What Made you Choose Marketing?
What made you choose marketing? Have you ever pondered this question?
It’s something I’ve found myself asking a lot in those quiet, self-reflective moments at 3 am (when I should be trying to sleep — curse you, brain!). I think I’ve finally answered it.
During my final year of primary school, my teacher asked the class what we wanted to be when we grew up. I answered ‘a writer’, which back then used to earn me an enthusiastic nod of approval from all whom I told that. Back then I had tunnel vision — I was going to help people through my stories, I was going to entertain them.
Creative writing was my first passion, ever since winning a class short story competition when I was around eight, I found myself to be naturally gifted at piecing together a story and you know what? I loved it.
But I remember distinctively that one of the more practical reasons I had for wanting to be a writer was that I wanted to work from home and be my own boss. That was something, for whatever reason, I always felt drawn to.
The years went on and as I researched more and refined my craft for creative writing I realized through the writers I’d spoken to (thanks internet forums!) and read interviews from — breaking into writing was seriously difficult. It wasn’t so much about what you know, but who you know. Of course, self-publishing through Amazon didn’t exist back then. As far as I knew getting a published novel or a TV network to accept your screenplay was difficult business even for the most talented of writers. This has not changed.
At some point during my teenage years I decided that if I was going to be a screenwriter and novelist, I was going to have to take this slow and find something to pay the bills until I lucked out. How many times have you watched a show with the stereotypical ‘starving artist’ who sits at home eating crisps and fumbling from one ‘regular’ job interview to the next, calling themselves a writer while being dirt broke and unpublished? A lot, I’d wager. Whether or not this portrayal is healthy and helpful to those young children who like me, will be shown that their dream job is likely to leave them penniless and soul-crushed is irrelevant. It’s realistic.
I’ve gone through various ideas on what I wanted to be when I grew up, but I’ll skip ahead to the important bit. In 2017, following a few years of full-time work in various factory and supermarket jobs to support myself, I took the plunge to return to college at the expense of my finances. Attending the Telford College, I studied for a Level 3 Diploma in Computing. Initially, I wanted to be a software developer, providing people with my stories through games I had created. At the time, I thought this was a brilliant way to combine my passion for both creative writing and gaming into a career that would provide value to my life.
Until I had to program.
It was one of the most tedious things I’ve had to do in my life, and completely knocked me for six. How was I going to be a software developer who couldn’t even program a calculator?!
At that point, I knew something had to change. Having already gotten close to completing the first year of the two-year course, I decided to pivot into technical support, focusing more on the hardware of computers than the software. But I still wasn’t happy.
Only this time, it wasn’t because of the work itself. I could do that fine, and it was even semi-enjoyable. Yet something was missing.
The people. The connection.
Fixing a machine is all well and good, and you could argue I could still have found meaningful work in helping people by fixing their machines. But is there really a connection built once the contract of fixing somebody’s computer is fulfilled? Only if they need it fixed again in the future.
When the time came to apply for university I had three choices — computer science, cybersecurity, or…digital marketing.
As interesting as both computer science and cybersecurity were for me, as well as the potential income stream from the latter, digital marketing was sticking out to me like a sore thumb. In my spare time, I’d been creating blogs based on reviewing TV shows, films, games, and albums and I’d also been creating YouTube videos that I’ve attempted on-and-off since around 2008.
I was also fortunate enough to meet David, the owner of Mazepress whose Discord server for digital creatives I’d chanced upon through browsing on reddit. David’s gone on to become a mentor to myself, and it was through our many late-night chats and his tutelage coupled with my own interests, ambitions (and my slow but sure process to understand what my goals were and how I wanted to achieve them) that I realized marketing was something I’d been regularly engaging in my entire life and was my calling career-wise.
Marketing combines my love of writing, and telling stories, with my passion for connecting and helping with people. It isn’t about how well you can spin a product to the audience, or about how many likes and followers you may amass across multiple social media channels. It’s about communication, connection, community. We all have a story to tell, and there are stories everywhere you look. There’s also marketing everywhere you look.
When you were seven years old begging your parents for a pet dog — you were pitching the benefits the dog could bring to the household and the problem it could solve (however unsuccessfully). When you were writing a personal statement to a college or university, you were marketing yourself as a prospect, a worthwhile ROI for the institution to take a chance on you. When you were creating your first CV for a part-time job — you were doing the same thing.
Now more than ever we’re all marketers, some of us just choose to bring that closer to our core focus.
What made you choose marketing?
I hope when you ask yourself this question in the future, you’ll be able to find a more concrete reason that brings focus and passion to you. I think it’s easy with the current macro-environment to become disillusioned with why we do what we do — there’s so many numbers and platforms involved!
Now more than ever with the global crisis we’re facing, marketers would do well to strip back down to basics on their relationship with their role and post-pandemic we will hopefully have the customer and community at the forefront of our mind. Products that solve problems should be the benefits our relationships with one another have, not the driving force.
