Medical vocabulary term is the new corporate jargon – 06/14/2023 – Sérgio Rodrigues

When today we hear Hyldon singing “E eu vou/ Esquecer de tudo/ Das dors do mundo”, the chorus of his soul classic “As Dores do Mundo”, from 1975, the poetry of the lyrics runs the risk of being contaminated by recent semantic evolutions in the world of neuralgias.

The fact is that, for a group of speakers with great influence on the direction of contemporary language, the pains of the world should no longer be forgotten — whoever hurts. On the contrary!

In the words they themselves usually use, it is crucial to focus on the pain to deliver at the end of the day a product or service design that provides the potential customer, this tortured one, with some relief. If it’s not a cure, then at least a pain reliever.

As you can see, we are not talking about medicine, but about marketing. If you’re lucky enough not to be exposed to this kind of jargon, congratulations: one less pain.

Even so, it may be useful to know that pain —of the customer, of the sector, of the market— is the last cry (of pain?) in terms of vocabulary fad in corporate environments. “At the end of the day” tastes like the day before yesterday. “Address”, any mediocre professional addresses. The “differential” today is pain.

Pain, in this case, is a synonym for problem, need, deficiency, requirement, difficulty. The fetish word was imported—to nobody’s surprise—from English. “Pain point” is often defined something like this in marketing manuals: “Specific problems that potential customers face in the market.”

In case it’s still not clear how marketing pain works, here are some examples picked haphazardly from the internet.

“Learn how to use the Value Proposition Canvas, identify your ideal customer and make your product more compatible with the pains of the market.”

“Defining the plan without analyzing the pain and behaviors of the target audience will not get you very far.”

“According to so-and-so, the sector’s pain is small, but it exists.”

“Using the needs, or as we call it in Marketing, the PAIN of the target audience, as a source of our communication is a POWERFUL attraction.”

“Exploring the pain of the target audience, the product differential for customers is justified, in favor of the macro objective of the method.”

“At this stage, the company can develop e-books, blog posts, carousels and other content that alleviates the public’s pain.”

Yes, we are facing a metaphor. The pain in question is not literal, it is not located in anyone’s body, at most it can be located in the social body understood in its economic dimension —which is also a metaphor.

More interesting, in this case, is to reflect on the reasons for the success of the expression at this moment in history when the world’s lancinating points are so many —in the environment, in geopolitics, in collective mental health— that lead many people to yearn for the final anesthesia of the apocalypse.

In his book “Mitologias” (Difel), which sharply criticizes various aspects of the cultural landscape of the 1950s, the French semiologist Roland Barthes confesses his impatience with the way in which “the press, art, common sense continually mask a reality” created historically by treating it as a natural thing.

Barthes was going to have a lot of fun with the pains of marketing, which perfectly illustrate everything that made him impatient by coloring what is historical with nature, that is, with a physiological deviation which is a business opportunity in certain markets of capitalist societies of the 21st century. 21.

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