I started this profession working in one of Italy’s most successful furnishing retailers.
I was a marketing assistant at Mondo Convenienza, earning 500 euro a month, and I was commuting for over 4 hours a day by public transportation, and I was happy as a clam at high tide. It was tough, but thanks to those sacrifices I was able to learn a lot and build a career.
My main responsibilities were to organize every year 3 or 4 big marketing launches leveraging billboards, magazines, newspapers, and paper catalogues, our goal was to to promote the opening of new stores.
The online media plan was just an appendix of the whole mix and mobile marketing was accounting zero-coma-something on the overall strategy.
It was only 15 years ago, but if I compare it to nowadays it seems prehistory.
The marketing profession has changed profoundly, it’s much faster and complex. New technologies, platforms, channels and formats have reinvented the way we serve and consume advertising. And there is this all-new wave of automation tools that are promising marketers to do more with less.
In this profession there is always something new to explore and learn, that’s why it can be scary for people who don’t like changes, don’t have a growth mindset and stick with the same old way of doing things simple because it feels safer.