What does it actually mean... "to deepen"?

Sometimes in workshops, it feels like you're in a diving camp. Yet the Swiss communications industry is an inland body of water, not an ocean. People dive for all they're worth, even though very few people know where this neologism comes from. Not always, when English terms - in this case deep dive -If the word is taken over, it succeeds. In this case, because the new word creation also brings things together linguistically that have long belonged together methodically. Dive or deepen were the terms that had been stored in our vocabularies until now.

People inevitably learned to deepen their knowledge at school or in their studies - be it knowledge, skills or competencies. Those who deepened their knowledge gained knowledge that was tested (or not) at the end of the journey and rewarded with a degree. Whether this knowledge was understood was of no interest to anyone. Immersion, on the other hand, was considered something one was allowed to do in one's passions. Music, sports, theater, literature were ideal for this. The grades in these subjects, if there were any at all, were secondary. What counted were opinions. Those who dived into areas where nothing counted were smiled at mildly and wished good luck if they went in that direction professionally.

The end of MINT VS. MUSE

Thanks to digitization, hearts and minds have now merged, and the mix of so-called STEM subjects - mathematics, computer science, natural sciences and technology - and artistic skills has given rise to things that changed the world: Apple pioneered the successful mix of STEM and MUSE in the early 1980s.

So today, the blending of the two verbs is not surprising, because "abtiefen" refers to the symbiosis between knowledge and opinion, in order to find out exactly which 50 percent of marketing and communications expenditures make a difference. "It doesn't work" are responses from the supposedly ignorant, fought with rows of numbers, click-through rates, dwell times, access information. If we just bombard these ignorant people with facts long enough, they will eventually give in.

But mostly opinions are made long in advance and affinity or aversion remains uninfluenceable even with facts, because incompetent people unfortunately also lack the competence to recognize their incompetence. This is called the Dunning-Kruger effect. So going into depth with endless charts of analytics data is of little use if clients tend to decide "on gut instinct". Or to put it another way: It's no use showing up at meetings loaded with oxygen tanks if the other party prefers to travel with a snorkel and diving goggles.

* 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.