As a marketing enthusiast who reads, observes, and experiments with trends nonstop, I’ve started to notice something — we marketers really love giving things names.

And not just simple names. I’m talking about full-blown frameworks, acronyms, buzzwords, and layers of complexity… all for stuff we were already doing.

From the day I started learning marketing, I’ve seen models evolve (or just expand) from 4Ps to 7Ps to 9Ps. One day it’s ATL vs BTL, next it’s TTL, and then someone decides to reinvent the wheel with ToFu, MoFu, BoFu.

We had USP, but that wasn’t enough, so now we’ve got UVP, ESP, and JTBD. And of course, we measure success with LTV:CAC, ROAS, CLV, CPM, CTR, CVR, and my personal favorite — KPI soup.

Sometimes I wonder — how many more funnels can we build before we just admit it’s all the same pipeline with fancy labels?

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🔍 Naming ≠ Innovation

Let’s be honest. A lot of these “new terms” are just old concepts in new wrapping.

Take SEO for example — search engine optimization. Simple. Then came semantic SEO, topic clusters, E-A-T, E-E-A-T, and now we’re hearing about AEO (Answer Engine Optimization). Sounds advanced, right?

Except… when you actually read into it, AEO is just:

“Structure your content well, answer the user’s question clearly, and make it machine-readable.”

Which, frankly, is what good SEO was always supposed to be.

But hey, if we rename it, we can run webinars and sell courses, right?

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🤯 The Irony of the Marketing Department

What’s wild is — despite all these frameworks, marketing remains one of the least trusted departments in many companies.

- Sales gets the revenue credit.

- Finance gets the final say.

- Tech gets the innovation tag.

- But marketing? We’re the “color team” — the fluff squad — unless we can tie every word to direct ROI.

We invent concepts like:

• “Zero Moment of Truth”

• “Growth Loops”

• “Emotional Moat”

• “Omnichannel Synergy”

• “Hyper-Personalization at Scale”

And execs nod politely… then ask how fast we can “just launch a promo campaign.”

It’s like we’re trying to justify our seat at the table by sounding more complex than necessary.

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📦 Let’s Not Forget the Funnels

We started with AIDA. Then we got:

• RACE (Reach, Act, Convert, Engage)

• HEART (Hear, Engage, Activate, Retain, Tell)

• SCALE, PASTOR, STDC, and AAAARRRRGH — wait, no, that was Pirate Metrics: Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Revenue, Referral.

Eventually, we just stopped building funnels and started building flywheels — because circles are cooler, I guess.

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💡 What I Figured Out

The truth? Marketing doesn’t need more labels — it needs more clarity.

The power of marketing has always come from:

• Understanding people

• Telling stories that stick

• Delivering value in a way people remember

Not from who can invent the next acronym or split the funnel into more sections.

I’m not against innovation — I’m all in for evolving strategy. But we need to call out when the industry leans too far into buzzword inflation and forgets the basics.

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🧠 Final Thought

If you’re a marketer — especially a young one like me trying to find your way — don’t get distracted by every new shiny label you see on LinkedIn.

Learn the fundamentals.

Think critically.

Speak in plain language.

And remember — good marketing doesn’t need to be renamed every six months to still work.