Thursday, May 12, 2011

Marketing: the communicative reconciliation between truth and profit. I cobbled together this definition when I was fresh out of college, head still spinning as I tried to make sense of a career I had accidentally chosen, and now, years later, I thought it’d be neat to revisit it. It’s been easy to settle into a reflective mood recently, since training inherently calls for you to know exactly what you’re imparting, and after mulling over it, I’d like to update my definition. Marketing is the act of steering the conversation to your desired end.

It’s a colder, more pragmatic interpretation, I know. When I reread the original one, it comes off as genuine, yet overly academic, a greenhorn’s attempt at grasping a larger world with one hand while desperately clutching a newly minted diploma in the other. But as cynical as my new definition of marketing may be, my take on corporate citizenship has set up shop far on the other end of the spectrum. Here is the sharing part I mentioned on Tuesday.

My old man once held forth on how best to operate in the private sphere. He subscribed to the notion of guarding your skill set closely in order to preserve your marketability. I promptly repudiated this school of thought–more to be contrary, honestly–and since then I’ve championed full disclosure. Every Excel trick, every negotiation tactic, every copywriting tip, and every best practice I’ve cultivated is readily divulged upon request. Naïve? Perhaps. But such knowledge is publicly available, and enshrouding your job security in it seems woefully thin and inadequate.

What sets you apart, instead, is your industry. Your ideas. Your relationships. These are uniquely yours. These are the things you jealously guard. It’ll be interesting to see whether I still hold to this belief in a few years. I’m not even going to try to prognosticate, though–absolutely no five-year plans. Heck, five years ago, I would’ve never guessed I’d end up here, now, in this place. That said, I’m currently wrestling with this idea of being thankful–thankful for being employed, for instance, and having a roof over my head–but never content, and it’s a conceit against which my Baptist upbringing recoils in horror.