Ah, marketing. The land of slogans, one-liners and buzz phrases. Terms our esteemed colleagues have spent days (or, more likely months) slaving over and are kind enough to share with the rest of the industry. In a business like ours which is dominated by words, surely we could never get sick of language? Well actually, yes. And over the last couple of weeks some especially annoying words have come together to form a massive grumble in my mind.
I’ll start with one particularly close to home. The industry seems to have a habit of segmenting marketing careers into different silos. It’s fair to some extent given that we all have our specialisms and niche areas, but in my job, working as a writer in the headache-inducing, mind bogglingly technical area of financial services, my colleagues have given me a special name. Apparently I’m a “fluffy” marketing person, and apparently it’s also essential to wiggle your index and middle fingers in a “ “ motion every time you say it. I’m surprised they haven’t changed my email signature yet- I’ve even been introduced as a “fluffy” in business meetings, a term probably best reserved for Hugh Hefner groupies.
Now, I’m sure it’s probably a joke and I shouldn’t get touchy about it, but I can’t help but feel that it’s a teensy bit degrading. I often have to remind myself that I have taken, and passed, four finance exams, so I can’t be a complete numpty. Sure, I might not be able to understand the intricacies of a yield curve first time, but if you explained it to me I could eventually communicate it to other people, which I don’t think is entirely without skill.
Anyway, I’m not whinging purely to wallow in self-pity; I’ve noticed the labelling thing happens to other marketing jobs too. Across the office from me sit “the techies” (finger wiggling again essential). They’re the ones who can understand accumulation, top slicing, lautro and all those other topics which form a question mark across the foreheads of normal folk. But just as I don’t like being shunted into one little box, it seems “the techies” don’t either. They’ll often point out that they can actually write communications, and find the idea that they all function like Moss on The IT Crowd a bit offensive.
Apart from those observations, the words which are currently irritating me are the ones I have to clatter out on the keyboard in every bloomin article I write. An obvious one is that eye-watering, bottom-clenching catchphrase which has been coined in every ad and news headline for the past twenty years (or so it seems), the credit crunch. I mean, I like a bit of alliteration as much as the next consenting adult, but in this instance, having too much of what we fancy is making us unimaginative lard-arses.
If you’re sick of the dreaded CC phrase too, the good (or bad) news is that it’s been replaced by a word which is going to hang like a rain cloud and piss all over our work for the foreseeable future: recession. Just the thought of typing it over and over again is enough to wear the nobbles off my keyboard.
Finally, a term which really confuses me is 'bear market'. Not because I don't understand what it means- it's scattered throughout every fund manager outlook written these days, like a defense for the fact that they're just about to tell you that your investment's dropped by 50%. But I always have to think really carefully to remember that a bear market is a bad thing, because to me it sounds rather lovely. I always imagine market stalls stuffed full of teddy bears and a load of punters haggling over the price.. Big teddies, little teddies, teddies with bowties...
And I just realised why they call me a fluffy.
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