What does... "Lab" actually mean?
In his column "What does... actually mean?", Benno Maggi looks at terms from the marketing and communications sector. This time he deals with the term "Lab".
The abbreviation of the word laboratory is quite popular at the moment. Why is that? Two reasons seem obvious: helplessness and a willingness to take risks. The former leads to almost excessive use of language with zero output. The second would actually be the original description of the place that serves as a place of work and research for experimental scientific work in the natural sciences and medicine.
On the former: In our industry, we are used to excessive use of language. We use linguistic trampoline jumps all the time to emphasize a job, a product or a service and make it appear more attractive. Whether as a superlative ("the best offer ever") or as a pleonasm ("benefit now and get a free gift") or a combination ("the most innovative idea").
Places with the names Crea-, Idea-, Innovation-Lab are such pleonasms, because Lab = research site. Creative processes = research work. Okay, that might be a bit of an exaggeration, a superlative so to speak. At least for scientists, but they don't read this column. After all, it's just us here. So: creative work is research work because creativity is associated with the ability to create and understand new things that have never been seen before. But if you look at Swiss advertising today - whether printed, digital, moving or social - the results of the work are diametrically opposed to the use of the word lab. Nothing new versus many word creations with the prefix Lab. And every room and non-room in every company in the industry is referred to as a "lab" or as such.
Like the rabbit before the snake
Regarding the latter: the willingness to take risks. In economically difficult or extremely successful situations, it would be appropriate to take risks instead of freezing in helplessness and fear like advertising bunnies or guinea pigs in front of the crisis snake. Companies that invest in workplaces and work models for experiments in their most successful times, instead of paying out fat salaries or dividends to managers and shareholders, usually remain successful in the long term. However, those who stick to the status quo in times of crisis for fear of loss, or worse still, revert to old patterns, are doomed or, to use the expression, will be eaten. It doesn't help if, in this helplessness, furniture is rearranged, walls are painted and Post-it notes are bought in all colors to transform the empty offices of redundant employees into labs.
Because although a lab is a place, it is ultimately more of a mindset. Or where did all the product ideas, marketing concepts, blockbusters or bestsellers come from before everything was a lab? From garages (according to the legends), cubicles (those cramped one-and-a-half-square-metre open-plan office boxes) or from experimental minds.
* Benno Maggi is co-founder and CEO of Partner & Partner. He has been eavesdropping on the industry for over 30 years, discovering words and terms for us that can either be used for small talk, pomposity, excitement, playing Scrabble, or just because.
