Kern & Turn Studios Logo

The Great Acronym Apocalypse: How Marketing Killed Plain English

Thoughts

Dear fellow humans trapped in conference rooms where people say things like "We need to optimize our CTA for better CTR to improve our ROAS while maintaining CAC efficiency across our omnichannel UX," we need to talk.

Somewhere along the way, the marketing industry collectively decided that using full words was for amateurs. We've created an impenetrable fortress of acronyms that would make government bureaucrats weep with envy. And honestly? It's getting ridiculous.

The Acronym Arms Race

Remember when "ROI" felt sophisticated? Those were simpler times. Now we live in a world where a single meeting can include:

  • CRM (Customer Relationship Management)
  • CMS (Content Management System)
  • CTA (Call To Action)
  • CTR (Click Through Rate)
  • CPC (Cost Per Click)
  • CPM (Cost Per Mille)
  • CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost)
  • LTV (Lifetime Value)
  • ROAS (Return On Ad Spend)
  • KPI (Key Performance Indicator)
  • UX (User Experience)
  • UI (User Interface)
  • API (Application Programming Interface)
  • SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
  • SEM (Search Engine Marketing)
  • PPC (Pay Per Click)
  • B2B (Business to Business)
  • B2C (Business to Consumer)
  • SMB (Small to Medium Business)

And that's just the warm-up round.

When Acronyms Attack

We recently sat in a meeting where someone genuinely said, "Our CRO strategy for improving our UX should boost our CVR, which will help our ROAS while reducing our CAC, assuming our CTR doesn't negatively impact our CPM across our omnichannel approach."

The client nodded thoughtfully. We frantically googled "CRO" under the table. (It's Conversion Rate Optimization, by the way. We think.)

The real tragedy is that beneath all these letters, there was probably a good idea trying to escape. Something like: "If we make our website easier to use, more people will buy things, and we'll make more money while spending less to find customers."

See how much clearer that is?

The New Employee Hazing Ritual

Nothing says "welcome to the team" like throwing a fresh college graduate into their first client call and watching them decode sentences like:

"We need to integrate our CDP with our DMP to create better lookalike audiences for our DSP while ensuring our attribution model accounts for cross-device tracking in our walled garden ecosystem."

Translation: "We want to use customer data to find similar people to advertise to, but we need to make sure we can tell if our ads actually work when people use different devices."

We've created an industry where fluency in acronyms has become a weird form of gatekeeping. New hires spend their first month not learning the actual work, but memorizing a dictionary that would make Scrabble champions jealous.

The Client Translation Layer

Here's where it gets really fun: explaining to clients what we're actually doing when we're drowning in our own alphabet soup.

What we say: "We'll optimize your CRO through A/B testing your CTAs to improve CVR across your customer journey touchpoints."

What the client hears: Expensive gibberish

What we mean: "We'll test different button colors to see which one makes more people buy stuff."

The irony is that most clients don't care about our acronyms—they care about results. They want to know if more people are buying their products, visiting their stores, or signing up for their services. But we've made it sound like you need a computer science degree to understand whether a website is working.

The Acronym Anxiety Epidemic

We've created an entire generation of marketers who are afraid to ask "What does that mean?" because they think they should already know. Social media managers nod knowingly when someone mentions "programmatic attribution modeling" rather than admit they have no idea what's happening.

Meanwhile, seasoned professionals are inventing new acronyms faster than we can define the old ones. Someone probably created three new ones while you've been reading this article.

Latest additions to the confusion:

  • CDP (Customer Data Platform)
  • DMP (Data Management Platform)
  • DSP (Demand Side Platform)
  • RTB (Real Time Bidding)
  • DTC (Direct to Consumer)
  • PLG (Product Led Growth)
  • ABM (Account Based Marketing)
  • MMM (Marketing Mix Modeling)

At this rate, we'll need acronyms to explain our acronyms. Oh wait, we already do that—it's called TLA (Three Letter Acronym).

The International Incident

Try explaining American marketing acronyms to international clients. We once spent twenty minutes in a call with a European client trying to figure out if their "GDPR compliance" was compatible with our "CAN-SPAM" requirements for their "B2B SaaS" targeting "SMEs" in their "go-to-market" strategy.

By the end, nobody was sure what we were talking about, but we all agreed it sounded very professional.

When Acronyms Go Rogue

The real chaos happens when different industries use the same acronyms for different things:

  • API could be Application Programming Interface (tech) or Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient (pharma)
  • CRM might be Customer Relationship Management (marketing) or Crew Resource Management (aviation)
  • SEO could be Search Engine Optimization (digital) or Senior Executive Officer (corporate)

We once had a very confusing conversation about "conversion rates" before realizing we were talking about currency exchange while the client meant website optimization.

The Acronym Escape Plan

Here's our modest proposal for surviving the acronym apocalypse:

For Agencies:

  1. Define every acronym the first time you use it in any meeting or document
  2. Keep a "plain English" translation handy for client calls
  3. Resist the urge to create new acronyms just because you can
  4. Remember that impressing clients with jargon is less important than getting results

For Clients:

  1. Never feel embarrassed about asking "What does that mean?"
  2. Insist on explanations in regular human language
  3. Judge agencies on results, not acronym fluency
  4. Remember that good marketing should be understandable, not just measurable

For New Hires:

  1. Start an acronym dictionary on day one
  2. Ask questions—everyone else is probably confused too
  3. Focus on understanding the concepts, not memorizing the letters
  4. Suggest plain language alternatives when possible

The Plot Twist

Here's the funny thing: the best marketing minds we know are also the best at explaining complex concepts simply. They can discuss sophisticated attribution modeling or advanced segmentation strategies without sounding like they're speaking in code.

The acronym addiction often masks unclear thinking. When someone can't explain their strategy without using fifteen acronyms, they might not understand it as well as they think they do.

A Modest Proposal

What if we started a movement? What if, for one week, marketing agencies tried to communicate entirely in plain English? No acronyms allowed except for company names and commonly understood terms like "TV" and "CEO."

Imagine client calls where we say:

  • "Website visitors" instead of "traffic acquisition"
  • "People who buy things" instead of "conversion optimization"
  • "Making sure people can find you on Google" instead of "organic search visibility"
  • "Testing which version works better" instead of "A/B optimization"

Revolutionary, right?

The Future of Human Communication

Don't get us wrong—acronyms serve a purpose. They can make communication more efficient among people who share the same vocabulary. The problem is when they become barriers instead of bridges.

The marketing industry does incredible, complex, sophisticated work. We help organizations connect with their audiences, solve real problems, and build sustainable growth. But we've wrapped all that valuable work in so many layers of jargon that sometimes even we forget what we're actually doing.

Back to Basics

At Kern & Turn, we're trying something radical: talking to clients like they're intelligent humans who care about results, not like they're computers who need to be programmed with the right acronyms.

We still use industry terminology when it's helpful, but we also explain what it means and why it matters. We've found that clients appreciate understanding their marketing rather than just receiving reports full of letters they need to decode.

Plus, it turns out that when you can explain something simply, you usually understand it better yourself.

The Bottom Line (No Acronyms Required)

The marketing industry has created an acronym monster, and it's eating our ability to communicate clearly with the people we're supposed to serve.

We can still be professional without being incomprehensible. We can still be sophisticated without being confusing. And we can definitely create great marketing without requiring a decoder ring.

So here's to bringing back plain English, clear communication, and the radical idea that good marketing should be understandable to the humans it's supposed to help.

Now, who wants to join us in creating a CLEAT (Campaign for Less Elaborate Acronym Torture)?

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this article, check out our other blog posts for more insights.