First 100 days

Achieving consensus around marketing intentions first requires mutual understanding between marketers and their peers. And understanding requires a common langauge. NOT a private language.

All industries have them of course, their own private languages. With good reason.

An agreed lexicon can be very helpful to insiders - to rapidly convey meaning and share common experiences.

However, private languages are also used to obscure and confuse, to maintain secrecy; to distinguish group members from outsiders; or simply to have fun.

The language of marketing - brand essence, segmentation, value propositions, lifetime values, suffers from the worst of every form. In the private langauge of IT, there is at least consensus over what' html' actually means.

Marketing's fuzzy language both excludes others, and confuses itself. There are as many definitions of branding as there are marketeers. Savvy smart marketing director talks the language of customers and the language of the balance sheet.

Save the marketing-ese for the team meetings, or conference platforms.