Buzz Words

It had become a fortnightly thing. We arrived at our meeting with the client’s PR & Marketing team and for the next hour we were bombarded with the latest in PR and marketing buzz words and phrases.

“on brand experiential activation”, “revert”, “traction”, “channel congruity”, “cut through marketing”, “brand reliant” and the list just goes on. Oh! the fun to be had!

The aim of the game was then to pick one of them each time and try and use it as often as possible until the next fun packed meeting.

“Hi, I’m trying to find out if my parcel has reverted to the warehouse, or if it has cut through and is on track to revert to me?”

Literally hours of adolescent fun

But what did they all mean? There were the usual acronyms like ROI and KPI, the usual phrases like, activation, brand identity etc etc but it’s fast becoming a language unto itself. I received a client email last week and had to look up the term “channel agnostic” ……I mean seriously peeps!

So, following is a list of these amazing new terms in the hopes that you too could understand and use them liberally in both your digital and oral coms set (see!) and get as much fun out of them as we do.

I will start with my absolute new fav of the month and then they go on in no particular order:

Channel Agnostic - refers to communication and branding that favours no medium or channel strategy.

“our channel-agnostic approach helps enterprises achieve the lowest cost per resolved conversation”

 Deep Vertical Expertise - A vertical market is a particular industry or group of enterprises in which similar products or services are developed and marketed using similar methods (and to whom goods and services can be sold). So maybe deep vertical expertise is selling product across one market whilst smoking marijuana (deep) at the top of a very tall building (vertical)

“We are redefining how deep vertical expertise can produce personalized, satisfying customer experiences.”

Contextual Marketing - Contextual marketing is marketing that is aware of its surroundings and its placement within a larger form of content (how’s that for a GREAT definition! After years of therapy, marketing is now aware)

Disruptor (another fav of mine, the latest version of a Thought Leaders) - Disruptors are rocking the boat. They’re mixing things up, breaking the rules, and riding motorcycles with aviator sunglasses.

(In my day they were the kids that always got detention and booted out of class – so I guess not much has changed)

Freemium - A pricing strategy in which the basic version of a service or product is offered free of charge. Extra features and functionality require free users to upgrade to paid versions. 

I wonder how that will go down with event clients?…

Growth Hacking - Growth hacking is commonly used to refer to bootstrap marketing strategies utilized by startups and new businesses with small budgets. This often means getting creative with free marketing methods like social media, viral marketing, SEO, and content marketing. 

(In other words, doing what every small business does in order to not spend a marketing budget the size of a small countries GDP)

Hyperlocal - Hyperlocal is all the rage these days, as marketers use GPS data to geographically target audiences and provide location-based advertising (otherwise known as Trump Marketing)

Ideation - “Ideation” refers to the process of creating new ideas. 

(Really!? I love this one! ONLY a marketer would come up with this buzz word to describe something that already exists. Why use the word “Idea” when you can marketify it and turn it into “Ideation”)

Jacking - From Newsjacking to memejacking, the –jacking movement is commandeering content for your personal marketing purposes. In newsjacking, writers cover a breaking news story while weaving in their own brand agenda. Memejacking is a corporate takeover of a meme. 

(A virtual carjacking, or brain jacking, or just jacking off, uh sorry folks I got a little too excited)

Enough, enough!!! I can’t take any more!

You are now armed and ready to rock the marketing and events world and show that you are on linguistic par with a cutting-edge millennial or Gen Z, even if you are a lagging Baby Boomer or Gen X’er.

So, go forth and conquer the world of Marketing Buzz words and remember at COB, revert to self, pour yourself a drink and know it’s just for fun.