Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Le marketing

I recently did a two-day interpreting job on the subject of marketing and brands. For some reason —perhaps post-traumatic avoidance of cerebral overload — after I've done one of these jobs I have usually erased all memory of the content within a couple of days.

The only things I remember about this one are:

a) that marketeting people really admire Apple and will refer to the company's success at least once every half hour.
b) that marketing people like to talk about a "company's DNA" which becomes really, really annoying after two days.
c) that French marketing people like to use English words. I kept this list of some of the terms I translated from English back into English: le story-telling, le buzz, le hypermarketing, le supply-chain, le empowerment, leverager, mainstream, focusser sur, le sourcing, le user-generated content, le slow-wear, l'urban-wear, les malls, un peu hype, la peoplisation, les community brands, challenger, du display, le push, le pull, le crowd-sourcing, votre page rank, l'insight, le storyboard, le couponing, les early adopters, les user labs, and last but not least my favourite: il faut shifter les choses.

12 comments:

materfamilias said...

il faut shifter les choses, indeed!
I love that and think I'm going to have to work that into my daily vocab, somehow . . .

nmj said...

What an interesting post: now I will have il faut shifter les choses stuck in my head, it will never go away, just like il faut cultiver notre jardin. (Candide is my fav book from uni.)

Antipo Déesse said...

Damn you Lovey, I was planning a similar post, but my list is not nearly as impressive as yours!

deborah said...

Amazing Lesley!
Slowly into the night I am trying to figurer/figure out le slow-wear ...
Can't help admiring the French who seem to adopt even more new words than we do now.
And for another laugh here is Germaine Greer on translating Proust :
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2009/nov/08/germaine-greer-proust

Anonymous said...

Le user-generated content, lol! Are you sure they weren't just a group of British 15-year-olds who know full well they're about to fail their French exam but don't really give a toss? ;-)

Hum ELT

Lesley said...

Materfamilias: Shiftons, shiftons!

nmj: cultivons nos jardins!

Antipo: the worst thing is that when an English-speaking person used these words, we had to rack our brains for suitable French equivalents. Not an easy task for levarage and empowerment.

Deborah: Apparently it's like slow food: “Slow wear” fashion on the rise I once did a five-day translation on slow-food which involved a lot of slurping and chewing into the microphone.

Hum ELT: Don't you hate it when they do that? Or when they stop in the middle of the exam and ask how to say a word.

beaverboosh said...

lol, let me know if you want a job is social media!

Deadlyjelly said...

I am SO out of touch with the corporate world. But from what I recall, it is better that you erase all memory of the content within a couple of MINUTES. Don't let it fester in there for days, it can result in brainmush.

x

Rosaria Williams said...

So, we all speak marketing lingo no matter our native language? Interesting.

Lucy said...

I too love 'shifter des choses', especially appropriate if one were marketing laxatives. Le empowermetn is quite a hoot too.

Anonymous said...

It only gets worse if you're in financial services marketing. Then you get to spout forth about 'dark pools' and 'the institutional space' as well as leveraging synergies or whatever.

I'd love to hear more about 'la peoplisation'. Sounds fascinating.

Lesley said...

Spentrails: I should have explained that one. "Les people" are showbiz persnlaities so "la peoplisation" is the creeping takeover of showbiz personalities in marketing strategies etc.

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