Want to look dumb? Cool, me neither.
When I first started attending meetings at Pathfinders, it was my first time being exposed to certain acronyms and agency lingo. I would sit in meetings and think “what the heck is a SOW? Should I know what a SOW is?”
There’s a bad feeling that comes with not knowing acronyms, and none of us want to look dumb like one of my favorite people, Phil Dunphy, simply because we don’t know an acronym.
[If you’re not a Modern Family fan… I have no words.]
I quickly needed to brush up on my acronyms – so I did.
As time went on, I made it a point to always write acronyms in small print at the bottom of my notepad during meetings whenever I was unfamiliar with a term. This way, I wasn’t bombarding people with questions during or after meetings with something I could figure out on my own. I used this thing called Google search to figure out words after the meetings. Ever heard of it? [insert sarcasm]
Below are some of those acronyms, as well as ones I was already familiar with. I hope there is at least one word in this list that will help educate you when talking to agencies, or your coworkers in general.
Note: these are acronyms used in my specific environment; Account Service, digital, and design.
Account Service Acronyms
QRG – Quick Reference Guide
This is a step-by-step guide that visually explains and educates the reader. We create these a lot for our clients to educate their sales team on a promotion or for their sales team to quickly educate their audience. They “quickly reference it” for info. Here’s an example of a Supreme Corporation QRG we created for their sales teams.
SOW – Scope of Work
These are our terms and agreements or contracts. In these documents we “scope” the budget, timeline, project details, and include a line at the bottom for your pretty signature of approval.
EOD – End of Day
Timelines are essential for any project inside our walls – and this one is a quick way to communicate you’ll have it to them today.
PRD – Project Requirement Document
This is an in-depth strategy of how we plan to tackle a project from all angles, including user experience, programming, etc. We gather the details of what the project entails by collaborating with the client, determining the final deliverable, and nailing down our steps of execution.
Digital Acronyms
QA – Quality Assurance
Website testing, testing, testing. We check links, usability, functionality, placement, load times, etc. on all our websites before sending them onto our clients. We ensure the quality of the site is working as it should and good to go in front of clients’ eyes.
UX – User Experience
This is an overall look at the experience your users have when viewing your site, email, etc. When I go to a site, is it easy to tell what the company sells or what their services are, can I find what I need within a couple seconds, and is the content organized in the best way possible? A users’ experience should be so effortless, a drunk person could use it; take this guy’s word for it theuserisdrunk.com.
CMS – Content Management System
This is your general back end of a website that holds your content, media, and other fun plugins. I’m currently typing this blog inside our CMS. It’s a simple and organized way for people who may not code, to change the site’s content and media in different sections of the site without getting confused with a wall of source code text.
WYSIWYG – What You See Is What You Get
Pronounced: “Wizee-wig”. Inside the CMS (mentioned above) there are two content editing windows – a visual editor and a text editor. WYSIWYG is the visual editor, where you edit the visual presentation of the content, not the source code (text editor) like a developer would. This means you visually see something very similar to what the content will look like on the front end of the live site.
SEO – Search Engine Optimization
These are efforts in place to optimize your site in the eyes of search engines. The end goal is to gain traffic and increase visibility to the users you want to find your site. You want to be found when people search certain terms. This is done through site analysis, keyword research, content optimization, landing page creation, PPC campaigns, AdWords, and analyzing search data.
SM- Social Media
If you don’t know what social media is, then bless your little heart. Facebook,Twitter, Instagram, etc.
Design Acronyms
RGB – Red, Green, Blue
RGB is a color format in design that is used for web. Screens (TVs, computers, iPhones) are all made up of red, green, and blue light. A designer needs to create a project in this color mode when they know it will be applied to the web. i.e.- email, website, digital ad, etc. Our Senior Art Director explains more about RGB (and CMYK) in his Color From Another Mother post.
CMYK – Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black
CMYK are the four colors used when printing material. A designer will create within a CMYK color mode in order to talk to the printers correctly. Print machines slide your print piece through multiple feeds, each feed containing one of these four colors.
VIG- Visual Identity Guide
A VIG can also be identified as a branding guide. A VIG contains how the logo is and isn’t to be used, appropriate colors and their uses, as well as the brand voice and other visual aspects to be included with any piece of marketing created for that specific brand.
CTA- Call to Action
Whether it be a button, a sentence, a link, what is it you want your consumers to do and how are you going to get them to do it? A CTA is your way of telling them what to do. A CTA may be “call us today” or “join our team”. In both instances, the most important part is to give them a way to do so by providing a number to call or a link to where they can apply, hence your CTA. Here’s a resource from Hubspot of how to master the design and copy of CTAs.
Speaking of CTAs, we would love to hear from you – so contact us!
If you’re unsure of what marketing tactics are best for your company – a QRG, CMS assistance, a VIG, SEO research, SM strategy, or anything else under the marketing sun, we can help you figure that out to gain the best results for your company. TTYL!
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