The marketer's truth: where they're struggling right now

So let's start with a quick story because I think it grounds the report into why we decided to create it in the first instance.

Um, and really this starts with my own story.

Um, I'd started marketing back in 2014, so...

Or I entered the workforce in 2014.

My dirty little secret that I have, uh, is that I entered the workforce and I was an SAP consultant, which is meant that I was spending my time in Slough building systems and processes for FTSE companies, uh, 14 hours a day in the Holiday Inn, uh, trying to bring all their processes together.

At the same time as this though, as I was an SAP consultant, I was still finding myself writing about social media.

Um, social media was my gateway drug for, for marketing in general.

And so after about six months of being an SAP consultant, I decided to follow a bit of a passion, something that I actually wanted to do, and I got my first job in marketing, and it was for a company called Business of Software, where we ran conferences, uh, across the world.

At BoS, I had an incredible time.

I was a solo marketer in a three-person company, and like I got every bit of joy from marketing.

I, um, I got to understand, like, the creativity, uh, the experimentation of new stuff, uh, and I got to play around with social media.

But I also felt every moment of brutality that can come with the marketing industry and a marketing role.

I sat some days at my desk more anxious than I can begin to explain, uh, about what I was doing.

Unclear, uncertain, without goals, et cetera, et cetera.

It was hard.

As much as it was brilliant, it was tricky.

And that's sort of like the second story of why The Marketing Meetup started.

Um, I often speak about my quiet demeanor and, and sort of not being comfortable in networking spaces, but there was- Just the reality of the hardness of, uh, of the marketing role and the marketing industry.

And so we spent, uh, a little bit of time running an event in a canteen in Cambridge, and it was fab.

The last ten years of the Marketing Meetup have been wonderful.

I couldn't have had been blessed to be surrounded by more wonderful people than the people in this community right now.

The people in this chat are some of the best people I've ever met.

But one of the things that I've observed over the past ten years is that [laughs] I'm not saying goodbye, Catherine, I promise.

Uh, one of the things I've observed with our marketing reports over the, uh, the past ten years is that we spend a lot of time with our reports speaking about marketing as a practice, but we don't spend a lot of time, uh, speaking about marketers, the fabulous people that make up this industry, the people who work so hard to make great stuff happen, and it's a little bit boggling to me.

I don't understand why we don't spend more time caring about each other and trying to elevate one another.