Language travels faster than advertising. A phrase that's already circulating — already loaded with negative charge, already in people's mouths — is infrastructure waiting to be redirected. Find a phrase that already has momentum, identify the payload it's been carrying, and swap it out. Don't counter it. Don't argue with it. Just redirect it so that every time someone uses the phrase, they're now doing your work for you.
Here are four wordplay tactics from the Creative Tactics Engine that turn language into leverage.
- Flood the Phrase
- Expand the Acronym
- Turn the Name Into a Movement
- Weaponise the Word
1. Flood the Phrase
Take the phrase already being used against your audience — and drown it in the opposite.
Go Back To Africa — Black & Abroad, FCB, 2019
The brief: counter a racist slur that had been weaponised for decades to silence and diminish Black people — and simultaneously reframe Africa in the global imagination. FCB's answer was structural. The #GoBackToAfrica campaign didn't argue against the phrase or campaign against its users. It hijacked the hashtag directly on social platforms so that whenever the phrase was used negatively, it triggered a flood of images and videos showcasing Africa's cultural richness, natural beauty, and contemporary vibrancy. The insult became the algorithm. The campaign won global creative awards, transformed the phrase from a weapon into a travel movement, and built genuine cultural pride by making the enemy's language work backwards.
Always' Like a Girl (Leo Burnett, 2014) used the same flood logic against a different target — filling a phrase that had long been used as a put-down with footage of real girls running, throwing, and fighting with full athletic power. Over 90 million views. The phrase didn't disappear. It was permanently reloaded with a different meaning.
