Small town leisure city marketers
There I was checking out the news this morning and found this nasty collection of Dunglish marketing terms in this Dutch article: “Regionale aanpak van marketing kan slimmer zijn” (roughly, “Regional approach to marketing could be better”).
I love how the author nicknamed the Dunglish used as “fantasy English of Dutch origin”. Rather than incorrectly using already existing English terms, these marketers show off their excellent breeding by coming up with their own English terms, making them sound like posh hicks, if that’s at all possible.
City marketing = destination marketing (and not place marketing)
Leisure stad (“leisure city”) = pick one language, please.
Full-time city marketeer (“full-time city marketer”) = Full-time destination marketer (you too, stick to one language)
For the record, ‘marketeer’ in English refers to those annoying people who call you up at dinner time and try to sell you something. Nice to know the Dutch took over the bad term ‘marketeer’ instead of ‘marketer’, which is the more neutral term. When I hear ‘marketeer’, I think ‘racketeer’. Now you will too.
The MICE (Meetings, Incentives, Congresses and Events) industry has been using the term ‘destination marketing’ for at least 15 years. Reinventing the wheel is stupid and a waste of time, two things marketing people should know.
The Dutch title of the article says that marketers should work “smarter”. Coming off smarter is probably not a bad idea either.
Tags: fantasy English, marketers, marketing
August 10th, 2007 at 11:38 am
The entire article is filled with nonsense. If his comments reflect Braun’s academic level…
To quote a famous Dutch marketer: “I don’t fall for advertising – I just buy the brands I know”
August 11th, 2007 at 2:56 am
Great post! BTW, I didn’t know that (marketeer). And didn’t like the word much before I knew, anyway. To me, it always sounded like ‘buckaneer’. Thanks for firmly pinning that to my brain, “so to say”.
“Reiventing the wheel” and “wasting time” is what most marketing people do, anayway. I am allowed to say, because I am a ‘marketing person’ (and of course, I ‘never done that’ myself).
My guess why ‘destination marketing’ as a term never caught on in the Netherlands would be that the word ‘destination’ is so strongly associated with ‘going away from here’. “And how can we make money on people going away, we want them to come, not go away”. They’re marketeeeers after all.
August 14th, 2007 at 3:45 pm
‘‘marketeer’ in English refers to those annoying people who call you up at dinner time and try to sell you something’
Uh, that’s usually called a telemarketer.
‘Marketeer’, aside from meaning someone who sells at a market (like a stallholder) or a proponent of or participant in a particular type of market (free-marketeer, black-marketeer), is generally synonymous with ‘marketer’ in the sense of someone who is engaged in selling or who works in the marketing profession. It’s also used pejoratively to refer to someone who is bad at those things.
August 20th, 2007 at 3:04 pm
Bingo on the last sentence 🙂
January 7th, 2009 at 11:29 pm
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