But where did the word come from?

It’s believed that the early Egyptians were the first to use to word. There is no substantial proof but many scientist and logographic experts believe they have found what appear to be hieroglyphs of a bird, three squiggly lines, a snail and a monkey, which they say, when translated means synergy.

However, there are those who believe Zeus himself passed down Synergy to the ancient Greeks on a bolt of lightning. The word then flourished in the ancient Greek economy as merchants used it to confuse farmers and uneducated buyers when selling slaves or as a negotiation tactic to avoid having their goods stolen by pirates.

In the 21st century the word was used exclusively by fresh out of school B.A.s hoping to demonstrate their expertise and prove that they actually paid attention in University and didn’t spend four years and $50,000 just to play beer pong and be promiscuous. However, a growing trend began to emerge where company presidents and CEO’s adopted the term in the hopes of sounding as ambiguous and confusing to their subordinates as possible – while still appearing to have a complete grasp on what they were communicating. This in tern lead to mid-level management and uppity account people hopping on the synergy bandwagon and the word trickled down into client meetings and marketing plans.

Clients were baffled and amazed upon hearing the word. They had no idea what it was, how it worked, or what it meant for their branding campaign but looked at each other in awe as they opened their wallets to agencies. Consequently if you do the research, due to the use of the word synergy in almost every creative pitch from the 1950’s to the late 60’s, it was directly responsible for selling some of the greatest ad campaigns of all time.

Bernbach has stated numerous times that Volkswagen was completely against the “Think Small” campaign and were about to scrap the idea but in a last minute Hail Marry, he reached deep down and pulled out the word “synergy”. Leo Burnett was once quoted as saying, “if we wouldn’t have had synergy, we wouldn’t have had a Marlboro Man”. Batton, Barton, Durstine & Osborn’s The Pepsi Generation campaign might as well have been called the synergy generation.

Unfortunately due to success stories like the above mentioned, the word spread through the advertising industry and has been grossly overused by many people who don’t understand the word or how it works. With great power comes great responsibility and perhaps the word synergy wasn’t meant to be used by everyone. Like an O.C. housewife and a bottle of vicodin, it’s been abused and misused.

Lucky for us there is a whole new generation of buzzwords seeping out of the industry that perhaps one day may be able to overthrow synergy as the most overused buzzword. Words and phrases like: socialization, turnkey solutions, visceral, a 2012 approach (start over/anew), cross-functional multi-discipline team network (I just threw up in my mouth a little), blog, Google, and twends, may take this generation into a whole new era of redundancy.