Technical jargon: What does "adopt" actually mean?

"Adopt, adapt and improve!" - That's what we would like to shout at the president-elect of the USA. But not only to him, but also to all the whiners in the industry who are currently languishing in self-pity, helplessness or spite. Even the Prince of Wales, Edward VIII, wanted to use this rhetorical three-step approach in 1927 to motivate people to adopt tried-and-tested solutions and to develop and improve them in line with the changed circumstances at the time and with a view to the bleak future.

However, not everyone has the ability to apply this as brilliantly as the congenial John Cleese in "Monty Python's Flying Circus" in 1969 during his desperate robbery of a bank that was mistaken for a lingerie store: "Adopt, adapt and improve!"

Adapt, change, improve instead of complaining

In German, the verb "adopt" is nowadays usually clearly associated with children in patchwork or rainbow families. In its origin, the term means "to make something one's own", which applies to children at most in the legal sense.

However, the English version of the word is currently on everyone's lips. In the advertising and communications industry in particular, its implementation is more in demand than ever, because budgets are now being slashed, suspended or put on hold everywhere, which - whatever it is called - means a real loss of revenue for agencies. If you ask around your colleagues, this is something they have not practiced. The request to "adopt" missing or smaller budgets, flexible working time models and remote working usually trickles down unheeded from the client to the agency bosses and from there to the employees, leaving a lot of frustration in its wake. Not everyone has the adaptability that would be desirable now. But Christmas used to be easier to organize when there were fewer patchwork or rainbow families. With this in mind: "Adopt, adapt and improve for 2021!"