The jangle fallacy is the assumption that two similar or identical things must be different because they wear different labels. Old wine in new bottles. Psychology coined the term, and psychology is where it does the most damage. A few of my favorites:

Grit. In high school my kids were assigned the Duckworth book. Grit was sold as a fresh discovery — passion plus perseverance, the great predictor of long-term success. Meta-analysis puts the correlation between Grit and the decades-old Big Five trait of Conscientiousness at .84.

The Dark Triad. Ominous, creative, spooky. It sounds like Emperor Palpatine teaming up with Spectre and Hydra. Pitched as a blend of psychopathy and narcissism. The same meta-analysis found a -.9 correlation with our old friend Agreeableness.

Net Promoter Score. A fantastical label slapped on the unglamorous, formerly-known-as “willingness to recommend” survey question. Its creator, Fred Reichheld, will tell you the calculation is what’s novel. He’s right. It’s also throwing away good data for no upside. The underlying question always had limited (read: zero) value, and lipstick on this pig isn’t making it any more kissable.

The codex of behavioral science “nudges.” Codex is a mysterious word. Fitting, given the byzantine explosion of nudges. If you haven’t invented one as a behavioral science company (I’m looking at you, DonorVoice), maybe you aren’t trying hard enough. Or maybe it’s nonsense. How different is telling hotel guests “75% of guests in this room reuse their towels” (social proof) from “most people in your neighborhood recycle” (normative influence)? Both ride the same horse: perceived common behavior steers individual decisions.

Content marketing. The official definition: creating and sharing valuable, relevant information to attract a defined audience with the goal of driving profitable customer action. Newsflash. If you’d define plain old marketing any other way, you’re already doing it wrong.

Often, the relabeling is just commercial mischief plus the hubris of believing you invented the wheel. The meek borrow, geniuses steal, and somewhere in the middle, people relabel.

But sometimes the relabel does worse damage. It vacuums up granular, discrete things and rolls them into one vague abstraction.

Take Engagement. No, please — take it. The word used to have its own meaning. Now it’s a label for a grab bag of behaviors: clicks, opens, likes, follows, reposts. Conspicuously missing from the engagement potpourri is another old-school term: reading. Perhaps reading is no longer hip. It also happens to be, by a country mile, the number-one behavior a donor or prospect does to actively show interest in what you’re saying. Which is, you know, the act of being engaged.

Engagement is a state of mind, not a behavior. The behaviors getting bundled into “engagement” may or may not reflect any actual engagement. They also miss the one behavior that matters most. And if any of those non-giving behaviors does help drive giving, I need to analyze and act on each one separately, not pour them into a stew.

There is a lot I can do to lift the percentage of people who read my copy and how long they spend with it.

Trying to lift “engagement” as a relabeled, bundled abstraction is worse than old wine in new bottles. It’s pouring the wine down the drain.

Kevin