On Friday, the American Dialect Society chose its word of the year: “because.” The Oxford Dictionaries chose its word of the year earlier in 2013: “selfie.” We were inspired and it caused us to wonder: what would our word of the year be?
We took a poll and the clear favorite was “engagement.” We understand that the word is overused and quickly becoming a cliché, but isn’t that part of the criteria for award-winning words?
Public relations is no longer passive. It’s not enough to simply get the hit or create visibility. Our job is to develop the mechanisms by which people connect (a runner-up word) to our clients. Our conversations with our clients are increasingly moving towards helping them enlist “brand ambassadors” and “evangelists” who share (another runner-up word) their experience and activate (a runner-up word) others to engage.
As we engage with our clients in the new year and work with them to engage their audiences, we’re also engaging in some good thinking. Those are our words of every year.