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Marketing Fluff: What Tech People Really Mean (and How to Avoid It)

By Jay

Sep 2, 2025 | 10 minutes read
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Series: Leadership

Tags: marketing, tech, writing, communication, trust

Marketing fluff bingo card showing common buzzwords

In the tech world, few phrases are as dismissive—and as cutting—as “marketing fluff.” This term is shorthand for a particular kind of content that technical audiences often find frustrating and unhelpful. It’s a criticism that points to a disconnect between marketing efforts and the expectations of a technically savvy audience.

Is it always fair? No. But it’s a real challenge that needs to be understood and addressed, because once you produce something that gets labeled as fluff, it can be hard to regain credibility.

I’ve been fortunate in my career to have safely avoided this pitfall, thanks to copyediting from skilled technical writers and editors who gave me the opportunity to push back on changes made in the name of “marketing.” In one of my last positions, I had a product marketing manager who took a simple blog post that helped answer the question “what version of product X am I running.” This was for a product that was very well known in general, but was available in multiple versions with different features, different licensing models, and different support levels. The post was meant to help users figure out which version they had installed, full stop. Instead, she rewrote it to cram in as many buzzwords as possible, and to make it sound “exciting.” The result was a vague, jargon-filled mess that said nothing useful.

My editor at the time was a very technically savvy person who understood the audience and the purpose of the post, and supported my pushback. The product marketing manager was unhappy that I resisted their changes and seemed to take my characterization of their rewrite as “marketing fluff” as a personal attack. Although I offered to collaborate with them on a new post that would meet both our needs, they ghosted me after that interaction and later left the company.

The most frustrating part? The fact that the market did not fully understand the product’s capabilities and differences between versions was down to a lack of clear, specific documentation and marketing materials from the product marketing team. My post was an attempt to fill that gap in a practical way.

The sad irony is that the product marketing manager was likely trying to do their job well, but in doing so, they missed the mark entirely. This experience reinforced for me the importance of understanding your audience and the value of clear, specific communication—especially in technical fields.

The following terms often signal “marketing fluff” to technical audiences. They’re not inherently bad words or concepts, but when used without context, specifics, or evidence, they can come across as empty buzzwords. The fact that these are often the butt of jokes in tech circles speaks to how frequently they are misused. For example:

Marketing fluff example illustration

When a technologist calls something marketing fluff, they’re typically responding to content that prioritizes style over substance—beautifully designed slides or polished copy that doesn’t actually tell them how it works. The warning signs are unmistakable: vague superlatives like innovative, next-generation, cutting-edge, and revolutionary thrown around without examples or proof. The content dodges specifics, offering claims without benchmarks, features without use cases, and promises without implementation details. Most tellingly, it tries too hard to sound impressive, loading up on buzzwords like synergy, AI-powered, and digital transformation until the intended meaning gets lost in a fog of jargon.

This type of content looks good to audiences who know just enough to be swayed by flashy language but not enough to ask the hard questions. But for technical buyers, specifically those who will be using or implementing the product, it is a huge red flag.

In consumer marketing, vague promises can sometimes work. In B2B tech—especially when selling to engineers or technical buyers, it’s a trust killer. Technical buyers approach everything with healthy skepticism by default. Their jobs are built on spotting flaws and asking “what’s the catch?” When they encounter fluff, it feels like you’re hiding the truth. Without real data, they’re forced to dig for answers…or move on to a competitor that provides the honest specifics upfront.

This slows decision-making, frustrates the audience and damages your credibility.

The last is the most serious. As Neil Peart noted, “trust so hard to earn, so easy to lose.” Once you are labeled as a source of fluff, it’s incredibly difficult to win back trust. Even when you do have good data, people will doubt it.

Not all audiences evaluate technical claims with the same rigor. High-level executives, especially those removed from day-to-day technical work, may not have the tools or the time to dig into the details. This is why sales and marketing often target them with broader, more aspirational messaging.

The risk? Top-down mandates. A senior leader buys into a vague promise, signs the deal, and then the engineering team is tasked with implementing a “solution” that’s misaligned, incomplete, or simply not fit for purpose. This wastes time, burns budget, and can damage morale, because the people who have to make it work know from day one that it won’t. You also run the risk of losing key technical talent who feel their expertise is being ignored.

Good leaders in tech avoid this trap by surrounding themselves with people who can evaluate technical claims honestly, and be willing to “call the baby ugly” when needed. They build teams with diverse expertise, encourage open dialogue, and foster a culture where questioning is valued and expected. The best leaders develop a strong intuition for technical quality over time. They may not know why it won’t work, but they can sense when something’s off and ask the right questions.

Consider this comparison of two ways to describe the same API:

Technical Version (substance first)

The DataSync API transfers files at up to 2GB/s with less than 40ms latency over standard TLS 1.3 connections. In a 500GB dataset migration, we saw a 33% reduction in transfer time compared to SFTP, verified in independent benchmarks. It supports checksum validation, automatic retries, and parallel chunk processing to ensure integrity and speed.

Marketing Fluff Version (style first)

DataSync is a groundbreaking, next-generation solution that empowers teams to move data faster than ever before. Leveraging cutting-edge technology, it revolutionizes the way organizations collaborate, ensuring your business stays ahead in the digital era.

One of these tells you exactly what the product does, how fast it is, and why it’s better. The other tells you that someone had access to a thesaurus or an AI writing tool.

If marketing fluff had a visual form, it would be the marketecture diagram. We’ve all seen these: a glossy, color -coded block chart showing how a product “fits into the bigger picture,” usually with the hard edges filed off and the details blurred. The high level in this case is so high it may as well be in geosynchronous orbit.

Marketecture isn’t inherently bad, as it can serve a purpose. In the right context, it explains concepts at a high level, and helps non-technical audiences understand roughly how things work together. But when it’s presented as a substitute for a real architecture diagram, it’s misleading. It’s the tech equivalent of trying to plan a trip using the cover of a travel brochure instead of a map.

To put it simply:

  • Marketecture says “here’s what we want you to think happens.”
  • Real architecture says “here’s what actually happens,” down to the protocols, services, and dependencies.

Technical audiences know the difference. And if they can’t find the real diagram, they’ll assume it doesn’t exist, that you don’t understand it yourself, or that you are hiding something.

When I was steward of an open-source project, I gave a lot of talks about it. I could have leaned on marketecture slides, but instead, I used the project as a real showcase for our product. It was designed to run on actual hardware, not just in a brochure or on a web page.

That meant talking through how it worked:

  • The hardware environment it was designed for.
  • The integration points with our core product.
  • The performance characteristics we’d measured in practice.

It respected the audience’s intelligence and gave them the what, how, and why. The result? Those talks didn’t just sell the product—they built trust in both the technology and the team behind it. More importantly for the company, they led to deep technical discussions with potential customers who were evaluating our product for serious use cases.

Marketing fluff often happens when the wrong style is applied to the wrong audience, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Technical and marketing teams often have different priorities and perspectives, but they share a common goal: to communicate the value of a product effectively.

This can lead to tension, but that is not a bad thing as it can lead to better outcomes, stronger products, and more effective communication between teams by challenging assumptions and pushing for clarity.

The best results emerge when both sides respect what the other brings to the table. Marketing contributes narrative, accessibility, and reach, while technical teams provide accuracy, credibility, and trust. When these strengths combine rather than compete, the resulting content serves everyone better.

Different audiences have different needs. The key is to tailor your message accordingly, while not falling into the trap of relying on fluff to fill gaps. So, before you create content, ask yourself: Who am I speaking to? What do they care about? What do they already know, and what do they need to know?

In my career I’ve found that audiences generally fall into three categories, each of which requires a different approach:

For executives: Lead with business outcomes, but include a sidebar or link to technical detail for those who want it. For example, “This API reduces customer onboarding time by 60%, saving an average of $50K per quarter in support costs” with a link to technical specifications.

For practitioners: Lead with technical detail, but frame it in the context of the problem it solves. For instance, “This REST API handles 10K concurrent connections with sub-50ms response times, eliminating the bottleneck that was causing your weekend pager alerts.”

For mixed audiences: Layer the content—start with a clear, high-level summary, then progressively add more depth. Begin with “Our caching layer improves site performance,” then explain “reducing page load times from 3.2s to 800ms,” and finally detail “through intelligent prefetching and edge distribution across 15 global regions.”

If you want to speak credibly to technical audiences, you need to replace fluff with clarity. Start by leading with specifics. Instead of saying “Our platform is the fastest on the market,” try “Our platform handles 2M requests per second with 30ms average latency, verified in independent benchmarks.” The difference in credibility is immediate and measurable.

Beyond specifics, show rather than tell. Use demos, diagrams, code snippets, and case studies. Remember, a 30-second product demo will land better than a paragraph of buzzwords. Make sure to explain the “why” behind features by tying them to real-world problems: “This API reduces integration time from weeks to hours, cutting onboarding costs by 80%.” Remember to write for the technically curious, because even non-engineers in buying roles often have technical advisors who will read your docs, skim your blog, and verify whether your claims make sense.

In tech, your audience isn’t just buying a product, they’re buying trust in your execution. When marketing loses the details, it also loses credibility.

The smartest leaders, whether technical or not, know how to sniff out hype, ask the right questions, and demand proof. If your marketing can stand up to that kind of scrutiny, it will stand up in the market.