All three dovetailed quite nicely with my original ambition to go into Law, so when I had the opportunity to pick up some work experience in a small family law firm before university I jumped at the chance.
Unfortunately I realized quite quickly that the dream and the reality were miles apart. Family law was brutal; very eye opening. It’s a difficult sector to really kind of get to grips with. You see a lot of family trauma, personal issues and broken families; it’s tough for a young kid to see that on a day to day basis.
That sowed a little seed of doubt; my intention was still to go into law but most likely in another capacity, criminal ideally. In hindsight I’m not sure that would have been any better though!
On a trip to visit my university of choice I actually stumbled into a retail marketing class and ended up staying for the entire lecture.
"The discussion was around the psychology of marketing, how people behave in retail outlets and why they buy certain products, what made for compelling advertising. I loved it."
So, in a pretty impulsive moment I decided to switch lanes and study marketing; it had a psychological element, a political element and a legal element, so seemed to tick all those boxes. That’s how I ended up studying marketing and it’s been intrinsic to what I’ve been doing the last 10 years!
Would you consider yourself a digital marketing professional or more of a traditional marketing professional?
I graduated 10 years ago when digital marketing was still a relatively nascent industry. I remember getting Facebook in our final year and spending a ton of time talking to classmates and planning nights out with it. Even in classes we didn’t get much around digital platforms and advertising, but we were digital natives; completing class work and assignments on our laptops and consuming and sharing digital content with our friends.
My final essay, my dissertation, was on Apple and it’s iPod; specifically the product life cycle and how it would be constantly evolving with iterative changes. Apple as a brand have always fascinated me; from their design ethos and Steve Jobs to their iconic marketing and advertising campaigns. I grew up around computers and broadcast; my dad worked for a TV broadcaster for 20 years so we always had odd computer pieces and camera equipment kicking around the house and his passion for technology rubbed off on me – I’m comfortable being fully immersed in digital and my passion lies there rather than traditional marketing methods, especially in today’s day and age.
So your first just out of college was working for the law firm. And then you were a marketing assistant for Upper Deck?
Yeah, it’s interesting because if you say Upper Deck in the UK no one has really heard of them, where in the states everyone knows them for their baseball, hockey and NFL cards. I’ve grown up a huge US sports fan; I played ice hockey at a very competitive level and grew up with the Mighty Ducks franchise and watching the San Jose Sharks (my dad lived there for 3 years), so it was a dream role for me straight out of university.
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