ACTION-ORIENTED

Hiring managers want to see candidates who will take chances, even if some of those efforts result in failure. Ideal candidates bring fresh and well-researched ideas to the table. Ellen Slauson, executive vice president of account management at marketing agency Upshot, says being action-oriented, or decisive, is one of the most overlooked qualities a marketing job candidate can have. Job candidates should prove their ability to gather intel, decipher the information and find the pearl.

›› ACTION

Should an interviewer pose a hypothetical problem, respond by asking follow-up questions and provide a firm conclusion. Your decisiveness will show confidence and an ability to act without wavering.

BUZZWORDS

Don’t use them!

“There are buzzwords that are so overhyped,” Slauson says. “Big Data, strategic, results-driven—all that stuff on the résumé makes you feel like it’s an empty bag.”

The , according to LinkedIn, are:

• Specialized
• Leadership
• Passionate
• Strategic
• Experienced
• Focused
• Expert
• Certified
• Creative
• Excellent

›› ACTION

Scan your application materials for buzzwords, and remove them. Have a trusted peer or mentor review the updates to ensure you chose appropriately descriptive words—you won’t get hired by misusing a thesaurus.

COLLABORATION

This means being able to collaborate within your team, with other teams in your organization and with outside clients. It’s all about breaking down silos.

“Collaboration is key in this industry,” Slauson says. “We don’t really believe that creative is just creative’s job. Partnership is absolutely critical.”

Some of the best marketing has come via collaborations; think Nike and Yeezy, GoPro and Red Bull, Uber and Spotify. There’s no reason you can’t find your own marketing magic this way. 

›› ACTION

Highlight your collaborative skills in job interviews, particularly if they involve reaching outside of your immediate team. Provide examples.

DESIRE TO LEARN

Education shouldn’t end once you land a job. Professionals need to constantly evaluate their skills against industry standards. A willingness to continue learning illustrates your ability to be autonomous. If you see a shifting trend in the industry, educate yourself without being prompted—you may even be able to seek reimbursement from your current or future employer.

›› ACTION

Show your current or prospective employer your desire to learn by taking courses, attending industry events, gaining new certifications or reaching out to thought leaders for insights. If you don’t have time for an after-work class, listen to an industry podcast on the way to work (may we recommend “Answers in Action”?) or grab lunch with a mentor.

EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

Although you may not see this trait listed on job postings, Slauson says emotional intelligence tells an employer a lot about how you solve problems. Candidates can illustrate their emotional intelligence, or EQ, by describing a time they handled conflict in the workplace.

Harvard Business Review quoted Adele B. Lynn, author of The EQ Interview, as saying EQ accounts for anywhere from 24% to 69% of performance success.

›› ACTION

 focusing on three measures of EQ when interviewing:

1. Self-awareness and self-regulation: Understand the needs and wishes that drive you and affect your behavior. Keep your negative emotions from spreading to colleagues—.
2. Reading others and recognizing the impact of your behavior: Be aware of how your words and actions influence colleagues.
3. Learn from your mistakes: Acknowledge your mistakes, reflect critically and learn from them. This is an excellent way to respond to the ever-popular interview question: What is your greatest weakness?

FUSION

Marketing doesn’t operate in a vacuum. Companies hire marketers expecting them to have a wide range of skills and be able to fluidly work with other teams. 

 found companies with fewer than 50 employees have an average of three people on their marketing team, companies with 50 to 249 employees average eight people on their marketing team and those with 500 to 999 employees average 14 marketers. If you work for a smaller company, you could be one of a few divvying up the work of many.

“I want marketers to understand the full breadth of what marketing can do and how it intersects with every other business function,” says University of Cincinnati professor Ric Sweeney. “Marketing is the center of the business universe—it integrates with and is essential to every other aspect of business. [Marketing] is not an isolated function. [You] need to build [your] understanding and skills in finance, accounting, analytics, operations management, international business, entrepreneurship and every other area impacted by the marketing function.”

›› ACTION

Talk to co-workers outside of your immediate team. Learn how marketing is impacted by the financial team, IT team and the executive team. When building a campaign or creating new marketing materials, understand the financial implications, the resources you will need from other departments and how you will explain the value of your work to those stakeholders. Thinking beyond creative and the four P’s of marketing will make everyone else’s job easier and the work well-rounded.

GET SPECIFIC

 found general or extremely saturated skills such as “strategy” and “marketing” are being replaced by more specific skills within those professions, such as “integrated marketing.”

Pure360’s report also shows a trend toward more specific roles: 33% of respondents said they expected their teams to become more specialized in 2017, compared to just 3% who are moving toward generalist roles.

›› ACTION

“Marketing” may cover all your areas of expertise, but organizations expect all employees to be advocates of the brand. Get more specific and break out the exact types of marketing you have experience with: copywriting, analytics, direct marketing and/or artificial intelligence.

HONESTY

Job candidates must be honest about their experience and qualifications. This is especially true in the era of social media: 35% of hiring managers surveyed in a  said they had sent friend requests to or followed job candidates, giving employers the opportunity to confirm candidates’ pasts and personal details. The survey also found that 56% of hiring managers have caught job candidates lying on their résumés, with the most common untruths being embellished skills or capabilities. A quarter of survey respondents said they’ve caught applicants who claim to be employed by companies they never worked for.

›› ACTION

Tell the truth. Explain gaps in work history, be clear about your qualifications and clarify exactly what your experience has been. If you’re asked about specific skills you lack, be clear about any related abilities you have and describe your learning style.

IMMEDIATE CONTRIBUTIONS

“Employers seek new hires who can contribute immediately,” Domeyer says. “Candidates who can communicate specific ways they can help the organization succeed often make the best impression.”

›› ACTION

Visit the website and social media platforms of companies you’re interviewing with. Search for news articles about the firm and reach out to members of its network. After you’ve done some research, pull together anecdotes of when you solved problems or faced challenges relevant to the firm.

“Whether it be through a specific campaign or creative projects, marketing executives are keen on data points,” Domeyer says. “Cite how you helped grow revenue, increase customer conversion rates, improve usability or boost staff productivity. Contributions and accomplishments that can be attributed to your work can set you apart.”

JOY

Companies do not want to hire someone with a negative attitude. that 75% of job success can be predicted from a person’s overall work optimism, positive engagement and support provision. They also found that optimists are five times less likely to burn out, compared with pessimists, and three times as likely to be highly engaged in their jobs. If that’s not reason enough to be optimistic, know that positive employees have also been found to make more money over the course of their careers.

›› ACTION

Gielan wrote in Harvard Business Review that optimism can make job candidates appear more likeable and capable. “When a hiring manager asks about a recent challenge and how you solved it, the way you frame your response is telling for future performance,” Gielan writes. “Optimists focus more on the energizing aspects of work and the areas in which they have control. If an interviewee gives an empowered response with a focus on the solutions instead of merely discussing the problem, that person is worth a second interview.”

KNOWLEDGE OF INDUSTRY

A broad understanding of the marketing industry will always be a competency that hiring managers seek in prospective employees.

“While the marketing industry continues to evolve, knowledge of industry best practices and trends remains essential,” Domeyer says. “Marketing professionals should always showcase their most current skills, especially when applying for digital roles. Employers want to hire talent who are keeping up with new tools and technologies and who show a continued desire to learn.”

›› ACTION

Follow industry thought leaders, set up alerts for relevant industry news and sign up for industry e-newsletters (the ��������� has a few).

LEADERSHIP

Fifty-three percent of advertising and marketing executives surveyed by The Creative Group said that strong motivational skills are the most important factor they consider when promoting professionals to supervisory positions. “Being an effective manager means more than delegating tasks and making sure projects are completed on time,” Domeyer says. “Leaders also must inspire their teams.”

›› ACTION

Domeyer points to a few qualities held by marketers in leadership roles: 

• Vision: A keen understanding of where the business is moving in the future.
• Focus: Effective managers know when to sacrifice short-term wins to pursue big-picture objectives.
• Creativity: A willingness to flip established business practices upside down and foster a culture of intelligent risk-taking.
• Flexibility: Change in the industry and the workplace is constant, and leaders need to pivot accordingly.
• Resilience: The best leaders can bounce back and turn setbacks into gains.

MATCH

Personalization is the driving theme of marketing today, so prospective marketing candidates should match their application to the job rather than taking a one-size-fits-all approach. If you’ve never stepped foot on a fairway, you would be confused if a coupon arrived at your house for golf clubs. Similarly, hiring managers will quickly throw out a generic résumé indicative of spray-and-pray applying. Customization shows the hiring manager that you want a specific position, not just any job. 

›› ACTION

Update your résumé, cover letter and portfolio each time you apply for a job. If you’re applying for a managerial position, pull examples of your leadership to the top of your skills list, or start your cover letter with an anecdote about your management abilities. Some career coaches suggest removing any experience older than 10 years, but you should also keep any role that would be relevant to the position for which you’re applying. In general, you can delete your oldest and least-relevant jobs.

Your cover letter should describe your qualifications and your interest in the specific position. Rambling on about yourself without mention of the job will play like a self-absorbed date. Your application should mirror the skills or qualities the job post emphasizes. It can also be beneficial to find the LinkedIn profile of whomever held the job previously and see where your skills overlap.

NETWORK

Never underestimate the power of knowing the right person.  85% of all jobs are filled by way of networking, and  about 80% of available jobs are never advertised. Checking in with your network can also garner insights about an organization before you interview, Domeyer says, helping you come armed with insider knowledge.

You also showcase your network to prospective employers. Consider how your personal or social network could benefit the team, department or organization. This is less about name-dropping and more about tapping into the resources you’ve accrued.

›› ACTION

LinkedIn allows you to see if you have any direct or mutual connections at an organization. Tap these people for a recommendation or company insights. Don’t just network in the digital world. Find industry organizations in your region and attend events to make face-to-face introductions. Always carry a small stack of business cards, which should include contact information that won’t expire with your current job. 

OMNI-CHANNEL

“Marketers need an understanding of a wider range of channels than ever before,” says Celtic Chicago’s CEO Marlene Byrne. “Digital and social are moving at the speed of light, and keeping pace with how these new conversations affect the overall landscape is critical.”

›› ACTION

Developing a strong personal brand can demonstrate that you’re an omni-channel-minded marketer. Your brand includes your visual identity (logo, website, business card, résumé, promotional materials) and your verbal identity (bio, elevator speech, résumé content, social networking profiles).

“A good way to nail down your personal brand is to create a one-page brief on yourself,” Domeyer recommends. “This exercise forces you to craft a targeted message based on your skills, qualifications, passion projects, accomplishments and career aspirations. […] Once you’ve defined your brand, you want to apply it consistently across all channels, including your résumé, social media profiles, portfolio or website and elevator pitch. Consider the look, feel and content.”

PORTFOLIO

Slauson says everyone, not just creatives or designers, should have a portfolio to show their work. A portfolio describes your specific accomplishments, and gives you more time to discuss your soft skills and other qualifications. A portfolio provides proof of value to the hiring manager and further differentiates you from the other candidates.

›› ACTION

Slauson recommends building a portfolio like you would a case study: Show the problem, ideation, solution and results.

QUESTIONS

Job interviews always end with the opportunity for the applicant to ask questions. This is a chance for you to find out if the organization and position are the right fit for your career and aspirations.

›› ACTION

There are many great questions to ask depending on the responsibilities of the role, the culture of the company and how much information is already public. Here are some of our favorites:

• What are the biggest challenges facing the company/department right now? Not only can you learn what hurdles you’ll encounter if you land the job, but the answer to this question may determine if this job is more trouble than it’s worth.
• How will you measure the success of the person in this position? Every marketer knows that ROI matters, and your role in the company is no different. Find out how the organization tracks its employees’ progress and what milestones you’ll be expected to hit.
• What differentiated the employees who were good in this position from the ones who were really great? Depending on their answer, you may be able to provide an anecdote that relates to this person’s qualities, or note it as one of your personal goals.
• What is the typical career path for someone in this role? Hiring managers like candidates who are driven (hence the common question, “Where do you see yourself in five years?”). It’ll also give you an idea of whether there’s room to grow within the organization or if it can serve as a launch pad for your goals.
• What are the next steps in the interview process? Avoid waiting by the phone or checking your e-mail nonstop. Find out when you can expect to hear back from the company or if there are additional steps before the final decision.

RESILIENCE

LinkedIn showed future-proofing skills to be critical in its report on job trends. The survey found almost 30% of professionals believe their skills will be redundant in the next one to two years, if they aren’t already, with another 38% saying they believe their skills will be outdated within the next four to five years. “This feeling is largely driven by lack of access to adequate training to stay abreast of new—largely digital—skills that are necessary to be successful in today’s fast-paced jobs landscape,” the report says.

›› ACTION

Continuously expand your skill set, especially computer-related skills. Competence in social media, Microsoft Office software and digital marketing is in demand for a number of jobs.

SOFT SKILLS

Soft skills aren’t typically taught in school, so they require personal development.  identified the top soft skills that recruiters look for as problem-solving (62%), adaptability (49%), time management (48%), organization (39%) and oral communication (38%).

, with hiring managers identifying top skills as adaptability, culture fit, collaboration, leadership, growth potential and prioritization.

›› ACTION

Show up on time, dress appropriately, make eye contact and keep your phone put away during the interview.

TECHNICAL KNOWLEDGE

It’s critical that candidates have knowledge of relevant software and technology, but don’t waste space on your résumé listing every app and platform you’re fluent in.

“We assume that any marketing candidate has a basic understanding of business software,” Byrne says. “The real estate on your résumé is precious. Use it for your unique qualities and skills that set you apart.”

›› ACTION

Instead of highlighting your knowledge of specific technology, mention it as a tool used in projects that showcase your other abilities.

UNDERSTANDING DATA

 a report by The Creative Group, surveyed almost 600 creative and marketing professions with hiring authority, finding data analytics to be a top area of need. “There’s strong demand for professionals who can improve customer experiences and create measurable ROI, like UX designers, digital strategists and e-commerce marketing managers,” Domeyer wrote in the report.

Out of 22 skills identified by Pure360, data analysis and reporting was reported the third-most important skill in B-to-C marketing and sixth-most important in B-to-B and nonprofit marketing.

›› ACTION

You can find free resources online to hone your analytics skills: , , and  are good places to start.

VISION

Domeyer identified vision as one of the top qualities that managers look for. “A sharp understanding of where the business is going is essential to success,” she says.

›› ACTION

Research the companies and industries you apply to and provide the interviewer with your thoughts on where you see the industry and company heading and the role you would play in that future. If applying for a promotion, make it clear how your efforts align with your inside knowledge of the company’s goals.

WRITING SKILLS

Perhaps one of the most basic marketing skills is the ability to write. “Strong writing skills and the ability to craft a compelling narrative are essential to success in business,” Sweeney says. Marketers need to be articulate when explaining data and able to tell a story that convinces and compels action. 

›› ACTION

“I recommend marketers consider taking a creative writing class so they can hone their skills in crafting well-written, compelling messages for a variety of audiences,” Sweeney says.

X-FACTOR

Every so often there’s a résumé story that goes viral, like the guy who dressed as a Postmates delivery man to deliver his résumé inside a box of donuts. Slauson says she once received a rubber ear from a job candidate to symbolize that person was a great listener, and another time the office received a cake with someone’s résumé printed on top. She wasn’t particularly impressed with either. 

“Somebody who I did hire came in and gave a PowerPoint presentation about themselves, built like the brand pyramid,” Slauson says. “They had a brand positioning statement and turned themselves into a brand. Not only did it tell me something else about the person, but showed me they understand marketing and how to build a brand. It was interesting, yet relevant to marketing.”

›› ACTION

Don’t do a stunt for the novelty of it. Stand out in a creative way that showcases your marketing know-how.

YOU

Despite the effectiveness of automation and algorithms, you’re not going to get a job by being a robot. Be yourself, the hiring manager doesn’t want an entirely different person performing the job than the one who showed up to the interview.

Make your needs clear. Domeyer says job postings are showing a greater emphasis on corporate culture and what the organization can offer the employee. “In today’s candidate-short market, hiring managers need to be asking, ‘What can we do for you?’ versus, ‘What can you do for me?’” she says. “In job postings and during interviews, they should emphasize perks such as remote working options, tuition reimbursement programs and career advancement opportunities, and provide a complete picture of life at their organization.”

›› ACTION

Be professional and be yourself. While showcasing what makes you the ideal candidate, ask about what you need from the position. 

ZIG (OR ZAG)

Demonstrate your ability to respond to challenges with pragmatism. This creative flexibility is at the crux of marketing.

“At the end of the day, we’re here to solve problems, and many professionals, while good at doing, often lack the ability to assess a situation and develop a plan for solving that problem,” Sweeney says. “It is the forward-thinking approach to solving problems that gives a marketer the edge in this competitive environment.”

›› ACTION

Provide examples of how you’ve solved problems, especially in a way that was counter to what your competitors were doing. 

The post The Complete Job-seeker’s Guide: From A to Z appeared first on ���������.

Brian de Haaff, co-founder and CEO of product roadmap software  and author of , asks the audacious question of whether having a personal brand is worth it. De Haaff spoke with Marketing News a​bout his belief that personal brand building, especially at work, is counterproductive to goals of getting ahead.​

Q: Why are personal brands bad?

A: I don’t think personal brands are bad. It’s a question of focus. We would never say that a personal brand is something to be avoided. All great accomplishments are the result of teams, and you only have so many hours in a given day. The question is where do you want to put your focused energy? In an organization, putting the organization first is important most of the time.

Q: How can you put an organization first?

A: You can improve how you communicate with the team. You can improve the dynamics with the team. The results of your team benefit you in the long run, so emphasizing effort in a team-based environment is superior to spending the same amount of time trying to bolster your own personal brand.

Q: How do you define personal brands? 

A: We all have a personal brand, right? Everything about us is a characteristic. To answer that question, we have to take a tougher look at what a brand is. A brand is a set of perceptions that anyone important to you has about you, and those perceptions are created through interactions over time. Brands under that definition can be an organization or a person. A personal brand is nothing more than the perceptions that people you care about have about you.

Q: How do you highlight your contributions when you’re up for review?

A: At our best, all of us are operating in a transparent, supportive, goal-oriented way. Promotions are irregularly achieved based on some short-term task or objective reached. We want to be doing our work in a proactive way that’s aligned with the goals of the organization such that people can understand that we are contributing to the team and the organization. If we do that, we tend to have support throughout the organization for taking on additional levels of responsibility. No matter where you are in that process, ensure that you can clearly communicate what the goals are, what the team has achieved and—without a lot of hype or hyperbole—what you did that contributed to the teams’ success. 

Q: Say there’s someone currently spending a lot of time cultivating their personal brand. What happens if they stop and use all that time to become a better team player? 

A: The “you” actually can come out because very few of us are laden in that level of narcissism or self-focus. It gives us a chance to present a broader view of ourselves without the glossy finish that can sometimes be a distraction and keep people from actually getting to know who you are, what you’ve accomplished and your aspirations.

The same can be said within an organization. Communicating clearly and transparently gives people a better understanding of who you are. It gives you more time to actually be a good teammate and to be an important contributor to the organization. If you give good people a framework for success, and you give them more time to be successful, most of the time they will achieve something meaningful. 

The post Why Building Up Your Organization, Not Your Personal Brand, Is a Better Strategy appeared first on ���������.

Goal

In December 2017, Aaqib Usman did a full 3-D scan of his body and uploaded it to , a tool by Snap Inc. that allows people to design their own augmented reality lenses for Snapchat. Until then, Snapchat lenses—think face-swapping or a bunny nose on a human face—were designed exclusively by Snap and its paid sponsors. 

The December release of Lens Studio was an exciting moment for Usman, founder of . He wanted to play with the new tool immediately. “I have myself dancing to Drake’s ‘Hotline Bling,’” Usman says of the AR lens he created using his avatar. “I made it on Christmas, and I think I’ve seen about 4,000 views on it so far.” 

Aside from the fun of superimposing a digital, shoulder-shimmying version of himself into an AR lens, Usman was eager to test Lens Studio. Usman believes AR—a seemingly simple but utterly complex technology—has immense potential in marketing. 

“When people are using augmented reality, [it feels] like a natural extension of an existing platform,” Usman says. “It feels like it should have been done a long time ago, but people are not realizing the amount of calculation and math and technology that goes into powering that little experience. Your phone has to essentially calculate the depth of every object in your world and be able to space things accordingly. When people are using it, they don’t realize that they’re using AR; that’s kind of a good thing. It’s seamless.”

Other marketers and advertisers are also excited by the novelty of AR, as spending on the technology jumped from , according to Socintel360. The excitement for AR technology skyrocketed after Pokemon Go, AR’s most popular application yet, . 

, calls AR “a new emotional lexicon of the digital and mobile era.”

“Brands [need] to understand these emotional shortcuts and how the younger generation engages with brands on messaging apps,” Husson says.

Usman wanted to test how Generation Z would react to Snap’s AR lenses by designing a lens for an experiential marketing campaign. He found an ideal subject in , a Chicago streetwear brand run by 17-year-old Kimisha Moxley. Midwest Immersive set out in branding Moxley’s winter collection launch party, creating an AR lens to accompany the experience of the party. 

Action

Moxley’s youth and that of her potential customers made her launch party—titled “Saturday Night Heartbreak”—the perfect field test for Snapchat AR marketing, Usman thought. “She’s locally famous in the Chicago teen scene,” Usman says, adding that Moxley’s parties attract a few hundred attendees in the exact age range of Snapchat’s heaviest users. Of Snapchat’s 187 million daily active users, more than 70% are 34 years and younger; . 

To create the lens, Usman used Snap’s world lens base, which is different from Snapchat’s better-known template masks. Template masks encourage users to take selfies by changing their face: Users aim their phone’s camera at themselves and become a cartoon dog or pixie or open their mouths and vomit a rainbow. The world lens encourages users to point their cameras at the world and discover what pops up in augmented reality. 

“We didn’t want people to just take selfies, we wanted people to actually show other people what they were missing out on,” Usman says. “That brings the event to life.”

Moxley and Midwest Immersive collaborated to design a Snapchat lens in step with the party’s 2000s R&B theme. They placed posters with the lens’ Snapcode (Snapchat’s version of a QR code) around the party for attendees to scan.

As attendees arrived, they scanned the Snapcode and saw pieces of early 2000s nostalgia pop up on their phone’s screen, as if the nostalgia pieces were part of the real world. If they aimed their camera one way, they’d see a spinning compact disc or piece of vinyl floating above a model strutting down the runway. If they aimed their camera another way, they’d see a boombox, flip phone or the event’s logo amid people dancing. If they recorded a video using the lens, they’d hear an instrumental version of Missy Elliott’s 2002 hit “Work It” playing over the video.

“It’s fun for me to see how people who were born in 2001 are representing that entire decade,” Usman says with a laugh. 

​�ċResults

What’s unusual about Lens Studio is its breadth of data; Snap’s new tool gives creators analytics for their lenses. Usman was excited, as Snapchat analytics have historically been opaque, if nonexistent. The Kim Products campaign was an opportunity to measure an ROI baseline for AR marketing in Snapchat.

Moxley’s party lasted for three hours, with each user getting 24 hours of access to the Snapchat lens. Usman says the lens’ Snapcode was scanned 299 times, the lens was shared 262 times and snaps made in the lens were viewed 24,391 times during the party. Attendees posted snaps from the event to their own stories, so thousands of Snapchat users from Chicago and beyond saw Usman’s AR items floating alongside Moxley’s new collection. 

“How does a 300-person event reach 24,000 people?” Usman says. “It’s experiential marketing, magnified.”

Usman doesn’t know yet how these results will compare with similar campaigns. He’s curious to find out what the metrics will be for other Snapch​at-based AR lens campaigns. One of the hardest things to do is to measure ROI in experiential marketing, he says, but the metrics from Lens Studio could change that.

“If it’s used in the right way, the potential to measure your success is immense,” Usman says. “The potential for creativity is also fantastic because of the amount of stuff you can do.”

Whether the ROI of AR marketing will justify its use remains to be seen. Forrester’s Husson says AR is still a budding technology and will likely reach critical mass through social and gaming before reaching its tipping point. As AR grows, he believes more marketers will use it in campaigns. Until then, marketers should get their AR practice shots in, just as Usman did, because Husson says there will be a learning curve.  

“AR is a disruptive technology,” Husson says. “It may take longer to scale than many believe, but I think it will open a lot of new opportunities for marketers.”​

The post Why AR May Be the Future of Experiential Marketing appeared first on ���������.

“You seem strategic,” a manager told Rissa Reddan during a job interview, “but can you really execute an idea?”

Reddan, who worked as a marketing leader at PwC, listened to the question and realized she could answer with a story, something she had never done during a job interview.

“May I show you a picture?” she asked the manager.

“Sure,” he said.

Reddan reached into her bag and pulled out a photograph of herself. In the picture she is radiating an adrenalized smile, standing alongside a horse and a police officer. The trio stand just off a dirt road in Winter Park, Colorado, cars fanned out in a panicked formation behind them, another man in the background looking toward the ground. 

“My husband and I were walking back from a music festival out in Winter Park, and this horse was running down Highway 40,” Reddan says she told the manager. “All the cars are stopped and everybody is looking at one another like, ‘What’s happening? What should we be doing?’ I’m standing there watching, and the horse comes around the corner. I step into the middle of the street and grab onto the bridle.” Reddan pauses her story, takes a breath and laughs. “I think that’s what it’s called; I don’t know anything about horses.”

The horse was bigger up close than Reddan imagined, but as she grabbed it, the horse slowed its gallop before faltering to a stop. “I was terrified,” she says. “I just felt like something needed to happen.”

As police officers and the horse’s owner arrived, Reddan’s husband snapped a photo of Reddan holding onto the horse as proof of the improbable moment. In the photo, her hand rests under the horse’s black mane, her body craned forward in a pose of astonishment. “Anybody could have stepped in to grab that horse,” Reddan says she told the manager. “But I was the one who did it. So I would say, yes, I am somebody who can take an idea and put it into practice or be the one to take some action.”

Weeks later, the manager offered Reddan a job. She worked as CMO of financial adviser Performance Trust Capital Partners for the next two and a half years.

Stories have long defined marketing. The story has been one of marketing’s best tools for building desire, interest and bonds with customers. Apple’s “1984” commercial is a classic example of the power of storytelling in marketing. The minute-long ad told the story of how Macintosh computers would free consumers from tyranny—something Apple Art Director Brent Thomas told The New York Times was ” It was one hell of a marketing position: Apple aired the ad once during the 1984 Super Bowl and sold $3.5 million worth of computers the morning after and $155 million over the next 100 days, per David Lewis’ The Brain Sell: When Science Meets Shopping.

Just as stories have defined marketing, stories now define the careers of marketers, the people attempting to build desire and create bonds with consumers, managers and employers in a world awash with content. 

The surfeit of content—tweets, videos, résumés, portfolios, blog posts, white papers, market research and inspirational speeches—has worn away the audience’s willingness to engage. finds that from 2015 to 2017, social sharing fell by 50%, even as the amount of content increased. 

However, a well-told story can stand outside the flood of content, engaging listeners and carrying a marketer’s message to the public. Think of the marketing stories that have stood time’s test: People still discuss Apple founder Steve Jobs’ keynote addresses, in which he mythologized newly created products—such as the now ubiquitous iPhone and iPad—as he introduced them. , a story told in 30 seconds and 44 words, is readily recited by anyone with hoop dreams: “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times, I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over, and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

Smart marketers have noticed the power of storytelling, but few marketers have become good storytellers, according to , a 2018 book written by Robert McKee, creative writing instructor of the “Story Seminar,” and Thomas Gerace, CEO of Skyword. “Story, like art and music, is a word you think you understand until you try to define it,” McKee and Gerace write.

Marketers and advertisers—even Super Bowl spenders—are often complacent with their limited definition of storytelling.

Most advertising campaigns lean on bragging and promising (McKee’s term for hard selling) coupled with a conflict-free, chronological narrative. Most corporate websites feature a carefully written history that reads as though the company were founded by improbably lucky businesspeople. Most speakers at marketing conferences tell stories of successful campaigns in data points rather than plot points. When the campaign bottoms out, the website gets no hits or the speaker puts the audience to sleep, McKee says, the storyteller blames the story. 

“But what they don’t realize is that they didn’t tell a story, they told a narrative,” he says. “If they had told a true story, they would have seen the effect of it. It’s inevitable. There’s no avoiding it. But it requires a huge transition in thinking.” 

Case in point: Research from Jennifer Aaker, a marketing professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business, found that , but only 5% will recall a single statistic. Put this stat in context (if you haven’t already forgotten it) by thinking back to your favorite stories: Were any of them read from a PowerPoint slide?

“Today’s CMOs must be change agents,” Gerace says. Marketers spend hundreds of billions of dollars on ad distribution, but many are losing faith in advertising’s ability to grab the attention of ever-distracted consumers. Stories, he says, will grab the attention lost by ads. “Today’s successful marketers will be folks that shift from ad-centric to story-centric marketing.”

This huge change in thinking—from bragging to storytelling—is summed up by McKee and Gerace in three words: Conflict changes life. 

​�ċConflict on the side of a dirt road in Colorado may not have changed Reddan’s life, but it certainly gave her a good story to tell. Before she learned how to tell a story, she would have answered a question like “Can you really execute an idea?” with a platitude like “I’m a go-getter.” Now, Reddan keeps the runaway-horse photo tucked into her folio, looking for her next chance to retell the tale. Reddan pulled out the photo during a recent truncated job interview with PayNet—an interviewer told Reddan he had a flight to catch—and immediately told her story. Later in the interview process the same man told Reddan he was telling the company great things about her. “I think you’d be a terrific add to the team,” Reddan says he told her. That company also offered Reddan a job as senior vice president; she started in April.

“When I have reached for a story versus saying ‘Let me tell you about the 57 facts on my résumé,’ the story has resonated more,” Reddan says. 

Reddan’s anecdote is bolstered by research from New York University psychology professor Jerome Bruner, who found that facts wrapped in stories are 22 times more memorable than facts alone. Marketers who clothe facts in story will benefit, McKee says, as the story format allows marketers to contextualize the facts. “If you don’t tell them the story that you want them to hear, they will ‘storify’ it their own way, which may not be persuasive for you,” McKee says. 

Why Stories Matter and How They Work

Scott Whitehair didn’t plan to make a business of storytelling—it was 2013, and Whitehair loved stories so much that he ran events where his friends and neighbors could spin yarns in front of an intimate crowd—but one day, Whitehair’s phone rang.

“We found you through your website,” a nonprofit executive said to Whitehair.

“You did?” Whitehair replied, slightly confused. He had been telling stories publicly and coaching others in Chicago’s tightknit storytelling community, but he wasn’t sure how a business could find him—

“Yeah,” the exec said. “Do you coach sales teams?”

“Of course, yes,” Whitehair said, even though he had never coached a sales team. 

Whitehair still shakes his head in disbelief when retelling the story of his first call from a business. “I worked with people who want to tell stories to their family and socially and on stage,” Whitehair says, “But [after that call], it clicked for me that this stuff is useful anywhere people communicate.” Whitehair researched the business he’d be coaching, scribbled down everything he knew about storytelling and coached his first group of employees on the art of the story.

Five years later, Whitehair is a full-time storytelling coach, a fantasy job for an English major and storytelling hobbyist. He has coached at corporations (Johnson & Johnson, BlueCross BlueShield and PwC), nonprofits (Chicago Cares, Rady Children’s Hospital – San Diego, Boston Children’s Hospital) and universities (Northwestern University, DePaul University, University of Chicago Booth School of Business). Whitehair spends a lot of time working with businesses, but he doesn’t spend any time wondering why a business would want employees to learn storytelling. “It bypasses the skeptical mind,” Whitehair says. “If I tried to tell you about all my values, how I was raised … it would take 10 or 15 minutes. Or, I could tell you a story about finding a wallet full of cash in front of my apartment and how I took all day to track this guy down. He had a very common name, but I found him through Facebook and gave his wallet back. At the end of that story, you know about my values.”

Sharing values through storytelling succeeds, Whitehair says, because people want to work with people, not ideas. This ability to relate to others can be critical to a career, according to research from Lauren Rivera, associate professor of management and organizations at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management. Rivera conducted two years of interviews with hiring professionals at 120 large companies and found that the most common way interviewees were

One professional told Rivera that potential employees must be able to pass the “stranded in the airport test,” which asks, “Would I want to be stuck in an airport in a snowstorm with them? And if I’m on a business trip for two days and I have to have dinner with them, is this the kind of person I enjoy hanging with?” Rivera called another common interview test “looking glass merit;” interviewers defined merit by their personal sense of worth and goodness, using themselves as the standard bearers, judging interviewees thusly. “Because these firms leave a lot of discretion to evaluators—‘I want you to pick somebody that’s driven!’—but they don’t tell you what drive looks like, people end up defining it in their own image,” Rivera told Kellogg Insight.

Interviewees can’t know the merits or personality of a person they’ve never met, but they can use stories to relate to interviewers as human beings instead of potential employees. Esther Choy—the woman who coached Reddan on storytelling, president and chief story facilitator at the and author of —says most people banter with and talk past one another, but very few people communicate well. When they learn how to tell stories, they’re learning how to captivate and communicate, all while sharing memorable truths about themselves. The standard reaction from new storytellers, Choy says, is, “Wow, people finally understand what I’m saying.”

To the human brain, a good story is like riding a rollercoaster, says , chief neuroscientist at Nielsen Holdings PLC. A good story has moments of tension and release built throughout the beginning, middle and end, just as a good rollercoaster clacks upward before dropping down, speeding along and clacking back up again for the next drop—every good story has the tension of the climb and the emotional release of the drop. The brain reacts to a poorly told story or a set of data points as if it were an uninspired firework display: “You get a little pop of attention early, but then engagement falls off,” Marci says. 

Getting the listener’s brain to pay attention is tough, he says, whether working on a campaign or speaking at a conference. Distractions are everywhere: A social media marketer must compete with 330 million Twitter users, just as a conference speaker must compete with the glow of smartphone screens. “We’re pretty taxed when it comes to attention,” he says. And attention is just step one of engagement.

Step two, Marci says, is conflict. This is an ingredient that changes a story from good to great by going beyond tension and release to give the listener themes, stories and relatable characters. When listeners can relate to a character, they feel empathy. Put that empathetic character into a surprising, thematic dilemma—wanting peace while at war, longing for love while experiencing hatred, wishing for freedom while held in captivity—and you’ve gone a long way toward activating the emotional and memory circuitry in the listener’s brain, which Marci says is essential for the third and most difficult step: creating an emotional response that forms new memories. 

This step—the payoff—is why you’ll remember every detail of your favorite childhood story but forget every detail of the PowerPoint presentation you heard yesterday. It’s likely a big reason why Reddan received a glowing recommendation from the manager she spoke with for 15 minutes. “We can’t act on something in the future unless it stays with us,” Marci says. “The key is that big emotional payoff at the end.” 

The emotional payoff chemically bonds us to a brand, a character or an interviewee. As a great story develops, according to research from Paul Zak, director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies at Claremont Graduate University. When the brain synthesizes oxytocin, Zak writes “people are more trustworthy, generous, charitable and compassionate.” Oxytocin is why great stories often leave us feeling exhilarated, ready to change our own lives, but it’s also why narratives without conflict are instantly forgotten. 

“How many times have you left a movie saying, ‘I want to do something differently in my life’?” Whitehair says. “I’ve been there. But if you’d gone into the theater and they just flashed bullet points at you, would you leave and say, ‘I should do the thing the bullet points said’?”

If this all sounds difficult, that’s because it is, McKee says. But that’s good news. All marketers can improve the way they tell stories. The human brain may want to take the easy way by bragging and promising, McKee says, but that doesn’t take listeners on a twisting, looping rollercoaster ride. It leaves them watching the hiss, fizzle and whimper of an underwhelming firework display.

The Pattern of Well-told Stories

When was a child, he spent hours finding the pattern of the artificial intelligence in computer games, working until the games were effortlessly beatable and exceedingly boring. “I’ve always been a tinkerer,” he says, pausing his story to ask a waitress to bring a straw for his iced coffee (“Gotta protect those teeth,” says Gannett, who has tinkered his way out of extrinsic stains). 

As a teenager, Gannett badly wanted to appear on a game show. He methodically applied to dozens of auditions and was quickly called for an audition on “Wheel of Fortune,” a show he had never watched. Gannett binged on episodes, trying to figure out what contestants had in common. “I realized that there’s a certain way they enunciate that works really well on TV and they’re all really silly, but they’re actually not good at solving puzzles,” Gannett says. “I practiced, I drank a lot of espresso, killed the audition and got on ‘Wheel of Fortune.’”

Gannett lost, but he kept searching for patterns and applying to gameshows, appearing on “Movers & Changers,” an MTV take on “Shark Tank” that has since been deleted entirely from MTV’s website. Gannett didn’t win “Movers & Changers” either, but at 19 years old, he formed a hypothesis: There’s a pattern to everything, including stories. 

​Now, Gannett is 27 and runs , a marketing analytics firm with clients such as GE, Honda and Saks Fifth Avenue. He’s also written a book,

The title of Gannett’s book offers a peek into what he believes to be the pattern of the story and all creative endeavors: The familiar and the unknown intersect and become something new. Stories have narrative arcs and character archetypes that have existed for centuries, but life is always offering new twists, situations and technologies that can be combined with the classic arcs and archetypes. The existing patterns of stories allow people who may not consider themselves creative—businesspeople, numbers people, methodical tinkerers—to be storytellers, too, so long as they’re willing to try something new. 

Gannett leans forward; he’s a super-liberal, he says, but he employs a practice from Steve Bannon, former chairman of Breitbart News and former White House chief strategist for President Donald Trump, that perfectly underlines the importance of story patterns. When Bannon ran Breitbart, a far-right news and opinion website, he said he used narrative arcs for each news story. “Paul Ryan is the globalist, and Donald Trump is the savior, Hillary Clinton is going to prison,” Gannett says. “They follow these arcs and they’re telling lots of stories. Content is coming out on these longer narrative arcs people can follow along and come back to.” , according to Five Thirty-Eight. “They bring you back in,” Gannett says. “Otherwise, why should we come back to your website, your channel or your brand if it’s just one random piece of content?” 

Despite the rapidity of modern media, Gannett says people still want content they can follow episodically—think of the popularity of serialized podcasts such as “S-Town,” which was downloaded 10 million times in four days. Gannett wants to give people something both familiar and unfamiliar as they follow him online. If TrackMaven releases something familiar like a white paper, a few people may read it, but if Gannett does something unfamiliar, like a silly video on LinkedIn that tells the white paper as a story, he believes the information will resonate with the audience. “It brings people into my story and my company’s story,” Gannett says. “There are consistent characters in my story, there are tropes, there are inside jokes. People get latched into that.”

A story has eight stages, according to McKee and Gerace’s Storynomics:

1. ​Find the target audience. Who should the story emotionally affect? GE targeted potential employees with its “What’s the Matter With Owen” campaign, which followed a young software developer who explains to confused friends and family that he has been hired by GE to write code that matters to the real world. The campaign increased job applications by 800%, per the company.
2. The protagonist needs a core value, a prime principle. 
3. An inciting incident occurs. An unforeseen event must upset the protagonist’s balance. What happens when their core value is tested? Think Tom Hanks being marooned on an island in “Cast Away,” or turning from a child to an adult in “Big,” or needing to find Private Ryan in “Saving Private Ryan.”
4. The protagonist longs for an object of desire to restore balance. What does the character want? Kurt Vonnegut once wrote that you must “Make your characters want something right away even if it’s only a glass of water.”
5. The protagonist makes a tactical choice she hopes will push her toward the object of desire. This may be clumsy, like Tommy killing Billy Batts in “Goodfellas,” or it may be inspiring, like Rocky beating up a side of beef in “Rocky.” 
6. The tactical choice fails. A gap opens between what the protagonist thought would happen and reality. (Damn, you mean you shouldn’t rage-kill a made mobster?)
7. The protagonist makes a crisis choice. Does she use insight gleaned from the first choice to make a more informed, more difficult tactical choice? “Goodfellas” protagonist Henry Hill knows his time in the mob is over. Does he risk death or go into a witness protection program?
8. Closure, the payoff. The character’s insightful choice brings the story to an end. Cinderella marries the prince. The audience leaves hepped up on oxytocin. 

Marketers who are unaccustomed to telling stories may look at these stages—a character who fails?—and get nervous. McKee and Gerace say marketers have “negaphobia,” a fear of showing their conflicts and failures, but McKee says that marketers need to get over negaphobia and start thinking in conflict. Remember: their definition of story is “conflict changes life;” no conflict, no story. “Marketers must be willing to recognize the negative side of life and dramatize it,” McKee says. “Things go wrong. There are negatives all along the way; they’re essential in story. If [marketers] can’t [realize] that, they’ll never tell stories. It starts with a recognition of that positive-negative dynamic, the conflict of life that’s underneath the surface.” 

In marketing, failure and conflict should look different than Hollywood’s dramatic deaths and life-shattering events. Nationwide CMO Matt Jauchius produced a story-based Super Bowl ad in 2015 that featured . The ad was designed to save lives by warning of the danger of child accidents, Jauchius told AdAge, but it left consumers feeling sad and cold—a multimillion-dollar insurance payout can’t make up for the loss of a child.

Instead of using severe conflict, marketers can use conflict and failure as obstacles in the way of success. One of Choy’s clients won business after a moment of vulnerability. They asked a potential client, “Do you struggle with this?” After a nod from the listener, Choy’s client followed with, “Well, we do too.” Reddan melded conflict into a video testimonial campaign by asking clients “What was your hesitation in working with us?” followed by “What got you over that hurdle?” The result was an unvarnished look at the biggest hurdle any company faces: winning over a client. “You weren’t getting a polished talking head,” Reddan says. “You were getting a real client account of what they value.”

Gannett understands why conflict makes marketers nervous. “It’s really risky,” he says. “Some stories don’t work even if you plan really well.” However, Gannett says marketers who continue to use outdated content strategies will stunt their professional growth and hurt their companies. Marketers who send a higher volume of the same content through e-mail and social media will get the same response rate and burn out their followers in the process, all without developing a knack for storytelling. Marketers who long for a job at a prestigious company or to be the CMO of the next big startup while only speaking in facts, boasts and promises will fail the “stranded in the airport test” and get used to hearing the phrase “just not the right fit.”

“It’s easy to be right down the middle and not take risks,” Gannett says. “There are a lot of people who have loss aversion and a lot of corporate environments that don’t reward failure.” By focusing on stories, marketers are accepting failure of the old way, but they’re giving themselves the freedom to do something different. 

Change is scary; using a big-budget ad campaign or important interview to tell a story can make a marketer feel vulnerable, but Whitehair says this vulnerability can be a strength. “Who is the stronger leader: the person who says, ‘I’ve never done anything wrong. I’m amazing at what I do. I have all the answers,’ or the person who says, ‘I’m human, and here’s where I made a mistake. Here’s where I need to get better’? I think there’s great strength in the latter.

“Any story that shows a mistake you’ve made also shows that you’re still standing there. You have overcome it,” Whitehair says. “The act of telling that story is a strength. It’s you saying, ‘I’ve learned from it, and I’ve moved past it.’”

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It’s 6 a.m. and mom or dad are trucking their child—foul hockey gear in tow—to the ice rink. The only redeeming part of their morning may be a doughnut and the cup of coffee that keeps their hands warm as they watch from the stands.

Dunkin’ Donuts saw this connection between cold mornings and a hot cuppa and struck at the chance to be the unofficial sponsor of early morning practices, as well as the corporate marketing partner of the National Hockey League, the National Women’s Hockey League and U.S. Hockey. Dunkin’ has also become a mainstay at NHL jewel events, which include the Winter Classic, All-Star Weekend and the Stadium Series.

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The typical Dunkin’ experience for most customers consists of popping by a walk-up window or sliding into a drive-thru for coffee, doughnuts or a breakfast sandwich. The brief stop is typically what fuels their morning.

Dunkin’ Brands wanted to capture consumers’ and hockey fans’ attention for longer than the morning rush. The company was interested in gaining in-person customer feedback and offering samples of products that customers might not otherwise try. It was a chance to extend the interaction longer than the time it takes to order, pay and leave. Through its partnership with national hockey organizations, Dunkin’ saw an opportunity to spend time with one of its key demographics: People looking to warm up.

“That’s the best way we can get customer feedback, and that’s the way we connect with our fans on site,” says Kemma Kefalas, assistant marketing manager for Dunkin’ Brands. “We want to give them a new type of Dunkin’ experience—something really fun and something that’s near and dear to their hearts: hockey. This is just a way to engage them, have some fun, to put Dunkin’ front of mind and remember how much fun they had that day at our activation.”

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With the help of Fenway Sports Management and Sapient, Dunkin’ Brands set up a branded experience tent at the NHL’s 2018 Stadium Series in March, held at the Navy–Marine Corps Memorial Stadium in Annapolis, Maryland, where the Washington Capitals played the Toronto Maple Leafs. Fans could engage with the campaign for a few hours prior to the game’s start.

“[Dunkin’] really felt like the demographic around the hockey world and that hard-working, diehard hockey fan was what they were going after,” says Kate Hogan, director of consulting and events at Fenway Sports. “When we were talking about what to do at the jewel events for the NHL, we were focused on finding something that would appeal to those fans.”

The “Brewed for This” Zone was stocked with Dunkin’-branded games, all centered around a shared love for hockey and a desire to stay warm in chilly temperatures. A DJ played music for guests to dance along to, accompanied by a grooving Dunkin’ Cuppy, the brand’s mascot. Guests could take advantage of the on-site photo booth, raising a giant Dunkin’ cup over their head, mimicking the way NHL players hoist the Stanley Cup overhead after winning the playoffs. The photo booth was set up, so pictures could be sent directly to users’ phones, allowing them to post the photo to social media, tag Dunkin’ Donuts and engage with the company online.

Dunkin’ offered samples of coffee, hot chocolate, iced coffee and Munchkins doughnut holes. There were air hockey games and bubble hockey games for fans to pass the time before the real game began.

Dunkin’ also tapped its partnership with the U.S. Women’s Hockey Team. Five members of the team, which won gold at the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, visited the tent to take photos with guests, including team captain Meghan Duggan. 

“They had their gold medals on them, which was a nice way for fans to experience something that they might never be able to get near, touch or see in their lives,” Kefalas says.

While fans waited in line to meet the Olympians, the Dunkin’ team found a family at the highest point of the stadium and gave the lucky fans, who drove three hours from Pennsylvania, a seat upgrade.

Results

Dunkin’ Brands measured its success by the number of samples distributed. At this Stadium Series event, the company gave away 4,000 Munchkins samples, 1,500 4-ounce cups of hot chocolate, 1,300 4-ounce cups of coffee and 300 3.5-ounce cups of cold brew. 

“It was really fantastic to see so many fans engaged with the team,” Hogan says. “And [fans] were staying in the booth. They didn’t just take their picture and leave. They were playing, they were sampling, they were dancing with Cuppy. It was a great draw, but we found fans were sticking around a while as well.”

At all NHL jewel events throughout the 2016-17 season, the company distributed 14,000 Munchkins, 12,600 coffee samples and 1,900 hot chocolate samples.

The young daughter of the Pennsylvania family was a big fan of Duggan and got to both meet the hockey star and wear her gold medal, Hogan says. The girl’s mother shared a surprise anecdote with Hogan as well: She rewards her daughter weekly for doing her chores and homework with a trip to Dunkin’ to get her favorite strawberry frosted doughnut.

“She kind of just went crazy when she had a chance to meet Meghan [Duggan],” Hogan says. “Sports fans are Dunkin’ fans many times, so we want to use our sports sponsorships to help share that access for these fans, to give them the upgraded opportunity on behalf of Dunkin’. ” 

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Unplugging is the new craze, but few people are actually leaving technology behind. Nor deep down does anybody really want to. Technology delivers what people want most: convenience.

The century-long arc of the modern consumer marketplace has been an uninterrupted trajectory toward ever greater convenience. Retail is easier than ever to transact. Products are easier to use. Experiences are easier to enjoy. Almost everything difficult has fallen by the wayside, and whatever remains will be supplanted soon enough as well.

There is almost no benefit so worthwhile that consumers are willing to put up with greater inconvenience to get it. Even if a value proposition works that way initially, the first thing that competitors do is swoop in to offer the same benefit at greater convenience. Convenience is the ultimate trump card.

This is not to suggest that price or value are unimportant. It is only to note that consumers are willing to pay a premium for convenience but not the converse; consumers will not accept inconvenience simply to pay a little less. Inconvenience is a price to be paid, one not easily recouped by a few pennies saved.

Technology is the driver of convenience. Most modern technology is digital, but since the turn of the 19th century, consumer technologies—in the broadest definition—have been mostly mechanical, electronic or chemical. Household appliances, for example, are mechanical. Processed foods are essentially chemical. Both are among the many technological advances that have been central to the progression of convenience.

Greater convenience diminishes tedium, saves time, eases fatigue, reduces physical labor, simplifies complexity, creates accessibility, frees up headspace, improves experience, offers something innovative and novel and opens up new possibilities for creativity and enjoyment. In short, greater convenience removes waste, inefficiencies and nuisances. Convenience frees up time and attention for other things that are almost always more fulfilling.

Only the sepia haze of nostalgia makes the less convenient past look leisurely. Not that life was backbreaking way back when, but it was more demanding of scarce time and attention. Technology has delivered efficiencies and productivity improvements that have made life more convenient. 

The  is ironic in a way few critics appreciate. The time available to critique digital technology is actually time made available by technology—maybe not always digital technology, but this outcry is part of a broader shift in sentiment about the net benefits of technology and its proper place in society and in people’s lives.

New technologies are typically met with an initial burst of enthusiasm soon followed by an eruption of discontent and apprehension that paint new technologies as modern-day Frankensteins. Yet the monster never runs amok. The reason is that the early failures and problems animating critics are remedied as people learn how to live with new technologies. It’s this necessary—and normal—process of adjustment and accommodation through trial and error that is somehow always overlooked by critics. People are willing to totter through this process because they don’t want to give up the greater convenience they now enjoy.

(As an aside in this vein, a good rule of thumb about forecasting is to never extrapolate failures as the future. Problems never persist because what’s wrong always gets fixed. The better way to anticipate the future is to focus on the fixes. The future will follow fixes, not failures.)

Much of the criticism about digital technology nowadays is meant to sound an alarm about things that need fixing, not to advocate forsaking new technologies entirely. But there are plenty of hypothetical digital doomsday scenarios in the headlines that are dominating the agenda for business and politics. The singular moment when AI enslaves humanity is one. A generation debilitated by its addiction to smartphones and social media is another. The squandering of talent and resources on trivial apps, the loss of community and empathy and the attrition of literacy and lucidity that diminishes the capacity for contemplative, rational thinking are three more.

When the telephone was introduced, critics assailed it for isolating people from face-to-face interaction, for intruding on people’s privacy, for putting women at risk of inappropriate contact by strange men, for mixing social classes, for providing a way for men and women to indulge in indiscretions, for encouraging women to waste time on idle chitchat and gossip, for being a source of constant interruption and for pestering people with intrusive sales calls and advertisements. Similar criticisms were leveled against bicycles, automobiles, TV and many other technologies as they first came on the scene. Substitute the word “digital” for “telephone” (or “bicycles,” “automobiles” or “TV”) and it’s the same “Groundhog Day” debate all over again. In retrospect, we see that all of the parlous hullabaloo about the telephone was overblown and shortsighted, and this is a lesson to remember when it comes to digital.

What kept the telephone moving forward despite criticisms and concerns was the convenience it brought to everyday life. It became easier to reach people and to stay informed, to organize functions and sustain relationships, to give and receive help, to find entertainment and  learn about new things. Whatever the problems, people wanted the convenience that the telephone brought to their lives. For consumers, the solution was not to leave the telephone behind. It was to fix the problems. The same principle applies today when it comes to digital technologies. There’s too much talk of unplugging among the chattering class when what consumers really want are fixes so that they can enjoy greater convenience problem-free. People are unplugging to live better with digital tools, not to live without them.

Today’s digital lifestyles are relatively new, only possible since the mid-2000s.Think of TV in the 1960s—that’s the equivalent of where things stand today with digital technologies. People have yet to learn how to strike a balance and live with digital technologies, so it’s no surprise that there remain many things to fix. But convenience rules, hence, things will get fixed. The problems at hand have to stay on the agenda because that’s the only way they’ll get addressed, but these problems do not involve the stark choices that have come to define much of the discussion about digital technologies.

Too little is said of the benefits that digital technologies have delivered to people. The focus is only on problems and challenges, and such an unbalanced view inevitably leads to the miscalculation that consumers are better off without technology.

Convenience is the criterion for assessing new technologies. Whatever other benefits they deliver, greater convenience must be part of the basic value proposition. It is this boost in convenience that will ensure problems are fixed and that technologies are embedded in ways that lead to better lifestyles.

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Marketers work for companies, but they also work for themselves. As we upgrade our skills, we create more value, we move up and our responsibilities grow. Hopefully, our titles and salaries grow, too.

A year and a half ago, Orbit Media created a marketing salary guide for seven different marketing positions. With the 2016 data as the benchmark, we repeated the process and were surprised at the changes: It’s a good time to be in marketing. The chart below shows what marketers made at the end of 2017.

The Marketing Salary Guide

These marketing job salaries aren’t starting salaries. They are median total compensation numbers based on several data sources that comprise reports from 67,736 individuals with these marketing job titles.

Compensations Rise 19%

Compensation increased for each of the positions over the last 18 months. They all exceeded the 3% baseline set by the . That’s good, but the average across all of the positions went up 19%. That’s amazing. This increase suggests strong competition for top marketing talent. Companies are placing high value on team members who can drive demand.

Mid-level positions saw the strongest growth, and compensation for one position overtook another: Content strategists now make more than marketing managers. Content strategy is a key skill that cuts across digital marketing disciplines. It’s no surprise that these people are in demand.

For job descriptions and salaries for the titles listed above, check out .

The Marketer’s Career Path

A career in any field is rarely a straight line, but there is a progression in job titles from junior to senior. The job titles in the diagram at right are listed in order of seniority. 

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Marketing Is a Growing Field

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, . That’s right in line with the national average of all fields, but judging from the jump in pay, demand for marketing experts exceeds the supply.

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