Jane Austin in Cannes: first the annual salad of pointless verbiage…

Like clockwork, the creative industries descend on The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity every June to shape its future upon the shores of a sultry French Riviera.

This sultry morning however, I come to you from my AirBNB, in my nightie, with a wifi password that resembles a complicated Chinese mathematical conundrum.

But I digress. Between talks, meetings and copious amounts of verbosity, the festival is an apt time to reflect on the language used – and to shed tired buzzwords from adland’s common vernacular as the industry evolves as it should with new trends and technologies.

There’s always a sea of jargon which crashes onto La Croisette each year, but which buzzwords should end up in the Gutter Bar – and stay there?

The first? ‘Purpose-driven’. Social purpose campaigns have dominated the Cannes Lions awards haul in recent years but last year, the tide started to turn, with jurors opting for more commercially led campaigns. Now that Cannes Lions has introduced a humour category, commentators are predicting Cannes juries will put brand purpose out to pasture. As adland grapples with the power of advertising to do good, purpose will become more baked into campaigns rather than the defining feature. I hope.

Next? ‘Disruption’. What started as a term to describe genuinely transformative innovation, disruption has been diluted to mean any minor tweak or new product feature. True disruption is rare and monumental, and calling every small change disruptive undermines its significance. The term should be reserved for a real paradigm shift.

Another I really dislike is ‘storytelling’. While storytelling is crucial to communicating a message, the overemphasis on the term has led to narratives lacking substance. Genuine storytelling should be meaningful and engaging. A shot must be had this week every time an introduction involves: “I’m a storyteller”. It’s like the initial moment on a Hinge date when you suddenly remember that you have to be somewhere else.

And ‘synergy’ too. Once a powerhouse term signifying the cooperative magic that happens when companies collaborate, synergy has become a hollow buzzword that’s often meaningless.

Talking of which, there are myriad overused phrases that need to get the sack in the actual workplace when it comes to adland. ‘Talent retention’ is one that grinds my gears, because it talks about folk as if they’re not actual real, living, breathing people, but mere commodities. Similarly, bandying about ‘The Great Resignation’ as some kind of explanation for current staffing woes – it’s old, tired and ignores root problems plaguing our industry which are often talked about but never addressed.

Ageism is one – a survey a few years ago found 42% of advertising, marketing, media and PR employees have witnessed ageism towards a colleague, 32% have experienced ageism themselves and 79% of industry employees agreed that the industry is ageist. Not much has changed since then. But of course, that won’t be discussed in Cannes, as we’re all 37.

That’s on top of the problems when it comes to sexism and gender equality, and other aspects of diversity and equality that the creative industry still hasn’t managed to address in its workforce when it comes to LGBTQ+ people, POC, as well as those with disabilities or from working class backgrounds. ‘Diversity’ is such an overused word, a banket term, when there’s so much hot air, not enough action.

Which brings me to ‘soft skills’ – isn’t it time this was simply called ‘being a decent person at work’? Along with ‘bandwidth’ when it comes to describing someone who has the necessary skills to deal with a situation needs to get in the bin.

Joined by the teeth-grindingly overused terms the industry loves to bandy around willy-nilly such as ‘idea shower’, ‘low hanging fruit’, ‘circling back’, ‘helicopter view’, ‘journey’, ‘deep dive’ and ‘drill down’.

Also, for the trash – ‘best of breed’ and anything to do with ‘washing’. And while we’re at it, the ‘-core’ suffix seen in the likes of ‘hardcore’, ‘normcore’, ‘cottagecore’ and ‘Barbiecore’ can join them in the rubbish. Enoughnowcore.

Or using the term ‘hack’ or ‘hacking’ when it’s just a slightly different way of doing something that isn’t even new in the first place.

But whatever the buzzword that you think should be banished, it’s always amusing to consider the ultimate irony that our industry’s entire raison d’etre is to be good with words, and to conjure up messaging that connects with the public. Yet it relies on a baffling array of meaningless or overused phrases, word salad and verbiage that would mean virtually nothing to the average man or woman on the street.

Which brings me to the final overused, ineffectual and tired phrase I’d love to see consigned to the trash as we head to Cannes, and never hear of again, on a purely personal level of course – ‘The UK’s Conservative Government’. I’ll raise a glass of rosé to that.