#307 In which our hero recounts a mysterious and new word he learned at his new agency.

I’ve been at the new job for about eight months now. I feel like I’m getting into the groove of this place, finally, but the first couple weeks were a little rough. This agency is a purely digital agency, and my experience is primarily print and collateral. I’ve done plenty of websites and online banner ads, but I’ve never gotten into the finer points of search engine optimization, highly-interactive user experiences, rich media banners and all the other stuff that takes the online experience to a much higher level.

I expected there to be a learning curve, but it was steeper than I thought. There was a lot of information presented in orientation that had me scratching my head; stuff that I assumed I would pick up as I got settled in.

But then, there was the lingo. This agency is thick with jargon and agency-specific titles, programs and processes.

My first week on the job I was anxious to prove myself and jump in and start producing good work. I was almost immediately pulled into a project for a smaller east coast bank. During the briefing, the Creative Director mentioned that we were going to have to turn around a concept pretty quickly, and would be producing an adlob to sell the idea.

Adlob?

This is a term I was not familiar with. He mentioned it in passing, like it was something that everyone would know. I wrote in my notebook “ad-lob? WTF?” and planned on looking it up later. Maybe it was a banking term? I’ve done lots of financial stuff in the past, but that wasn’t ringing any sort of bell.

But I let it go. Then, a couple of minutes later, the CD mentioned it again. I stopped him, saying, “Okay, sorry, but what’s an ad-lob?”

He explained that it was an “ad-like object.” Adlob. I laughed and shook my head. In my previous agencies we would have probably said it was a mock-up. Most likely something that looked similar to an ad you might see in a magazine. Nothing that was to proper dimensions or even with finalized copy and graphics—just something to get in front of the client so they know where our thinking was.

This was my first taste of much more silly jargon to come.

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