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WintWinter 2016


07


Q: Has what you studied in college prepared you for your current role, or has it been a dramatic change from what you expected?


Jay: I was an English literature major and never thought I’d do marketing. I wanted to write and create sports media and pursued that wherever I could. The best part of writing or creating any experience, to me, has always been anticipating what the audience will feel and working hard to trigger emotions in them. The fact that marketing lets me do that today, thanks to content marketing, is what attracted me to the field and what keeps me here.


Caroline: Developing written and verbal communication skills in college, as well as quantitative and qualitative research and data analysis skills, has been quite useful. Psychology classes taught me how people think and feel, which helps me think from the customer’s perspective. That said, I never practiced creating a marketing campaign from start to finish— strategizing, designing, creating, and analyzing—and wish I had more hands-on projects and less learning from examples in textbooks.


Deanna: Marketing, advertising, consumer behavior, and psychology classes helped shape my thinking, but nothing has prepared me more than on-the-job training and exploration. Over the past decade, we’ve had to evolve as marketers to adopt new channels, and that evolution was really just beginning when I was in school. Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn were new to consumers, and brands had not found their voices on these channels. When I graduated, I saw the opportunity for growth here, which is why I dove into new media and wanted to work with brands hungry to drive change in the way they connect with consumers, especially across social, mobile, and digital. I’ve been fortunate to be able to evolve my thinking to embrace a multichannel, user-centric approach to marketing today.


Q: What aspects of marketing are you surprised that more businesses aren’t implementing?


Jay: I’m constantly trying to learn how someone produced a piece, not just marketed it. I think what folks in other industries do infinitely better than marketers is study the process in the name of results, not just skip to the result. As a sports journalist, I realized that the most successful athletes worshiped the process of getting better.


Nike and Gatorade do a nice job of glamorizing the grind, but marketers often glamorize the end result. A lot of that has to do with how many marketers were dropped into this field of content marketing and asked to produce like a writer, podcaster, designer, etc., but we’re not all formally trained. We bring diverse ways of attacking problems, but we rush through that process and reject the notion of craft. It doesn’t work like that.


Deanna: Content marketing still has untapped potential by moving from where brands are just blogging to creating strategic programs to nurture prospects with content throughout the buying cycle and to deliver real value to their audiences at every touch point. Also, customer marketing is becoming crucial for brands today, not just driving retention and engagement with current customers, but also championing their voices and fostering advocacy that can help recruit the next wave of customers.


Content marketing still has untapped potential by moving from where brands are just blogging to creating strategic programs to nurture prospects with content throughout the buying cycle and to deliver real value to their audiences at every touch point. - Deanna Lazzaroni


IS GOODE WRYTING AHBOWT TO MAYKE A KUMBACK?


The most prolific texting generation in history says they would hire applicants with great writing skills over any other asset. If you’ve read enough emails from colleagues,


customers, or maybe even your boss, you’ve likely noticed an increasing disregard for proper punctuation, grammar, and spelling. That will likely have to change for the next generation of marketers to have success in their chosen career field. The proliferation of content marketing means content creators are (and will continue to be) at a premium, and whether the medium is video, blogs, podcasts, or just posting on the company Twitter or Facebook page, all storytelling is rooted in writing. “I was doing


more research papers, and a creative writing course would have been helpful in college,” Caroline Student says. “If I were


hiring someone right now, I would definitely hire someone with strong writing skills. It’s extremely important with all the content we are creating, and now that we are in an age of texting and social media, not everyone has those skills.” Jay Acunzo was an English literature major


and wrote for as many publications as he could as he pursued a sports journalism career, so he may be biased in the value he places on writing. He wrote for his school newspaper, a local newspaper near his hometown, and then the Hartford Courant before interning at ESPN in PR and Communications. Even with his own writing skills at his disposal, he’d hire a writer first. “I’d hire a truly prolific writer,” he says. “The kind of person that makes you aspire to be that good. After that, I’d hire someone who has done experiment- based, process growth marketing.“


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