Strategic Rape, Part I

How do you recognise someone from the advertising industry? Long hair, torn jeans, the-permanently-lost-in-thought look? Sorry. That’s dated. There’s a more accurate method. You don’t even have to look out for this particular trait. It’ll come out on its own. If you don’t miss this sign, you can say with conviction that the object in front of you, or over the phone, or in the chatroom belongs to the genus Advertisia illuminia.

Ladies and gentlemen, you identify this species through its recurrent usage of the word ‘strategy’.

Never in the history of humanity has one word been so disgustingly gang raped by so few people. It’s official now. The Award for the Most Abused in History (AMBUSH, anyone?) goes to strategy. It was selected from a privileged cluster that included some of its close cousins – strategic, strategically and stratagem. If there were a shelter of abused words somewhere on the planet, ‘strategy’ would have a permanent citizenship there. In fact, don’t be surprised if the shelter itself is named with ‘Strategy’ in it. If the job is given to any Indian advertising agency, chances are, it will be called ‘Strategically Abused Words’.

Why do people use, abuse and misuse them every frigging minute? The answer is quite simple. It’s the best bet to make sure that all your actions and thoughts carry unimaginable significance. Everyday functions of negligible consequence assume great significance when strategy is somehow squeezed into it. And nowhere does it apply more than advertising, since the whole business is subjective. So, instead of saying, “We should have more print ads so that more people can see us”, we generously tell our clients, “It makes sound strategic sense to leverage the long term, effective and in-built advantages of print vis-à-vis television as it fits in well with our long term strategy of counter fragmentation”. Or instead of saying, “I have a plan, Let’s switch off the lights when we leave”, we mouth “Strategically, all our resources should be used in such a way that the synergy is not lost and wastage, if any, should be…”

We use the word so frequently because we look important and imaginative when we utter it. Strategically sound, don’t you agree?