by  Pamela Thompson

In 1994, I celebrated my 30th birthday.  In those 30 years, I managed to produce three babies,  one ex-husband,  one AA in English,  and zero employment prospects.  Circling the drain of destitution, the reality of suddenly single parenthood inspired me to find new meaning in the word ambition.  With few options available to me based on my measly AA, I took a job as a telemarketer setting appointments for a Life Insurance company. I  hoped to get a position as an agent once I passed the state exam.  It was the only job with a flexible schedule, so I resigned my shy self to becoming the best Life Insurance Telemarketer ever.  It seemed like a good plan.

But, Fate had another program in mind.  My marketing career was inadvertently launched when my boss caught me tinkering around on his computer with a program called Paint Shop Pro.  I was supposed to be cold calling customers, but I thought my time would be better spent making a new company logo. Fortunately, my irritable boss liked the logo design, so he assigned me the task of creating a new brochure for an upcoming trade show.  I happily obliged.

My creative efforts freshly validated, the right side of my brain took over the more logical left.  Rather than producing the requested company brochure, I delivered to my boss a sign-up sheet for a contest to win a backyard swing set.

He said with indignant shock, “What in the hell is this!?”

“Uhh. Ok. Well…,” I gulped. “Well, I was thinking that life insurance is, well…boring.  It is actually boring and a little bit scary  if you think about it. But a swing set is fun,” I explained.

His crimson face was accented by an open-mouthed stare.  I managed to mumble through the rest of my idea.  I thought we could entice the trade show attendees to sign up for a contest to win this giant swing set which would be displayed in our booth.  Based on his resulting scowl, I was certain he would fire me on the spot.

Red faced, he yelled, “A swing set in the booth! Are you crazy? How are you going to sell life insurance with a swing set!?”

I said, ” I was thinking that if the trade show attendees have young kids, then they need life insurance, right? And, you said you want to talk to homeowners, not renters, right?” He nodded and huffed an impatient grunt.  I continued,  “So, if they are are parents and they own a home, then they will want this swing set so that they can have the coolest backyard on the block. ”

He hadn’t fired me yet, so I kept pushing the swing set theory, “A contest for this swing set will get them in the booth and make them glad when I call them later to set an appointment.”

“OK, so you can get them in the booth, but what makes you think they will be happy to hear from you when you call to set an appointment?”  he asked.

I pointed out the last question on the sign up sheet which read, “Thank you for entering our contest. Would you like to schedule a free Financial Analysis with one of our representatives?” There was a check box for Yes or No.  I expected most of them would answer Yes simply because they felt obligated.

Popping a TUMS, my boss agreed to the proposed plan with a warning that if my swing set theory did not work  I would be back on the phone making cold calls full time. After that trade show, I set 78 appointments with qualified buyers who were waiting to hear from us. Our office sold more life insurance in one month than we had in the previous six months, and I got a big promotion.  And so began my marketing career.

The Evolution of a Marketing Manager

Along with my new title of Marketing Manager came a pressing need to actually learn the marketing and graphic design skills necessary to do the job.  I took a few marketing classes a the local JC, but there were no course offerings in graphic design.  So I taught myself Photo Shop, Corel and Illustrator by devouring every user manual and tutorial I could find on the subject of graphic design.  I worked all day,  studied all night, and the rest of the time I was changing diapers and car pooling.

By the late 90s, my new and finely-tuned graphic design skills led me to a new job in Silicon Valley, and smack-dab in the middle of the Internet revolution.  Once again, I had to learn a whole new set of technical skills in order to keep up with the evolution of the Internet. I hit the books teaching myself Dream Weaver, Flash and digital video editing.  I spent so much time in front of my home computer that I often joke that my kids were weaned on a computers graphics card. By the time they were in elementary school, they were editing movies with content they shot on a little digital camera. It even had special effects and a scrolling credit screen.

As the internet age unfolded, it became very clear to me that good design and basic marketing skills alone would not be enough to sustain an upwardly-mobile, MBA-deficient marketing manager.  Managing the technology of marketing had become a critical factor in almost everything I touched.  I had to become an expert at IT administration, managing email servers, maintaining the corporate phone system, supporting an outside mobile sales force, and integrating communications between sales, customer support, order entry and shipping.  Later, as the demand for more interactive, dynamic data-driven websites increased, I endeavored to learn web development applications like PHP/SQL, JavaScript, AJAX, and CSS design. It was a lot of technology for a single mom with an AA in English.

Outrunning The Dinosaur

Most of us 40-somethings in marketing management have precious little formal training in the technical aspects of marketing. Like many others,  I had to learn it as I earned it. Let’s face it:  if you graduated from college before 1995, your curriculum did not cover things like search engine optimization, PHP, Ruby on Rails, or Cascading Style Sheets.  The struggle to stay current is constant.

Today I compete in this job market with a generation of 20-something MBAs who were weaned on Web 2.0.  This is a generation whose members include my oldest son, who at age 19 manages IT with such poetic talent that he was recruited by a tech service company while still in college. This is a generation whose member include my youngest son, age 16, who last year combated every MRPG player on Final FantasyXI between California and Japan, then sold his Avatar on Craig’s List for $700 because he thought that video games were interfering with his studies.  He invested his money on eTrade so he can go to Japan with his class next year.  He has 856 twitter followers, and 1252 friends on his facebook page, and is a social media mogul in his own right. This is a generation whose members include my 18 year old daughter, whose artistic talent flows out of the Adobe Creative Suite so naturally and skillfully that it is as if the software becomes a boar-hair paint brush held loosely in her little hands.

It is a constant challenge for anyone in marketing to keep pace with technology. As marketing continues to evolve, so must the marketing manager. Without constant learning, today’s marketing manager will quickly become a dinosaur.

This website started out as a blog of my frequently-used marketing resources, web development tools, tutorials, and freebies collected in my never-ending quest to out-pace the marketing dinosaur.  It is, in effect, my daily journal of things related to the technology of marketing.  I hope that eMediaFX will become a resource for others who, like me, strive to evolve.