Tuesday, November 23, 2021

IT’S THE AGE OF ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS!

 


One of our clients that we have been lucky to retain for many years uses acronyms and abbreviations for everything! 

 

It is a full-time job keeping up to date and understanding the meanings.  Just when we think we have everything under control along comes a new one. 

 

If we don’t understand the acronyms/Abbreviations, we can easily lose the thread of any conversation!  After every meeting we discuss what transpired and how to move forward from an agency perspective.  We also discuss the latest abbreviations that we need to include into our client dictionary.

 

There is one specific abbreviation that we loved and have adopted into our agency! 

 

About 10 years ago we were sitting in a meeting preparing for an upcoming sports tournament, and the client had brought in a number of internal staff members, and they kept referring to the CYA.  “Have you sent your CYA?” or “I followed up with a CYA”.

 

We were deeply confused and eventually had to ask what this meant, “Oh, that refers to the ‘Cover Your Arse’ email,” was the reply.   We had a good laugh and discussed how these emails had saved them on numerous occasions.  We have since adopted the CYA into the business and anyone who is in an agency will understand the value of a CYA!  

 

In comes the pandemic and welcome to the world of acronyms and abbreviations!

 

Marketing, including public relations and social media took on a completely new look when Covid took the world by storm.  Marketing activations stopped immediately, and we all furiously wrote stories about our brands and services and posted them on as many different platforms as we could. 

 

Storytelling became the buzz word.  The brand with the most interesting story won!  The brand that showed the most empathy and focused on helping their community, won!  Anyone jumping on the pandemic band wagon, lost!  The new normal had arrived!

 

We were all furiously writing blogs, articles, ebooks, white papers, reports, updating websites, changing social media strategies – it was the era of change! 

 

We learnt that we are not creatures of habit after all!  We can change, we accepted the fact that not everything works according to plan, and it is Okay to change a strategy midway through.  We became adaptable creatures!  We had to implemented change to perform in a world of chaos.

 

With all the writing that needed to be done to be heard above the clutter, we started using abbreviations and acronyms to cut down on time, and this trend continues.

 

Let’s now have a bit of fun with abbreviations and acronyms:

 

We were reading an article this morning and came across a new word – SKIMPFLATION – which has prompted this discussion!

 

To understand Skimpflation, we need to look at the background.  In the countries that have opened up, the UK being a primary example, mass staff resignations have been seen across most organisations. 

 

Staff members that had been hanging on to their jobs in fear of the pandemic and its implications have all resigned leaving companies struggling to find replacements and this has impacted on CX (abbreviation for customer experience) and the DTC (Direct to Consumer) shopping has been left wanting.  In a period where there is very little brand loyalty, this results in consumers looking for alternative sources.

 

-        Never before has DCO (Dynamic Creative optimisation) been so critical to brands.  Skimpflation does not help the DTC (direct to consumer) experience and drives a wedge between the company and consumers!

 

-        Companies such as Intune used the pandemic to look for a CMS (Customer management solution) and our decision was in invest in a CRM (customer relationship marketing) system.  To make this work we needed to ensure we understood the API’s (application programming interface) and how it works.  We further had to work on a DCO (dynamic creative optimisation) to ensure that we had a digital strategy for personalisation.

 

-        Intune further works with many macro and micro influencers and we needed to understand the NIL (name, image and likeness) to ensure any form of success

 

These are merely a couple of examples of how the new era of acronyms and abbreviations work. 

Here we are in the digital world

-        We now know that we CAN change …………. and quickly

-        You can teach an old dog new tricks

-        You are never too old to learn

-        You might be BBT (born before technology) but whether you are Gen X, even a Baby Boomers, you need to be in the mix and understand the tech world

-        Brand loyalty has gone out the window

-        Online shopping is on the increase

-        We live in a hybrid working world now

And finally

-        Storytelling is key to any brand’s success, and this require public relations!  Contact Intune Communications and we will help bring your brand, service and company up to speed with the new world.




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