It’s a word – or words – that stay with you.
For my dad, ‘build’ was the word… the process of building things. He liked that word.
For me, in the PR business, ‘compelling’ was the word. Would publicity be compelling enough to capture imagination? Would it win hearts and minds? Would it shape opinion? Would press releases see the light of day in the media? Would reporters show up to cover our special events?
When I started out in PR, we didn’t have many fancy metrics for measuring results. We did, however, have a word we used to suggest some bit of success, the word ‘hits.’ If 10 or 20 media used your publicity, in the PR lingo of the day, that was 10 or 20 hits, which was okay, but getting more hits was even better.
Getting ‘hits’ morphed into other words, like ‘impressions,’ for example. As I recall, ‘impressions’ was more ad agency, than PR, lingo. Advertising executives liked to emphasize the substantial number of impressions their ad campaigns were generating. Their ad campaigns were reaching many ‘eyes,’ they would, sometimes, say. That’s more lingo.
Well now, there’s another word, ‘programmatic.’
“Programmatic advertising has become an increasingly prevalent way to reach new audiences online,” according to an article in a Hearst Media Group blog. But I also heard, on TV, there are some issues with it.
As I recall, ads that are, shall we say, programmatically published in social media, for example, may wind up being associated with controversial news and views featured in such online sites. Meaning, it would seem, that business firms might get in a real pickle, if their ads are right near contentious, politically-charged commentary or risqué pictures, for instance. And, that programmatic might be problematic, especially for companies focusing on positive endeavors, like corporate social responsibility.
It’s interesting that the word – ‘social’ – can mean one thing when we’re talking about social media, and something else, entirely, when we’re talking about social responsibility.
And speaking of words, does ‘programmatic’ sound more like the brand name for a washer/dryer combo, than high tech advertising?
Harvey Radin is former senior vice president in charge of corporate communications and media relations, Bank of America Western Region. He makes his home in Redwood City, CA.