There is a great movie called The Accidental Tourist (1988) starring Gina Davis and William Hurt. It's about a guy who is a travel book writer. Though he doesn't realize it in the beginning, he's written about how to travel with minimal impact and fuss. As a result, the traveler ends up going to amazing places without letting what they're experiencing really make an impact. There's far more to the story, but this is the part I wanted to eek out in my first blog entry.
It's easy for us marketers to go through the motions of marketing and not really make an assessment of what we're doing. When we fall into this rut, this routine, we end up not letting our marketing impact us, teach us, change us. We become stagnant, valueless drains on our organizations and deserve the criticism of being cost centers, repetitive, and meaningless.
I've taken a long, hard look back at the last two years of my life. Each is so different from the other. Two years ago I fell into a rut, becoming complacent and giving up. Organizational mindsets toward the role of marketing vary and for me I had four bosses in four years all with very different views. Rather than be tossed by the whims of this executive only to have them replaced by another made it easy to minimize my input, thus minimizing my impact.
But this last year I began the journey of taking back the mantle of what good marketing is and what marketing should be. I've done away with the complacency and have reenergized myself. Yep, its pretty much a daily struggle sometimes, but one that is worthwhile because there is power in what we do. As marketers we weild powerful tools to shape opinions, promote ideas, sell value, and build empires.
Thus, the beginning of MarketAbility -- the blog about how marketing and the real world collide, and what to do when it happens.
Let the journey begin.
-- David Kinard, PCM
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