10 Worst Buzzwords of 2019
Not all these are brand new, but they’ve been trendy and will make you sound very knowledgeable and important the more you repeat them. They’re also crucial in making people hate marketers. Special thanks to Rob Estreitinho (@robistyping,) senior strategist at VCCP Kin, London, and his Douchebag Strategist @douchebagstrat Twitter bot for inspiration on some.
Brandformance – This mashup of “brand” and “performance” marketing is big now, as opposed to years past when no one cared if brand advertising performed.
Storyliving – Storytelling is so 2017. Storyliving was big at Cannes this year. Now, a brand must tell a story and “live it.” Authentically, of course, through storydoing.
Snackable – Quibi is a whole streaming service built on “snackable content,” which is really short video you can watch between train stops, or any time you’re busy storyliving.
Digestible – What snackable content becomes once ingested. Even longer-form meal-worthy content can be this if it goes down well. The opposite is barf-able content. Think Peloton.
Thumb-stopping – When your snackable content is so digestible your thumb has to stop to take in the beauty and avoid getting a cramp.
Experience – Marketers now know it’s about more than marketing. It’s the whole experience, from the smell of the package to the sound of the coins falling into the jar or the little song the card reader plays. Chief marketing officers are morphing into chief experience officers, a stroke of sneaky marketing genius for an under-appreciated job title, because it will let them run everything.
Hyper-relevant – Mere relevance is no longer enough. You need hyper-relevance, like an ad that has meaning only to your little finger. Or, as Accenture’s insurance marketing blog puts it, hyper-relevant insurers don’t simply focus on customers’ preferences or demos, but on “the evolving context in which customers make decisions.”
Hyper-targeting – Combine this with hyper-relevance and it’s so powerful that it should be licensed to keep it out of the wrong hands.
Recession – This buzzword simply failed to deliver this year, and possibly for the foreseeable future. Not so good for folks bent on defeating Donald Trump.
Influencer – It’s a real marketing phenomenon, but as a word leaves much to be desired. Many influencers do more entertaining than influencing. Then there was that guy from Iowa with 1.5 million Instagram followers who hired his cousin with a gun to make someone turn over a website domain. How much influence does your influencing have when you need a gun?
