The Government has today announced far-reaching plans to limit the number of acronyms, terms of jargon and indecipherable job titles used by the advertising industry.
Under the strict new measures businesses can be fined several thousands of pounds for “needlessly bamboozling” clients with “perplexing”, “cocksure” and “alienating” terms.
The department for culture media and sport (DCMS) made the intervention – which calls for a blanket ban on dozens of oft-used words and limits acronyms to just one monosyllabic grunt – after a record year of client complaints.
Terms such as “DSP”, “DMP”, “SSP”, “semantic co-related target audience profiling”, “dynamic insertion”, “seismic shift” and “connected ecosystems” will be banned alongside job titles including “organic performance director”, “digital evangelist” and “brand alchemist”.
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Although the measures have been described as “draconian” by some adtech firms, others say they are long overdue.
Felicity Moorebank, a junior planner at Mangle & Barfoot, said talking gibberish had almost cost her both her career and sanity.
“Literally no one knows what anyone is saying,” she said. “I’ve been nodding along in meetings and at conferences for two years now. My spirit is evaporating faster than a real-time accelerated segment test.”
In April 2015 a conference delegate was hospitalised after witnessing a series of post-lunch powerpoint presentations on the upcoming beta launch of a new native 360-degree, cross-device tag management programmatic solution for the post-digital eco-system.
Doctors revealed the victim’s brain had been “over-cooked” by “high-levels of hyperbole, jargon and the impact of too many buttery finger dishes.”
A spokesperson for DCMS said the Government hopes the proposed limits, which could come into effect by September, will ensure the advertising industry will learn to speak more plainly and spend client money more efficiently before signing over all ad contracts to malign sentient algorithms.
Happy April Fools’ Day, adland.
