Marketing·27·Added 2026-08-09

Colleague advocacy

The polite conscription of staff members into an unpaid digital marketing army, tasked with liking and sharing corporate updates they would otherwise scroll past in horror.

What they actually mean

"Please repost this picture of our new regional distribution warehouse so we do not have to pay for advertising."

Heard in the wild

"We really need to leverage colleague advocacy to get this product launch post trending on LinkedIn."

More from Marketing

Dark social

The untraceable sharing of content via private channels, usually consisting of employees messaging each other to ask if the company's new campaign is as embarrassing as they think it is.

Our latest promotional video is getting a lot of traction on dark social, though mostly via encrypted WhatsApp chats.

Translation

People are mocking our brand in private group chats where our tracking pixels cannot find them.

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To greenwash

The delicate art of redesigning a corporate logo with a soft leaf motif to divert attention from the fact that the company’s main export is non-recyclable plastic.

"If we sponsor a local beach clean-up with a catchy hashtag, we can successfully greenwash our Q4 distribution metrics."

Translation

"We bought a handful of carbon offsets from an unmonitored woodland in Devon to ease our collective guilt."

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To leverage

A highly versatile verb used to avoid saying the word 'use', thereby making a mundane administrative task sound like physics.

"We need to leverage our existing brand assets to drive deeper organic engagement."

Translation

We are going to send another newsletter.

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