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SURELY ONE OF THE MOST ridiculous phrases to surface in business-speak lately is “deep dive.” It came up a few times at the recent E-mail Authentication Summit in Chicago. It's used like a verb and means to explore a subject in depth.

Deep dive? Does this indicate a new soup-to-nuts paradigm? At the end of the day, how would a savvy marketer concept the phrase “deep dive” to get more synergy?

Here's an idea: Anytime a new word or phrase starts making its way into the business vocabulary, we should imagine using it in a conversation with our spouses. If it sounds nonsensical in that context, we should excise it from our brains and cruelly mock anyone else who uses it.

Let's try it.

“Honey, I know you think I'm being a little hard on Junior right now, and I'd love to deep dive that subject with you later, but right now I need to keep whacking Junior around for just a little while longer.”

Yep. Sounds pretty stupid — and in this case, vaguely obscene. We should stop using it and start seriously ridiculing those who do.

Of course, the Authentication Summit being highly technical as marketing conferences go, attendees were treated to all kinds of neat techie buzz phrases. One of the better ones was “social engineering exploits.” According to Microsoft corporate vice president Brian Arbogast, we can expect more of them in the near future.

What's a social engineering exploit? Turns out it's another term for a particular style of data theft, such as calling gullible employees and tricking them into giving out secret information like passwords.

OK, let's give our new absurd-buzz-phrase-detection method another test.

“Honey, I know you think I'm being a little hard on Junior right now, but these social engineering exploits of his just have to stop.”

This too sounds ludicrous.

However, “social engineering exploits” at least has promise as an expression one might use to describe the actions of an e-mail marketing superhero: “Tune in next week to follow the daring social engineering exploits of…Authentication Man!”

Still another stupid buzz phrase used repeatedly at the summit was “pain point” — as in something that causes difficulty.

And applying our method: “Honey, I know my treatment of Junior has been a real pain point for you lately….Honey? What's that in your hand?”

BANG!