What does "epochal" actually mean?

Past, present and future are linguistically fixed tenses. In life and especially in the professional life of our industry, however, these seem to be fluid. Therefore, it is understandable that words describing time periods are used differently here, but they still seem strange. For example, when students of communication and marketing talk about "earlier" while scrolling through social media on the way to college or university, but actually mean "yesterday," or when advertisers call something "legendary" just because it is "recurring.

At the moment, the word "epochal" is doing the rounds. It's not just futurologists who use the adjective when they want to describe what they see in the crystal ball. Sounds good and promising. After all, something that is described as epochal is significant beyond the moment and has an impact on the future. And that's what we all want to achieve somehow with our work. It is therefore understandable that we strive to make things not only ubiquitous, but also as epochal as possible.

Only useful in the world of yesterday

In view of the current world situation, such words are popular but should be used with great caution. Corona was epochal, as was the introduction of the iPod - which recently passed away. Whether it will be the coming winter or the blocking of third-party cookies, we can only guess, we just don't know yet. Because whether something is epochal can only be recognized with absolute certainty in retrospect.

But there are exceptions. For example, Stefan Zweig's work "The World of Yesterday," which is currently highly topical again. Not only is it epochal, but it describes epochal events from a perspective of the present day. The author's memoirs convey the attitude to life of a citizen of the world in the first half of the 20th century, and much in it is frighteningly reminiscent of today. Zweig lived from 1882 to 1942 and experienced two world wars. He was a child from a good family, which is what all of us living in Switzerland today are. Our society here has never been as well off as it is today, despite the war in Ukraine, inflation and the electricity crisis. Okay, the golden years of advertising are long gone and the descendants of the generation of Gredingers, Gislers, Strittmatters, Aebis, Suters and Co. still suffer from the reputation of being wasteful, but hand on heart. The industry is still doing well compared to others. Or would anyone like to switch to the healthcare sector, the airline industry or an electricity company? Exactly.

And if you look at the current campaigns, we all seem to have assets that we are supposed to invest somehow and with someone instead of saving. The losses or gains may be epoch-making, but neither the advertisers nor the financial advisors know it. So please use the word only in retrospect, if we don't want to make fools of ourselves one day. Thank you.

* 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.