Mindshare-capturing snatches of boozy PowerPoint pap

Editor’s note: I’m on the road the rest of this week, so no Weekender this Sunday. Back to regular programming next week.—Dave.

Welcome, Fingers Fam, to the thrilling conclusion to the boozeletter’s highly prestigious Buzzwords of The Week of the Year Awards! We last checked in on the beverage-alcohol industry’s top blatherers of meaningless blither back in July 2024. Since then, the trade’s MBA-brained execs and out-to-lunch flacks have been hard at work entering innovative new corporatespeak into the record. Each week, we’ve tracked the most potent new contenders in the Fingers Weekender (exclusive to paid subscribers, please upgrade if you haven’t, thank you), and now it’s time to take stock.

Below are nine of the worst best most mindshare-capturing snatches of boozy PowerPoint pap featured in Fingers over the past six-ish months, ranked in descending order based on how much each made me wish that the Neuralyzer from Men In Black was real, and in my possession. As you’ll see, the most powerful mindsets in the drinks business did not lay up through the back half of the year. At the midway mark, “multicultural LDA Zillennials” was the consensus first-ballot favorite for Buzzword of The Week of The Year 2024, but the race has only gotten tighter since.

Each of the items below appears as it was originally published so you can enjoy the mess. They’re all real, and mostly unattributed, but for instances where executives said mind-numbing shit in an earnings call or an interview or whatever. Real sicko behavior.

As ever, The Buzzwords of The Week of The Year is strictly for paying Friends of Fingers, so go ahead and upgrade your subscription to read this special edition (and everything else I publish.) As a bonus, paid subscribers get to vote in a runoff to crown the boozeletter’s 2024 corporatespeak champion for the first time ever. Isn’t that worth the price of admission? I think so:

As 2025 gets underway in earnest, don’t forget to submit the corny, clunky, or otherwise condemnable vernacular about drinking in America you come across to [email protected]. All submissions anonymous.

9. “Fostering a culture of moderation”

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