Uni Diaries: nobody knows what a marketer is anymore
Two weeks into uni, and I'm already questioning why I decided to take a master's in marketing and digital communication at 36. Then I check my inbox, see only spam recruiters and no jobs, look at the two personal brands I'm trying to keep afloat, and I remember why: I want to learn how marketing has evolved and, most importantly, digital storytelling.
This past week was not the most pleasant one due to some family drama, but that's just part of the mix, right?
Back to uni. This first module is the one that brings us all up to speed on what marketing is in general. I studied basic marketing at Glion and digital marketing with DMI. I've lived marketing basically all my life because I was born into an entrepreneurial family. But what I know is either 10+ years old or street knowledge.
Last week's topic was "Who is the modern marketer?", I watched webinars and read some very interesting opinions from my classmates in the forum. Everyone has their own take, but one thing we share: we are all scared and worried about where the world is heading for marketers and for marketing in general.
Here's a story from this week. I received a sponsored LinkedIn InMail from a "freelancer" about an opportunity to work at Puma. The website looked great, and the salaries were $250k+. Too good to be true, so my spam alert went off. I checked the URL: fake. I checked the person: a fake profile built on a real person's identity. And it's not the first time I've seen this kind of scam.
Was it my marketer's eye that caught it, or have I just seen too many? Probably both. But look at what the scammer did: they picked the right audience (people looking for work), the right channel, the right promise, and they hit the right emotion at the right moment. That is marketing. Used badly, but marketing.
So who is the modern marketer, and what are they supposed to look like? I'm not going to give you this-or-that definition because I don't have a neat one. Marketing keeps evolving, and any definition is old by the time you finish writing it.
What I can say is what the job asks of you. You need the numbers. You also need to be creative: keep people entertained, raise awareness, and, in the long term, stay in the consumer's mind. And you need the human side: understanding who people are and what they want, and really listening to them. Numbers and people are not two separate jobs. They have to co-exist in the same head.
The scammer in my inbox had both. What they didn't have was honesty. Maybe that's the closest I can get to a definition today: the modern marketer has all the tools to manipulate people and chooses to listen to them instead.
Ask me again in two years. I'll probably have a different answer, and that's why I'm back at uni at 36.
