This language, which sometimes does not make sense to people outside of the PR/marketing world, is full of phrases that sometimes leak out into my personal life; phrases that are greeted with confused faces and the inevitable “Wait, so what do you do again?”
Here is some of the public relations/marketing lingo we use, and what it really means:
Hits- media coverage
Pitch- a note to inform/gauge interest
Out of the box- thinking beyond the obvious
Release- a news announcement (as opposed to a product release)
B-Roll- “highlights” video of something we want to promote (company, person, event), and/or footage for a story
In-house- a job where one conducts PR or marketing inside a business, as opposed to an agency job where one services several different clients at once
Flack- although defined as “a publicist or promoter,” it is also a derogatory reference to describe negative coverage
Hack- a PR/ marketing response to “flack,” describing a poor journalist or reporting job
Seed- an action (promotion, media coverage, etc.) for a company in hopes of bringing interest in your company to the public, and in the end, receive more business to your own company as well
Feeler- a small offer of your company’s services/information to see if the costumer is interested and a good match
Running/ran- describing an article’s lifespan
Media alert- trumpet an upcoming event (press conference, grand opening, groundbreaking, significant speech, photo op, etc.)
Press release- written in the style of news coverage, as the story you would like to see written after your media event has taken place
