the forest through the trees

I have worked in advertising for almost 4 years now. After graduating from uni I started out doing an internship at a small little agency in Malmö, Sweden and then worked a short and intensely rewarding stint on the client-side at an architecture firm. From these experiences I determined that agency life was where I wanted to be and that strategy was where I wanted to go. 

After recognising the need to understand the advertising business before being unleashed on client strategy projects, I took the path of account management with ambitions of moving on into a solid planning role within 3-5 years. During this time I took every brief and every opportunity to do strategy work on my or others’ projects. This lead to my role at Mobiento developing into being their first full-time planner.

So now that I’ve achieved this first 3-5 year career goal - on schedule - I have started to ponder what I want to do with it, where I want to do it and why.

The most interesting part of this self-reflection is the why?

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Recently I heard a industry colleague, a smart one, make an interesting comment, “If we are all reading the same blogs, the same sites, attending the same conferences and talking with each other, aren’t we all developing the same skills and knowledge”.

While we were talking about hybrid skills, it triggered a different train of thought, one of the state of marketing competency in our industry around certain hot areas (such as movements, digital, social, mobile etc):

If we all are students of the web and each other, what does that mean for our education?

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After being one of those iPhone owners bagging out Android, I decided to see what it was like to live with a Google phone. So after 2 years of Apple, I popped out my sim and slipped it into a Samsung Galaxy sII.
My initial reactions when using it were of “allmän förvirring”, a Swedish term we use at the office to describe a type of ‘general confusion’, for when things that should make sense, don’t. Now having somewhat overcome this 2 weeks later, I am ready to pass judgement.

In short: It’s nothing to call home about. Android & Samsung is Good BUT…. 

The reason for this average mark is that for every pro, there is a strongly correlated con. And vice-versa.

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Recently I have been getting more and more involved in our agency’s recruitment. While not in the management team, I think I have learnt something critical for when I, one day, have to build my own team.

Your next recruit should be better than the last.

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Over the past 10 months, more and more Swedes have signed up for LinkedIn. Especially with those working with Marketing and PR.

Source: LinkedIn Advertising Targeting Tool: Dec 2010 & Sep 2011

Too often digital work’s creativity is evaluated against the criteria of ‘NEW’. And this is often linked to an application or use of technology.Many articles have been written about marketers’ and advertisers’ obsession with shiny new objects. But why is it that ‘never been done before’ becomes the review mark. You might as well not have a brief or business objectives. Instead you could just open the Guinness Book of Records and find gaps to fill. This is not the way to create ideas.

Let’s back it up a bit. Why do we “create ideas”?

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At the moment I am working on the rebranding of our own agency. Perfect timing given I have finished a few books about less traditional but arguably better ways to build brands that connect. Based on an ideology.

A brilliant tool for expressing one’s ideology is a manifesto. A public notice of your principles, your purpose or intentions.

So I started with my own brand: marekting

Below is a manifesto I wrote. It sums up who I am, what I do and what I hope to achieve.

A few consolidated ideas and learnings from some great books I have read over the last 12 months.

While on our holiday in Italy last week, I tried on my girlfriend’s sunglasses. As I looked out over the third town in Cinque Terra, Corniglia, I said, “everything looks like a 50’s latin film”. That same feel and vibe that her coloured lens produced no doubt inspired Instagram and Hipstermatic to introduce light and colour filters for mobile phone camera apps. But I hate taking photos while on holiday. Once upon a time I took thousands of shots while away. Now only a handful. And while I do love the fotos afterwards, I love just appreciating something with my own eyes, in the moment.
But with those sunglasses I realised that my own eyes could be even better, with a pair of hot sunnies with Instagram-like filter lens. So I am sharing this post with Le Specs (on their Facebook page), a fashion sunglass brand to tell them about this idea. Maybe they’ll like it. They say that they ‘set the trends, rather than follow them’, so maybe this could be a new way to impact sunglass fashion.

Corniglia - photo taken with an iPhone 4 and Instagram filter ‘Toaster’

I have for a long time felt there was something wrong with traditional marketing thinking. Some brands fail, some brand’s breakthrough and become part of our psyche. Why? The book ‘Cultural Strategy’ by Douglas Holt & Douglas Cameron was an ‘ah ha’ moment. It simultaneously organised all my thoughts and improved my understanding of brand strategy by providing the answer to this question. This book coupled with my recent readings in behavioural economics have illuminated for me that the simplistic marketing methods that are widespread today have arisen more for bureaucratic convenience than for creating consumer value.
This book is a game changer in my thinking on marketing and branding. I have been mulling over it for the last 6 months, re-reading it and applying it in parts in various parts of my work. Currently it is guiding my work on the rebranding our my agency Mobiento, which will still a work-in-progress. 
As I have not just read this book, but studied it, I have summarised my learnings on cultural strategy into a presentation. I note in advance that it is a book review summary crossed with some learnings and added thoughts I have had while thinking about this for the last few months.

I love the job search process. I know it’s rare and some might even say sick, but it’s true. It’s a rich personal development experience where you meet lots of new interesting people and spend the whole time talking about one of my favourite subjects - marketing - not me :) (I am not that self-involved). And while it’s been a while since I have been job searching, I have been helping  friends and colleagues with their job searches. So I have decided to put together some tips for young marketers (and other entrepreneurial souls) looking for a job.

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