One of my favorite websites to follow on Twitter and Facebook is Advertising Age. When I read an article from their site, I sometimes wonder how different my life would be if I had focused on marketing and advertising in college versus going to Bradley University for a mechanical engineering degree. At this point in my life, I cannot imagine living without one or the other. I enjoy both disciplines because I’m analytical when it comes to engineering and technology but on the other hand, I’m also very passionate and emotional when it comes to marketing and brand management.

An article on Advertising Age, posted on March 17, Our Biggest Brands Can No Longer Be Managed By Nerds, caught my attention because it speaks directly to both sides of my personality – analytical and emotional. Tom Hinkes writes, “Product managers with a fear of ambiguity have replaced the creative, forward-thinking brand builders. Our biggest consumer brands are now managed by nerds.”. I feel his comments are very true because in my past eight years in product management, the balance between these two skill sets have always led to internal marketing conflict – who’s right, who’s wrong, who has more data to back up that idea before we proceed. Tom notes again, “But brand marketing is not a science. It requires analysis, discipline and detail. Even more, it requires intuition, flair and vision. Great marketers are visionaries, not bean counters.” Love it.

Marketing is not like Differential Equations, sorry Dr. Grisham, but instead is a fine balance of instinctively knowing when you have enough data to back up your passionate emotion.

Image courtesy of Automania’s flickr photostream

Tags: advertising, branding, marketing

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 24th, 2010 at 1:05 PM and is filed under AboutMe. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.