Drinking the Kool-Aid

When I first committed myself to the Brandcenter application last July, it became the point of no return - I signed my life over to the communications industry.

But a passion for the ad biz doesn't develop accidentally - it's more of a cult than a religion. Personally, I started with zero knowledge of the business and a whole lot of curiosity. But when you combine curiosity with books, blogs, and trade magazines, drinking the Kool-Aid is just another step towards enlightenment.

But you can only read the opinions of so many assholes before you start to form your own (opinions that is...not assholes).

Out of nowhere, all the resources you've been studying become overwhelmingly relevant. It's exciting to see real-life examples of the stuff you've learned. Finding an article about a BOP marketing strategy is just like a young student spotting a vocab word in context for the first time.

But when your friends are engineers, financial analysts, and...well...everything else, it's tough to find a someone who actually cares about your insights. Because while an engineer may chime-in when a bridge collapses on the news, an ad nerd has two-cents on everything: commercials, brands, virals - pop-fucking-culture.

What other industry monitors change through flash sites and youtube videos?

Some how, I think positioning myself will be the hardest part of this industry. And as I continue to develop my own brand for the future, I find comfort in the fact that there are others who have tasted the Kool-Aid. I may not have it all figured out quite yet, but I plan on becoming a damn good brand manager in the mean time.

As Mark Fenske suggests:

Genuine progress in moving the ball of human knowledge & understanding forward does not come from the work you do when you pretend to be someone you're not.It comes from you being you.

Now I just gotta figure out who I am.