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How Agencies Use “Explosure” To Grow Brands
May 9, 2016
By Team Hello
Every agency has started growth-hacking businesses to grow the bottom line, and now, the cat’s out of the bag—explosure is the big secret to brand success.
But what exactly is “explosure”?
Explosure means “explosive exposure from media coverage”. Essentially, it means, “we’ll get you seen.”
Oh, also, “explosure” is a feel-good industry buzzword that marketers use to make uninformed clients feel like they’re about to become a part of some huge industry movement.
It’s just one of many senseless buzzwords that are tossed around so much that marketing and advertising now has its own dialect. After all, isn’t “being seen” a big part of advertising?
You probably notice these clichés everywhere: Advertising campaigns, company websites, and product packaging, to start. They sound fancy, but when you really start thinking about their true meaning, they don’t really mean anything, or have any special value.
And meaningless buzzwords come in different forms, too. They might appear as a quote from a famous person on someone’s website, or even as a person’s job title.
Another common way ad agencies and marketing firms try to sound smart while confusing potential clients is to use TLAs.
TLAs, or three-letter acronyms, are a great way to lose a non-marketing individual in a conversation about marketing. For example, which of these following sentences is clearer to you?
Option A – “We’ll increase your ROI by lowering your CPM based on the KPIs.”
or
Option B – “Based on data, your revenue will go up after your costs go down.”
The second option might be a bit oversimplified, but the principle stands—”we found out that, if you spend less, your costs go down.” Easy enough to understand, yes, but it doesn’t sound as smart.
The lesson from all this is not to try and impress clients with big words—instead, show potential clients results from your previous work, and tell them, in plain language, what your strategy and process is.
(But seriously—run from these. Run fast, run far.)
Invite prospective clients into your world. Teach them, and they’ll believe you when you say you’re not trying to pawn off the ripest lemon on the used car lot. Build trust by showing direct results and impacts.
If you can clearly explain a concept to anyone, it proves you understand that concept. It also proves you’re a good communicator, which is, in essence, the whole point of marketing.
