What a Wonk
by Iain on March 31, 2008
Following on from the post about URLs out, searches in.
According to Ad Week: W+K in NY have hired a search dude (By the way I’m not suggesting a causal relation between my blog post and the hiring before anyone thinks I’m being a total knob).
Search is something so deeply ingrained in most peoples’ online experiences that there has to be more interesting and creative ways to use it – over and above what we’ve seen so far. It’ll be interesting to see what happens when you put great search people and creative agencies together. It’s something I’ve always wanted to have a go at…
Back to the article… The closing line has to be one of the best I’ve ever seen:
“He knows the nuts and bolts,” said Gleeson. “You can get him in a room of search wonks and he can more than represent. Beyond that, he’s a good strategist and creative thinker.”
I’d never heard the term wonk before. And I don’t know what it means to ‘more than represent’, but it sounds pretty damn good. So I looked up wonk and found it:
wonk (wongk) noun
An expert who studies a subject or issue thoroughly and excessively.
When I grow up I wanna be a wonk!
11 comments
Wonk is a truly North American word. Wonkette was a blogger who then got hired to write for Time. Policy Wonk is a named used to describe politicians who, er, know policy — which doesn’t sound like a bad thing — but apparently is.
We can all be wonks. You can be a creative wonk.
by Matt on 31/03/2008 at 9:28 pm. #
Nice one Matt.
I was suprised that Wonk isn’t in wikipedia yet. Perhaps there aren’t enough Wiki Wonks out there?
by Iain on 31/03/2008 at 9:40 pm. #
Have you seen these ads for sixt? And the conversation underneath is quite revealing….
I agree with you about more creative use of search – I’ve been pushing for it with a lot of clients. It annoys the hell out of me when the media agency writes the text for a Google ad. 13 words to sell yourself is surely the exclusive domain of copywriters? What would David Ogilvy have done with that?
by Martin on 01/04/2008 at 9:46 am. #
How long before wonk is over used and we substitute an A for the O?
by Stan Lee on 01/04/2008 at 10:59 am. #
[...] via Martin’s comments on Iain’s post about search. Search being an areaI certainly need to ‘wonk off’ [...]
by Ship’s Biscuit » ASCII Art in Paid Search on 01/04/2008 at 2:22 pm. #
The phrase ‘to wonk off’ is now thoroughly ingrained into my vocab. Thanks.
by Mike on 01/04/2008 at 2:23 pm. #
pretty sure i can remember from reading kingsley amis’s book, ‘The King’s English’, that ‘wonk’ is just a play on ‘know’ – in this case backwards. The same as ‘yob’ and ‘boy’….though given the tone of the rest of the book, he was probably taking the piss.
by farquhar1875 on 02/04/2008 at 2:42 am. #
So if I act like a wonk, am I wonky?
by Andy Polaine on 02/04/2008 at 7:10 pm. #
Andy, I’ve always thought of you as such.
by Iain on 02/04/2008 at 7:12 pm. #
I might of said wonker actually…
sorry.
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