the agenda. But this asymmetry is eroding. The professionalization of procurement processes, the spread of technical expertise among clients, and the availability of digital information are significantly shortening the lifespan of this strategy. Companies that dazzle with technical complexity today will tomorrow be confronted by procurement professionals who compare their promises with benchmarks, case studies, and peer reviews.
The conversation patterns that result from the "talking around" approach are also well-documented. If sales representatives explain features too early instead of first diagnosing the specific need, they lose control of the conversation and end up in a reactive position dominated by price discussions and detailed inquiries. In contrast, the credo of a substance-oriented sales approach is: understand rather than try to convince. Facts remain important, but decisions also require intuition, risk assessment, and a clear understanding of the benefits. The "talking around" approach fails to produce any of these three prerequisites.
Industry-specific variations: From logistics to mechanical engineering
The talking-around methodology manifests itself differently in various industries, but with similar structures. In mechanical engineering, terms like "next-generation precision technology" or "future-proof system solutions" dominate, disregarding specific maintenance intervals, tolerance limits, or lifetime guarantees. In logistics and intralogistics, terms like "end-to-end visibility," "predictive supply chain intelligence," or "resilient ecosystem integration" have achieved a popularity inversely proportional to their operational distinctiveness. In the renewable energy and energy technology sector, the combination of sustainability rhetoric and technical jargon has spawned its own language, directly challenging regulatory requirements such as the EU Green Claims Directive, which will come into effect in 2026.
For small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which form the backbone of German industry, the situation is particularly ambivalent. On the one hand, many SMEs, often considered hidden champions, possess operational strength that can stand up to international comparison. On the other hand, they often tend to conceal this strength behind industry-standard communication jargon – either out of modesty, due to a lack of resources in their communications department, or because they want to conform to industry norms. The result is a communicative underrepresentation of their real strengths: companies that actually deliver on their promises hide their arguments behind the same phrases used by those with little to no substance.
Structural solutions: How industrial communication regains substance
The economic analysis of the talking-around methodology yields concrete recommendations for action that go beyond the general demand for "more authenticity." The first structural approach is the systematic decoupling of communication and self-presentation in favor of problem-oriented language. Specifically, this means that every external communication statement should be anchored in a customer benefit that is specific, measurable, and verifiable. Instead of "innovative solutions," companies should communicate concrete results—cost reductions in percentages, throughput time savings in hours, and quality improvements in measurable key performance indicators.
The second point of departure concerns the organizational alignment issue between marketing, sales, and product development. If marketing messages don't match the actual product characteristics, a communication gap inevitably arises, which encourages "talking around." Investments in interdisciplinary communication processes—that is, in close collaboration between technical experts and communicators—are therefore not only a cultural value but also an economic necessity.
The third approach is the targeted cultivation of thought leadership that meets the Edelman criteria: substantive in content, based on genuine expertise, developed through a real engagement with the challenges faced by the target group, and clearly attributed. White papers, case studies, technical comparison studies, and peer-reviewed publications are formats particularly well-suited to building trust in an industrial context—provided they deliver verifiable insights rather than disguised advertising claims.
The language of industry as a reflection of its credibility
The "talking around" approach is not a marginal communication phenomenon, but a structural problem in industrial communication that produces measurable economic damage. Erosion of trust, extended sales cycles, declining differentiation capabilities, and regulatory risks are the consequences of a communication culture that replaces substance with buzzwords. The irony is obvious: to the extent that companies try to deliver more than their product promises through polished language, they undermine precisely the trust that forms the basis of all sustainable business success in B2B.
The alternative is not a capitulation to linguistic simplicity. Complex technologies require explanatory language, and strategic communication has a legitimate function in corporate management. The crucial difference lies between language that makes complexity transparent and language that uses it as camouflage. Between formulations that truly inform customers and those intended to impress them without actually telling them anything. Between trust as a strategic resource and credibility as a short-term facade. Industry—and especially German SMEs with their structural strengths—would have good reason to choose this alternative. The "Made in Germany" label has derived its value from the combination of technical excellence with entrepreneurial reliability. Communication that credibly expresses this combination would not only be more stylistically appropriate—it would be economically superior.
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