Brain Vibe

it is inevitable that as we move further into social media and leverage it for customer engagement that new approaches and terminology will come out to help define the strategy and experience.  Yet, it can require more than just creating a term and putting it out there.  I’ve come across this problem in a business perspective when associations and vendors come up with terms to describe technology and practices and it is interpreted incorrectly.  It causes confusion between what the customer needs and what the vendor has to offer.  It is not that different in a consumer setting.  I got to witness this in action.

I sat in the theater waiting patiently for Star Trek to start.  A gang of boys that looked to be in high school sat next to me and my husband.  The typical banter ensued: young, immature, crude, hilarious!  As the lights dimmed and the advertisements and movie trailers began, they began the annotations and comments of what they saw.  It was the perfect focus group test if you wanted to get into the minds of teenage boys.

Not having been in a theater in over a year, I took the experience in as a marketer analyzing the ads/commercials, and the reactions from the audience – particularly the teenage boys.  What caught me by surprise was the way the boys reacted to a new interactive experience for movie trailers – the hyper-trailer.  Now, I didn’t really get why I should care about it and it came across more like a video game than a movie trailer.  I didn’t really understand how ‘hyper’ was really better.  Besides, they way the announcer said the term I burst out laughing.  It just seemed frenetic and loud.  I chalked it up immediately to a generation gap.  Afterall, I’m GenX and advertising is almost never aimed at my market segment.  So, the fascinating thing is how the teenage boys next to me took it in.  They verbally abused it!

It seems that instead of ‘hyper’ meaning a positive and improved experience for a movie trailer, they associated it with a negative connotation.  Their discussion went back and forth over what ‘hyper’ really meant and how ridiculous it was.  Then, the word association game began all showing how ‘hyper’ was anything but positive.

• hyper-active
• hyper-sensitive
• hyper-thyroid
• hyper-tension
• hyper-chondriac – so they didn’t really get this one right, but it was funny.

The point of all this is that creating new terms is an art form.  It requires more than introducing words within a concept.  It requires an understanding of initial perceptions and translation of the term by your audience.  Marketing has a knack for creating new terminology and acronyms to help generate buzz and gain mindshare.  However, it can also backfire if there isn’t concensus around the meaning or it provides an opposite reaction than anticipated within your customer base and market.  It could be a hyper-flop.

Filed under: communication, social media, Advertising, branding, Film trailer, marketing, marketing terms, naming conventions