Musings from the MarComms Trenches
As another year starts to wrap up, I find myself reflecting back on the year that has been and my career to date. Perhaps as part of an inner-healing, I write this article cathartically as a way to pass on some advice to my younger self, or someone starting their journey in the MarComms space. I hope this helps your inner-youngster too.
Everyone will have an opinion. Learn to juggle them (or drown them out).
You work in marketing and communications. Everyone will have an opinion on what you do, and how you do it. Did I mention everyone will have an opinion? Don’t fight it, it takes too much energy and isn’t conducive to a healthy workplace culture. No one wants to work with someone who is always resistant. Welcome it, open up the forum, but also be strong and sure of yourself and your work. The very talented and wise Lauren Kelly once told me ‘you are the most qualified person in the room to give the information you are giving’, and this has always stuck with me.
It’s important to be challenged in your thinking, you can find new ways to see a problem or solution, but there is also a time to stand your ground. Stakeholder management is key, everyone wants to be and feel heard, but do not feel like you need to take everything on. This only results in a diluted idea that serves no one.
Strip it back.
In studies you’ll be given your SWOTs and a myriad of other tools to help you tackle the beast. As you enter the field, this will quickly be forgotten as you rush to meet a client deadline, or follow ‘the way it is done’. You may feel overwhelmed with knowing how to tackle your next campaign or product launch. So stop, breathe, and strip it all back. The basics are there for a reason, they are your foundation. It can be so easy to end up going with the flow or copying something cool because a senior stakeholder has seen it and asked you to replicate it. If you bring everything back to the basics, in particular, understanding who your customer is, what their drivers are and who you are as a brand, you can quickly bring yourself into alignment and drown out the noise (and take a whole lotta pressure off yourself).
Be Kind.
Ah kindness. It feels almost too simple and maybe even a little too vanilla for the workplace, but there is never an occasion when it won’t be well received. As a MarComms professional, you will often be the glue in a company and mixing with many different stakeholders. What will make them more receptive to you? Knowing you’re a kind person who interacts with them professionally and recognises their humanity. Engrained into me with my Christian faith, showing kindness changes your approach to work (and maybe even improves your workplace culture too!). But don’t confuse kindness for weakness. You can still extend empathy and respect to a colleague or manager but have a different opinion. It’s all in the way you hold yourself and your deliver the information. And to that person who is short with you or rude? Be even kinder to them, you never know what battles people are fighting behind closed doors.
Embrace the new.
When I studied my Double Degree of Marketing and International Business at Edith Cowan University, social media wasn’t on the cards. It didn’t exist in the curriculum, and now almost 20 years later it is a whole degree in itself. The modern-day equivalent is AI (note, ChatGPT was not used in any capacity for this article, please feel free to embrace my writing flaws). You simply cannot push against change, you must dive in head first. You don’t always need to be a pro with every new piece of tech or platform out there (unless of course your choose to be a specialist), but you are expected to be ‘in the know’, so you can understand the opportunities out there for your workplace. Want to push it even further? Don’t wait to be asked, use a workplace chat to position yourself as the go-to with a new platform, offer people some tips and tricks, breakdown some industry vernacular. The more you empower others and your business the better.
Don’t stay there forever.
Somewhat controversial, but I strongly believe it’s important to experience different types of work places in your career. Try agency, try client-side, try freelance. You will see a different perspective and set of challenges at each end of the dial, and this exposure and experience is invaluable. You cannot be taught what the pressure of a forecasting meeting in an agency will create for you, or the learnings of an onboarding of your new client as a freelancer. It all weaves a rich tapestry that makes you a well-balanced professional who will know how to walk and talk with the best of them.