Top Ten Buzz Words You Need To Know For A Successful Career In Advertising.

1. Low Hanging Fruit

What you think it is:  Ripe and succulent fruit, ready to be picked.

What it is in advertising: A customer or prospect that can be effortlessly obtained.  Used mostly by confused brand strategists to fool the team and client in to thinking they’ve done their research.

2. A Brief

What you think it is: A pair of undies, mostly used for men’s undies.

What it is in advertising: A veritable book emailed over by an Assistant Brand Manager that is to be used as the foundation of a campaign. A brief generally contains more words than a Russian novel and is also as difficult to comprehend.

3. Retainer

What you think it is: A teeth guard worn by pre-pubescent teenagers, mostly at night.

What it is in advertising: A Faustian bargain made between ad agencies and clients. A signed retainer means that the client now owns the soul of every employee at the agency and will remind them of this fact whenever possible.

4. Pitching

What you think it is: To erect or set up a tent.

What it is in advertising: To erect or set up a tent at your ad agency because it means that you’re going to be living at the agency until the day of the pitch. Pitches entail endless amounts of free work done in minimal time for clients who will probably be too busy checking their Facebook pages to listen to your ideas.

5. Approval

What you think it is: An act of agreement or acceptance.

What it is in advertising: The sacred “thumbs up” from the client which is meant to guarantee eternal happiness.  This is almost certainly never given in the first 20 rounds of creative. Achieving the legendary “client approval” is a spiritual journey fraught with hardship, penance and spiritual enlightenment.  

6. Insights

What you think it is: An intuitive understanding of a person or a thing.

What it is in advertising: The strategy part of the presentation filled with bullet points and ven diagrams that repeat the same understanding again and again in about 50 slides.

7. Take Ownership

What you think it is: To lead a project and make it your own.

What it is in advertising: The passing on of responsibility by senior management to middle management, often when things have gone terrifyingly south.

8. Deliverable

What you think it is: Something that can be delivered.

What it is in advertising: The irritating term the client services person will continuously use to feel useful on the team.  

9. Media Agnostic:

What you think it is: Admit it. You have no idea what this means.

What it is in advertising: Neither do we, but we use it to sound smart in client meetings and to reassure them that we have received college degrees.

10. Share of Mouth

What you think it is: A space for tongue, tonsils and teeth.

What it is in advertising: All the similar things a consumer can stuff their faces with. Our quest is to be the most popular mouth stuffer amongst other mouth stuffers.