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Throughout my advertising career and I use the word “career” advisedly, I became familiar with the industry jargon. I’m not talking about the trade terms such as “Progs,” which used to mean “progressive proofs” or “T-nap” which was a system I have never understood. All I know is, it was a proof that made your ad look a whole lot better than it would in its final resting place in the magazine or newspaper for which your client paid a fortune and was required to indenture his first born. They don’t do T-naps any more. I don’t know about progs.

That’s what I’m not talking about. What I am trying to explain in this all-too-brief dissertation is the kind of language that is used to impress clients and make them feel that you really know what you’re doing.

I picked up this language by osmosis. There’s no lexicon or glossary of these terms. Hell, there isn’t even a thesaurus, although a great many of the words and phrases are so old and hackneyed that they may have made it into Roget’s by now.

Such a term is “differentiation.” It’s used in conjunction with a whole lot of other bafflegab and it follows the rule: “Never say anything to clients in simple language when you can overpower them with complex circumlocutionary verbiage.” Yes, I did that on purpose. Circumlocutionary isn’t in the MS Word spellchecker. It is, however in the dictionary.

You would never dream of telling a client that you have to make up a reason for people to buy the product you’re advertising rather than that sold by competitors. No, you must say (and marketing proposals are chock full o’ this) “We need to develop a U.S.P. (Unique Selling Proposition) that will give us product differentiation and establish our competitive edge.” This is ad-speak for “We have to make up something that will give consumers the idea that our nail clipper is different from everyone else’s nail clipper.”

Here are three things to remember when using differentiation:

1. Always use the word “consumer” instead of “customer.” That way you won’t feel guilty because you are hoodwinking actual human beings. Consumers are just statistics. Customers are people.

2. Always use “our” instead of “your” when you’re addressing the client in print or in person. This makes you appear part of the team, rather than a predatory consulting business with the sworn, but secretive mission to milk the client for every nickel of “our” advertising budget.

3. This strategy gets “us” away from the “value added” approach which is less cost effective. In this case, less cost effective means, “The agency doesn’t get to keep as much of the money because we have to buy spool-winders or thumb-warmers to give away with the product and that cuts into the fees.”

That’s enough about differentiation. The other words I want to cover, or perhaps I should say, uncover, this week are “qualitative” and “quantitative.” In the ad game, these words are most often used in conjunction with the word “research”.