Zeno Thinks: The Jargon Peak District of Hills I Would Die On
For a discipline dedicated entirely to communication, PR is legendarily dreadful at actually communicating.
It’s thick with jargon, TLAs (itself, a TLA), acronyms and - pardon my French, gentle reader - des conneries.
At the root of this is that PR usually has on one side messy, contradictory, subjective things – AKA people – that it tries to reconcile with neat, binary, objective numbers.
So we inevitably end up talking about unpredictable, imprecise things as if they weren’t, and in trying to define things that are inherently indefinite, we all arrive out our slightly different interpretations. Which means we talk at cross purposes and lose track of what we really mean in the first place. There are so many jargon hills I would die on that my psyche looks like the Peak District. But here are the most egregious five.
1. Saying “consumers” instead of “people”
It is reductive and grim to describe living beings that see, hear, think, feel, dream, hope, create and procreate as things that only consume.
But “consumer” properly refers to only a limited relationship - when that person is in the market for a product or service. But there are countless contradictory forces that act upon people when they’re not thinking about products - let alone our product - that shape consumption.
I once worked on brief for a plant-based food brand. They were wrestling with the contradiction that consumers said they wanted to buy less meat but weren’t actually doing this. It was only by looking beyond consumption and purchase that we found the very human explanation – culturally, it was ingrained that a meal = a big piece of protein plus some carbs and vegetables on the side, a formula most people didn’t know how to complete without meat.
Try to understand people, you better understand consumers.
2. Saying “brands" instead of “branding” or “businesses"
I have a gag reflex to the type of (usually sales-y) article that begins “Why brands need to …” Because it’s never clear what’s actually meant by a brand. Think back to last year’s Jaguar furore – everyone was saying the b-word, but some meant the logo, some the campaign, others what (they interpreted) the campaign was communicating, and others the car manufacturer itself. So which is it?
I have a pdf of the (typewritten) JWT planning guide from March 1974, which makes the point that your brand is really “the total impression” people have from a huge range of factors, not all of which you control, filtered through “the receiver’s mind” and relative to everything else.
So your brand, in the truest sense, isn’t what you say; it’s what the world hears. That sharpens thinking; focusing on branding alone (logos, tone of voice, campaigns) dulls it.
Or we often actually mean the underlying business - a complex organisation with employees and owners or shareholders. Consciously view “brand” like that and you make better decisions. Compare how you’d respond to “Retail brands need to be on TikTok” to “Retail businesses need to find a way to promote their products to shoppers who don’t use search engines”.
Muddling businesses, their products’ branding and (true) brand impression over-simplifies the first, over-emphasises the second, and under-appreciates the third.
3. Saying “cultural relevance” instead of “being relevant to do stuff people do”
Culture is often used as synonymous with “cool”, or high culture or the cutting edge, when we should use the word in a more democratic and neutral way. We often gravitate, consciously or not, to a London-centric youth culture. Which is no bad thing. Sometimes it’s the right thing. But it’s not the only thing.
Going to church is culture. Warhammer is culture. Live Laugh Love is culture. Culture is a set of conventions and codes through which all people express their identity, usually as part of a group they feel they belong to.
Understanding why people do things is better than desperately leaping on what some people are now doing on the internet. It stops us chasing fads most people haven’t heard of and coming across as forced and transparently commercial. It makes us reflect on whether we’re genuinely bringing anything the party. Were we invited in the first place? Will anyone kick us out if we rock up with our new CBD vitamin water?
“How is what we do relevant to what people care about and do?” is a more humble, authentic attitude than “cultural relevance.”
4. Saying “creative” when … we don’t know what we mean.
“Creative” can be two different nouns and an adjective, which is an unhelpful quality for a word.
Does it mean just something that’s been made by someone? Something that’s original? Unexpected? Different from other things? Is it concept, craft or execution? Is it something inherent or is it all relative? Is it art?
Based on the work of our friends at the School of Communication Art, a better definition is “the original expression of an idea that has value”. Not all ideas are original. But how we express them should be.
So rather than trying to judge creativity on vibes alone we can interrogate it: Is it going to make a difference to people? Is there an actual concept in there you could explain to someone? And are we showing it in a way that feels fresh enough that people will pay attention?
If we can say yes to the above, we might just help a business show up in way that’s relevant and meaningful to what people care about and do. Or drive a brand’s culture relevance among consumers. Up to you.
5. Most importantly: Saying leverage when we mean LEVER.
A lever is a tool that amplifies the force you put in. The verb meaning to use a lever is … to lever. You lever open a lid. “Leverage” is an investment euphemism for borrowing money to boost a return. The borrowed money acts as a lever.
So if you’re using the pull of interviewing your client’s CEO to get coverage for their company, the spokesperson is the lever. The interest of speaking to them helps get pick-up for something else. You’re using your CEO to lever coverage. This is good.
Leveraging your CEO would mean they’re not at all interesting, no one wants to speak to them, and you have to pull every favour you can to get an interview placed. This is not good.
None of this is just pedantry: when words have specific meanings they help us be clearer and more precise in our thinking - and more clearly understood. Which, in comms, would be a good starting point.
