Attend any ad agency meeting and one thing you can be sure of is that the buzzwords will be flying: Out of the Box, Let’s Take This Offline, New Paradigm, Low Hanging Fruit, A (fill in your own big number) Foot View, and Dog & Pony Show, just to name a few. It seems that these words are hardwired into the meeting lexicon.

This practice is so widespread that Buzzword Bingo games have sprung up like mushrooms on the web, and IBM even has a commercial based on the idea, which, I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess, was developed in a meeting.

Somehow, in this miasma of meaning, there are two words that have sprung up to mean the same thing: Flesh and Flush. As in Flesh/Flush Out The Idea.

It’s funny, in an ironic, post-Seinfeld sort of way, that this duality has occurred, since the whole purpose of buzzwords is to speak a language that everybody understands.

So, in an effort to restore linguistic harmony to meetings I would like to propose Flesh as the agency standard. Here’s my logic: flesh means to build or add to, while flush means remove or take away. Flesh seems more positive as it conjures up a picture of teamwork and continued improvement, while Flush only conjures up, well, it’s obvious what it conjures up.

For the sake of meetings — let’s all go with Flesh —and get on with the communications business at hand.

Steven Stark is a writer and creative director who thinks meetings can be fun. You can see his work and read some of his other musings here.

Article Tags: advertising agencies | advertising jargon | buzzword bingo | buzzwords | copywriter | creative director | flesh | flush | Steven Stark
Filed under: Advertising, Industry News, Personal Opinions, Steven Stark, Strategy