Technical jargon: What does "play back" mean?

Now that the football spectacle in Russia is finally over, it can be used again: the verb "to play back". During the last month, very few people dared to use it. But it dominated the field in marketing and communications departments in particular before June 14. "We have to play this back to the internal client first" or "Let's play it back again" and many other phrases that actually mean nothing other than either "I have no decision-making authority" or "I have no idea." This is frustrating for all goal scorers in the agencies, who actually only measure themselves by how many goals they score or ADC cubes they receive. It may sound harsh, but harsh language has been commonplace over the past month, because during the World Cup, even boiled-down department heads, account managers, marketing managers and creative directors lose their composure and berate players who play backwards instead of forwards and earn a lot of money for it.

Highly praised passers-by

In the past, agencies earned many times more than what was possible "on the client side". Spectacular goals, great ideas and extraordinary concepts were expected in return. Today, clients' income is higher and agencies are paid for possession rather than goals, but like football, advertising is still not an exactly predictable and calculable science, despite the many statistics. In football, passing statistics have been kept for a few years now, and they have become a currency alongside kilometers run, which seems to be slowly overtaking that of goals, with the Swiss Granit Xhaka and the German Toni Kroos being masters of their trade. One earns around 9 million francs a year at Arsenal, the other over 20 million francs at Real Madrid, mainly for passing. The former delivered 259 passes in the group stage of the last World Cup, putting him in sixth place in the rankings, which are topped by the latter with 331 passes. How many of these passes they "returned" remains unknown to us. It feels like 90 %, judging by the comments of frustrated spectators in Germany and Switzerland. So anyone who uses the word "play back" in our industry after the World Cup should know: It means defeat or early elimination.*Benno Maggi is co-founder and CEO of Partner & Partner. He created the section "Vom Fach" in the NZZ FOLIO and was in charge of it for years. He presents and decodes words and terms that can be used either for small talk, being important, getting excited, playing Scrabble or simply for fun.