030: What Do You Do?
Not long ago, I was at a 30th birthday party for a friend. Someone I met there (a qualified doctor and future anaesthetist) asked me what I did for a living. “Uh oh”, I thought, even those that have a cool job resent answering this type of question (doctors, for example, hate being asked this question - and their job is one of the cool ones).
Telling people what my job is has always been a tricky thing for me. You see, one day I might be making a website, the next it could be a short film, the next it might be an animated 3D graphic, the next a hand-painted architectural visualisation, the next a logo for a new business, the next a set of printed banners. I don’t really do one thing, so what do I put on my name badge?
Over the years, I’ve gone through countless ways to describe what I do. But in the spur of the moment, at that birthday party, I thought I would keep it simple by declaring:
“I’m in marketing”
Everyone understands that, right?
Well, the person who asked me the question was immediately unimpressed. His face dropped and his smile disappeared. No word of a lie, the response I got back was:
“Oh right, that’s fair enough.”
I kind of knew that everybody hated being marketed at, but was it really that bad?
Were marketers really up there with the likes of the tax collector and the local traffic warden?
I’ve always been fascinated by marketing that allows businesses to grow whilst simultaneously having a positive impact on everyone the business touches. For me, it’s got to be about giving our customers the best possible experience that fully enriches their lives, rather than treating each of them as objects to be ‘hustled’.
So, what if we acted generously for others, with love, rather than selfishly for ourselves?
James
“It’s why we build, not what we build, that matters”