It’s been more than 15 years since I opened my own marketing/public relations agency and during that time I have come to realize that an entire new lexicon has developed while I was sleeping, so to speak. I’m a pretty simple gal, so when I come across a new word I immediately Google it. And lately, more often than not, I find myself rolling eyes, shaking my head and then just going back to reading.
The reason I resort to the eye-rolling is that marketing people now, more than ever, feel compelled to invent new words for us to learn and to replace the older, less exciting words. When I hear the younger generation of marketers uttering the newspeak, that’s when I once again find my eyes rolling.
Really? Do we really need a new lexicon to define what we’ve been doing all along? For your ease, and to enable your own eye rolling, is a list of newspeak:
- Analytics—We used to call these reports.
- Content—We used to call this writing.
- Curating—We used to call this organizing.
- Earned media—We used to call this public relations.
- Evidence-based—We used to call this research.
- Engage—We used to call this commenting, sharing, listening, viewing.
- Infographics—We used to call these pictographs.
- Layering—We used to call this researching.
- Metrics—We used to say measurements.
- Monetize—We used to call this value.
- Multiplatform—We used to call this entertainment.
- Narrative—We used to call this the story.
- Optimize—We used to call this improve.
- Organic—We used to call this connecting, referring.
- Owned media—We used to call this promotion.
- Paid media—We used to call this advertising.
- Resonate—We used to call this shared emotion.
- Traffic—We used to call this circulation or viewership.
- Transparency—We used to call this what everybody knows.
- Value proposition—We used to call this core values.
- Verbiage—We used to call these words.
