Like Taylor Swift Once Sang “Everything Has Changed”

Reflecting on a semester of eye-opening lessons as a future marketer.

In my first blog post at the beginning of the semester titled “My Journey Back After Being Lost On The Marketing Sea”, I talked about my experiences of feeling lost and not fully accomplished in my education. This semester I learned that for a marketer it is a good thing to feel like you have not learned everything.

A marketer should strive to be curious, and have the ability to quickly adapt to the ever-changing market. In a video, Seth Godin states by ignoring something and not being curious it dulls the mind. Instead, we should make assertions and ask questions. This semester’s lessons teach that the job is never done; we need to continue asking those hard questions.

As an undergraduate, I always felt like marketing was being taught as a methodical process. An example lesson was about using a market-centric approach to marketing. This semester was eye-opening; yes, there are still some methodical aspects to marketing, but a marketer should be bursting with creativity and “big ideas”.

As taught this semester, technology has changed the way marketing is today and it will continue to change every day. As a marketer, I will face the challenges of never feeling too comfortable. By this I mean I will always need to be hyper-aware of the current news, market trends, consumer practices, etc. This means constantly being able to adapt to changes. It has been noted that in business there are more benefits to stepping out of your comfort zone than there are to staying in it.

I also will face the challenge of failure. This semester has taught me that not every campaign goes viral, marketers make stupid mistakes, but at the end of the day, it is about how you handle the failure. We learned about transparency, taking responsibility, and prioritizing consumers. By learning these core ideas I know if I ever come face to face with failure, it is not time to throw in the bag, but rather dust myself off and get back to work.

This semester has been an enlightening experience that has changed some of the most simplistic perceptions I had about the industry for the better. I look forward to implementing all I have learned in my career as a future marketer.