This rant’s been building up in me for a while and reached tipping point this morning, so I offer you:

“24/7 online access” – no sh|t!

A lot of companies and organisations offer a secure access portal to a user’s personal information/account, etc. Ten years ago, this was pretty much unheard of and the ability to access things at any time of the day or night, was a real boon.

Promotion of these services centred on the 24/7 accessibility. For example, banks gave customer the ability to check their account balance/s whenever they like, and sold it as a round-the-clock benefit as you no longer had to work around branch opening hours.

Time’s marched on since the initial launch of online services though, but the language of promoting it hasn’t. Surely we’re all agreeably that in 2009, “online access” is a synonym for “access any time”, making the “24/7” tag redundant?!

What’s worse is that so-called ‘digital marketing experts’ boast about this on their company websites! Hey ‘experts’: if you’re such a fountain of ‘digital’ knowledge, why are you spruiking a standard, basic fact as being a unique benefit?