Marketing Playbook
Glossary Index and Hard to Find Definitions
of Marketing & Selling Terms, Acronyms, Jargon

A-B | C-D | E-M | N-R | S-Z

N

NAICS—North American Industry Classification System. It replaced the SIC system for classifying industries with a new six-digit code. Several categories were either reclassified or created. You can read more at www.census.gov/epcd/www/naics.html. Also see SIC. Play 86.

O

Offset—A printing process that transfers an image to the paper using ink (and not laser printing). The term is an abbreviated one for offset lithography.

P

Pantone®—Colors created using the Pantone Matching System® (PMS). Pantone, Inc. is the world-renowned authority on color and provider of color systems and leading technology for the selection and accurate communication of color. Play 5.

Pay-for-Play—A popular way for contract PR professionals to be compensated for their efforts. In a Pay-for-Play arrangement, the PR person is paid only when an article appears featuring the company or the company’s products. The vast majority of PR firms shun this form of compensation because of its mercinary characteristics. On the opposing side of the argument, having a PR professional bare the risk of getting a firm’s name into print is most intriguing. Pay-for-Play should not be confused with Pray-for-Play, which is what many SMB firms do—Meaning: write a press release, put it out on a wire service and post it to their website, hope (and pray) someone will read the release, know what to do with it and write a compelling feature story trumpetting the company’s success. This is worse than wishful thinking—it’s a complete fantasy.

Participating—The act of getting involved. Real company and organization leaders do this. They are men and women of action. Play 13.

Perfect binding—A method of binding where the pages of your catalog or book are glued to the square spine of the cover. Found in most books above 48 pages. Most paperback books use this style of binding. Play 100.

PDF Files—See Acrobat. Play 45.

Photoshop—Adobe’s image manipulation program. Files are designated by a .psd file extension.

Pipeline, Pipeline Forecast—The process of documenting and forecasting the stage your prospective customer has reached in your sales cycle. Play 1, 64.

PMS—See Pantone. Play 5, 6, 27.

.png—Portable Network Graphics, a patent-free graphics compression format developed by Macromedia expected to replace .gif. .png offers advanced graphics features such as 48-bit color higher compression rates. Play 5.

Portal—A public or private web site that offers resources and services, such as forums, search engines, exclusive content, and links to other relevant information and documents. Play 12.

Premiums—See Tchotchke. Play 26, 47.

Prepress—All the processes performed by the printer prior to going on press. This includes color separation, stripping and plate making. Play 27.

Presort—By presorting your postal mailings you’re telling the USPS you’ve organized the mailing into the order it will be delivered by the carrier. Presorting earns postal discounts. Your mailing partner can assist you with this. Play 28.

Principal Photography—Photography that has been contracted for your specific needs. Compare with Stock Photography. Play 76.

Prospect—A person with need, budget and buying authority working for a company that meets your qualifications for being a Customer.

P&DC—Processing and Distribution Center, these are the major postal hubs in the U.S. Play 28.

Publisher—A terrific graphic design program for kids. Not to be used in the office. Plays 16, 20, 27.

Q

Quark XPress—The longstanding leader in page layout tools. Now available for both Macintosh and Windows. See also, InDesign. Plays 16, 20, 27.

R

Raster Graphic—A computer image made up of a collection of dots. Can become ragged or otherwise distorted when the image is enlarged or shrunk. See also vector graphic.

Reach—A measurement of an ad’s exposure, usually calculated by the total number of people who have the opportunity to see your ad. This does not have anything to do with how many people take action on your ad. Play 11.

Reverse—An image that has light type or graphics against a dark field.

Registered Trademark—A trademark that has been granted Registration status by the Patent and Trademark Office. When registered, the symbol ® should be used, and is usually placed on the right shoulder of the word in superscript. The ® mark is used for both services and products. So, even though you may have used (TM) for marking your products and (SM) for marking your services, both use the same ®. For example, in my case, “Venture Marketing”, “VM” and “Marketing Playbook” are registered trademarks of Eagle Cross, Inc. d/b/a Venture Marketing (the legal name of my business and my doing-business-as designation). Play 7.

Reps—The Sales people in any of your chosen Channels. Reps are burdened with a quota for their territory. Unlike Marketing people, because a Rep’s work can be easily tied directly to an measurable outcome, will get fired for repeatedly missing thier quota.

Reproduction rights—In the world of art, illustration, photography and music, the creator of the work determines the licensing terms of his work. Unless you specifically negotiate a complete and exclusive buyout or have a contract that stipulates that the work is provided as “works for hire” (as we do at Venture Marketing), you don’t own the work. Reproduction rights are the terms under which you may use and reproduce a given work of art, which could be for a specific use, such as a brochure or a length of time. Now you know why royalty-free images are so popular. Play 60, 75, 76.

RGB—Red-Green-Blue, in web design, all colors are defined in terms of a combination of these three colors. For example, the RGB abbreviation for the color blue is 0-0-255. In contrast, print designers typically define colors using CMYK. Play 6.

RSS—The technology that allows blogs to automatically distribute content to subscribers and other blogs. Play 73.

® Symbol—The symbol used with a Registered Trademark. Play 7.

Run-of-Site, Run-of-Station, ROS—A schedule for ads that run in open, available time or banner ad slots. ROS ads are cheaper, but offer no targeting.