Customer Service and Strategy: It's a match made in a blender.

Now, this is just my opinion, so feel free to plot my downfall. To be successful in marketing (I think that's what Jess was getting at), we need two things: excellent customer service and interpersonal skills, and a strategic mind. For the purposes of this post, I'm defining success in terms of career progression, obtaining bigger and better clients, and being known as "the person we need on board" when it comes to marketing. See the end of the post for a caveat.

Customer Service and Interpersonal Skills
I hate Business Development Managers, or as I like to call them, glorified renamed sales reps. I hate them because that career path attracts a certain kind of personality, and its a personality type that has always rubbed me the wrong way. For their profession, however, it's what's required.

For our profession as marketers, we can't ignore our own personal branding and the way we provide service to our clients, boss, teammates, and underlings. A kind word, a quick communication, a timely update - these things will be remembered. If you want to be successful, then your interpersonal skills have to be more than up to scratch. Your name should be top of mind as "the go to guy" when a question needs answering, or when a decent pitch is required, or even someone who can keep big clients entertained at a swanky dinner. If you sit in a cubicle, huddled away, no matter how good your work is, you're only going to rise so far. It's not a matter of self-promotion; it's a matter of self-confidence and belief.

Strategic Mind
Ultimately, marketing is about strategy. It's not about creative words, images, sounds, or videos, although understanding how these can effectively work with strategy is imperative. It's not about having the best office, the best clients (though that's nice), or who can out-pitch who in an RFP.

All of that is like the augmented product of marketing; the core product will always be strategy. If you don't understand it, or if your strengths lie elsewhere, then you probably won't be a successful marketer. You may be an uberly successful account director, consultant, media planner...but you need strategy to be a marketer.

The way that the world is going these days, you'd be hard pressed to find a 'pure' marketing role. Integration is rife within both agencyland and clientland. Your job will more than likely cover coming up with a few creative words, images, sounds, or videos. It may also be heavily involved in media planning or account management; that's not a bad thing. But when push comes to shove, understanding WHY you're doing something in a campaign will be more important than any other aspect on the road to success. Your boss will appreciate your insights, you'll be regarded as "knowing your stuff" within any given discussion, and the client will want to keep you around because you look after their interests.

Caveat
There are other measures of success, like personal growth and challenge, income, job title, the kind of car you drive, the kind of family you raise, where you live, how you treat people around you...but it would be way too much to cover here.

So I had to limit myself to a capitalist consumerist view on what I think it takes to be successful as a marketer. ;)

Round Three

Let's go with a less physical topic for today:

What is the quality that you attribute most to being successful (as is relevant to marketing)? Again, make of this whatever you will, from focusing on yourself, someone else a company etc.

On a separate note, you guys are amazing, and this is turning out beautifully thanks to you!

And, if you're still writing on the previous topic, that's fine, we'll just throw it in there.