Our Team at Brainstorm Studio wants our prospects and clients to get to know us better. What we didn’t consider was that we had some things to learn about each other first. During some friendly office chatter, we tossed out the question, “What did you want to be when you grew up?” Suddenly, we realized it’s a question that everyone can answer— in very different ways.
So, we’ve decided to launch a series on our blog, called: How I Got Here, to discuss the very beginnings of the path that each of us took to join the marketing field. Stu Kamen, our EVP, Business Development, starts us off. Check back weekly to learn more about Brainstorm team members.
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When I was in 9th or 10th grade, in my math class, they gave us something I remember as the Job-O test, a kind of career aptitude assessment. Basically, it was a bunch of questions where you colored in a circle to select a multiple-choice answer about certain scenarios. On a scale of 1 to 5… Do you like working with your hands? Do you like being around other people? Do you like to write? Would you rather get up early and end work early or late/late? Stuff like that. Dozens of questions, many not seemingly related to work at all.
Then they took the test sheet and it went away for a few weeks and we all forgot about it. Until they mailed back the results (yes— long before internet and cell phones and microwaves and even copy machines). Turns out, my least likely occupations were meat packer and beautician. And my most likely occupation was marketing and advertising. Which is what I do today.
Ironically, my favorite “new” show on TV back then was a comedy called Bosom Buddies, starring a then-little-known actor named Tom Hanks. The characters had to dress up in drag in order to live cheaply in their women-only hotel (which has nothing to do with my story, thankfully). But by day they ran their own ad agency. I used to love watching them come up with creative concepts and pitch them to clients. So, between that and the Job-O test confirming that I was cut out for this industry, I filed an advertising/marketing career away in the back of my head.
Obviously, my path had a lot of twists and turns. In college, I majored in sociology but took many marketing classes and had my own column in the campus newspaper. After graduation, I began in the publishing business, spent more than a decade as a freelance writer, joined an agency, gained expertise in video and animation production, infographics and inbound marketing, transitioned to account management and biz dev, and so on. But somewhere back early in high school, my true future was revealed. And, as it turns out, I’ve had a successful ad agency career – with no need to dabble in either meat packing or cross-dressing. But, hey, we’ll see what tomorrow brings….
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How did you get to where you are now?