For example, we can all forgive the Make-A-Wish Foundation, the charity which arranges dream-come-true experiences for kids with life-threatening illnesses. It sometimes lets its staff pick their own titles. PR Managers are “Magic Messengers” and the CEO is known as the “Fairy Godmother of Wishes”. These titles, which appear alongside the more traditional variation of the title, only work because of the context.

They also offer other benefits. One study by the Academy of Management Journal found that these “self-reflective” job titles contributed to a lowering of stress among holders.

Rock stars

But many who take the Google or Make-A-Wish approach to job titling don’t have Google or Make-A-Wish’s capacity for communicating their culture and it is the culture that’s essential for contextualising such titles. Without the cultural frame of reference, people are bewildered.

Google actually appears to understand this, despite its taste for unusual titles. Their external jobs page is full of surprisingly normal-sounding titles like “software engineer” and “financial planning manager”.

It’s one thing to bestow a quirky job title on a post-holder once they’ve inhabited the role, as they do at Google and Make-A-Wish, quite another to advertise for a job that nobody has heard of or understands.