Recently the marketing and ad industry blogs have been talking about Ray Del Savio and his campaign to have ‘concept’ included in the dictionary. Yes, yes, I know that ‘concept’ is already in the dictionary, but Del Salvio has decided that its current noun status is a slap in the face to those professional creatives who use the term as a verb. I.E. ‘Let’s sit down and concept out this approach’. Roll that around your skull for a second. Does it sound stupid and wrong? If you said yes, you’re probably at least two degrees smarter than just about any industry hack who didn’t know that ‘concept’ already has a verb form (hint: it’s “conceptualize” ).
I’ve been accused of being resistant to slang and jargon, (and hey, I’ll admit it: I think words have specific definitions for a reason), but in this case I’m pretty comfortable in my opinion that Del Savio’s crusade to bully dictionaries into including his industry jargon as a widely accepted term is just one beer short of a six pack of dumb-assery. It’s bad enough when creatives approach communicating to the rest of the world like we’re squares hopelessly out of touch with their precious hipsterism, but for Buddha’s sake don’t ‘tard up our language with your mangled and empty jargon.
While we’re on the subject of deluded creatives, let’s take a moment to savor Pete Johnson’s excellent comic ’Creative Department Douchebag‘. If you want to do me a favor, find the biggest douchebag creative in your office and flip them off for me.
