From the course: A CEO’s Guide to a Career in Advertising and Marketing

The why of advertising

From the course: A CEO’s Guide to a Career in Advertising and Marketing

Start my 1-month free trial Buy for my team

The why of advertising

“

- I was a very curious person and I was interested in a lot of things in school. And I kept changing my major, multiple times. I was going to be an orthopedic surgeon, I was going to be psychologist, I was going to be a sportscaster. I was interested in marketing and I couldn't decide. And I felt like whatever I chose, I was going to have to kind of narrow my path and work against that. And when I landed and found advertising, it seemed to me that advertising marketing was the one thing that pulled it altogether, and really forced you to integrate all those disciplines. And it really rang true to me because it was able to take you know, science and research, and information, as well as creativity and art, and put it altogether to do interesting things. I think it comes from being curious and always asking why, wanting to understand how things work, why people make decisions, how they make decisions, and I think that the career choice that I've made this whole marketing space, there's no one right answer. It's really pursuit of the best alternative. And you take everything that you know, all the experiences that you've had, and you apply it to the problem. And the other thing I would say is that what's really exciting is when you have the opportunity to work from a blank sheet of paper. I think some people are paralyzed by that and some people are really energized by that. And if you're the kind of person that's energized by it, then that's a creative person who really wants to create something new that hasn't been done before. We tell people always to ask why, no matter what they're doing. From the new hire that's been here for a month, when you're asked to fill out your time card, ask your boss why. Because if you don't know why you're doing something, you're not learning. And you're just doing one piece of a bigger picture, and you don't see how it fits in. So when somebody says "Why do I fill out a time card," well the answer is because that's often how we bill our clients, because that's how we keep track of the amount of time that we're spending against a given project. It allows us to kind of aggregate what we're doing and understand if we're applying the right resources.

Contents