From a New York Times feature by Tiffany Hsu and Sapna Maheshwari headlined “The Strange Language of Modern Marketing”:
Every industry has its argot, but people who work in the advertising “space” seem to love insider language more than most. In news releases, ad copy and earnings statements, they have tortured plain talk in service of the sell, with Frankensteinian combinations and avalanches of acronyms.
“Every tribe has their way of communicating a message, their shorthand,” said Michael Kassan, the chief executive of MediaLink, a consulting firm that works with ad agencies. “Our industry is probably guiltier than most.”
In that spirit, here is a glossary of selected marketing lingo, new and old, that has proved baffling, or just annoying, even for some who work in the industry.
Brand heat: When “buzz” lost its buzz, brand heat came to the rescue. For years Puma, Burberry and other companies have used the term to convey strong interest in a given brand. Nike has invoked the phrase more than a dozen times during earnings calls in recent years.
Customer journey: People don’t simply buy things anymore. Like epic heroes, they go on a customer journey that begins when they become aware of a certain product, continues through the time when they weigh whether or not they would like to have it, and reaches a conclusion when they buy it.
Hypertelling: Advertising copywriters excel in storytelling (see entry below) for their clients. And when they allow customers in on the marketing process by, say, using their brand-specific memes? That’s “hypertelling,” as defined by Mike Yapp, the director of Google’s “creative think tank” the Zoo.
Occasion: In the real world, an occasion is often a special event. In the land of marketing, it’s a lot more prevalent. A common phrase is “snacking occasion,” which is a growing part of America’s “eating occasions.” We are now heading into the season of “gifting occasions.”
Phygital: A mix of the physical and digital elements in a customer’s experience of a brand. A furniture retailer could try to bridge its online and real-world sales strategies with an app that allows a potential buyer to see how a couch on display in a showroom might look in their living room.
Purpose-driven lifestyle brand: Blue Apron, Chipotle, Goop and Godiva have described themselves with this phrase. It’s meant to suggest that customers don’t just want the products sold by a particular company, but seek a deeper connection with it and wear it “as a badge.”
Snackable content: Short promotional videos made for smartphones and other devices.
Solutioning: Marketers love making one part of speech into another. A slogan from Hyundai — “However you family” — turns a noun into a verb. Toyota turned an adjective into a noun with “Start your impossible.” So it should come as no surprise that many marketers have taken a perfectly good noun, solution, and made it into a verb to describe the process of solving a knotty problem.
Storytelling: Companies once hired ad agencies for a simple job: conveying the appeal of their products, usually in a punchy manner. Now they want creative teams to immerse potential customers in narratives that practically mythologize their brands, and storytelling is perhaps the industry’s No. 1 buzzword. AdWeak, an advertising studio that also runs a parody Twitter account, has sold a tongue-in-cheek coffee mug emblazoned with the line: “For the last time, I’m not a copywriter, I’m a [expletive] brand storyteller.” (And even storytelling may not be enough, it seems. Mondelez says that “humaning” happens when “storytelling becomes storydoing.”)
Thumb-stopping: A descriptor for online content, made especially for mobile devices, that captures someone’s attention enough to stop him or her from scrolling. Pinterest, Shutterstock and Samsung have all promoted themselves as services that help users to create “thumb-stopping” material.
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Tiffany Hsu is a media reporter for the business desk, focusing on advertising and marketing. Previously, she covered breaking business news. Before joining The Times, she wrote about the California economy for The Los Angeles Times.
Tiffany Hsu is a media reporter for the business desk, focusing on advertising and marketing. Previously, she covered breaking business news. Before joining The Times, she wrote about the California economy for The Los Angeles Times.
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