Phrase set on stun

Advertising is a business lousy with buzzwords. And not just ones we create for public consumption.

Within these walls, and I mean figuratively because as any creative who’s worked in an agency in the last fifteen years knows they don’t have walls anymore, there are all kinds of words and phrases it seems people can’t get enough of.

I’m talking about campaign integration. Laddering up. Digital growth. Emerging strategic social media. Content analysis. Monetization solutions. Everyone's picking the low hanging fruit, and pushing the envelope. And don’t even get me started on millenials, brand engagement or interactive experiential guru (not kidding).

You’d hope agencies would be staffed with people fueled by passion and creativity who want to do the best possible work that wins awards, gets results, makes clients happy and lets them get more clients that let them do more great creative. And in some shops, you’ll find a lot of those people - especially if you’re looking in the creative department.

Problem is there aren’t enough of them. Instead, running around in agencies are people fueled by fear. Of losing the client, their job or their corner office - which they’ve probably already lost thanks to open floorplans.

Anyway, bitching and moaning about it isn’t going to change it. These buzzwords are like cockroaches: for every one you manage to kill, there’ll be a hundred more to replace it.

But next time I hear one of those words or phrases in one of the many meetings I’m in, I just may have to counter it with a word I find myself using more and more often.

Bullshit.

I can't wait to see how it ends

Advertising has never been shy about being behind the bandwagon, then jumping on it and saying they've been steering it the whole time. It's also a business that's never met a buzzword it didn't like.

If you've been on any agency website recently, usually in the About section, you've probably noticed the unholy alliance of bandwagon with the buzzword du jour: Storytellers.

Apparently agency creative departments aren't staffed with copywriters and art directors anymore. Instead, they've been replaced by storytellers.

I get it. It's a romantic notion, and it plays well in pitches where the client is told how the "story" of their brand will be conveyed to the waiting masses. Like many other things in advertising, it's hyperbole.

It's the janitor calling himself a sanitation engineer.

I can't exactly tell you why this trend pisses me off so much. Maybe because it's so blatantly untrue. Or the image it conjures up is of someone who's facile with exaggeration, able to spin a yarn or an impossible - and unbelievable - tale out of thin air.

And if there's anything advertising needs to be more of, it's unbelievable.

Storytellers, the really good ones, are skilled at the practiced art of spinning straw into gold. But when the story's over, compelling though it may be, you're still left with straw.

Storytellers, brand stewards, marketing gurus (yes that was on one of the sites), dynamic social directives officers. Whatever. It all sounds false and a little desperate to me.

As for the agencies who insist on calling themselves that, I believe their future can be summed up in two words found in every story.