How Twin Sheep Influences me as a Digital Marketer
As explained in my ABOUT TWIN SHEEP page, Twin Sheep is a celebration of the parts of our identity that make us individuals and the parts of our identity that make us a part of society. Beyond that, it is the idea that certain things that are seemingly on opposite ends of the spectrum can be used together to create something greater. It is my belief in this idea that led me to a career in Digital Marketing.
How I ended up in Digital Marketing
Growing up, my interests in school have always seemed to be at ends with each other. On one hand, I always enjoyed the qualitative subject like history and art. On the other, I also really enjoyed math and sciences. Undecided about what to pursue moving forward into higher education, I ended up settling on studying Commerce in University. My thought was that it gave me the best chance of satisfying my left and right brain. This was great for the first few years, as I got a chance to try a bit of everything, but I eventually fell back into the same dilemma when I had to decide what to focus on for my major. Do I focus my career on areas like Marketing and Human Resources or Finance and Accounting? I ended up doing none of the above and majored in the bland area of General Management.
Upon graduation, I ended up working at Hitachi Solutions on the Sales team, initially as a Sales Coordinator. Working in a firm with a heavy focus on Analytics, I immediately fell in love with the thought of working with data. For someone like me who loves to analyze things from multiple angles before making any decisions, data-driven decision making made all the sense in the world. Crunching numbers to finding interesting insights gave me a type of satisfaction that I hadn’t had since figuring out a complicated problem in math class. By the end of my first year at Hitachi Solutions, I had taken multiple courses on Analytics and had been moved into the role of Sales Analyst. Creating reports from sales data became a daily occurrence and not only did I enjoy doing it, I excelled at it.
As my time at Hitachi Solutions went on, I started getting more responsibilities in marketing and also had the opportunity to more get more hands on with the front end sales work. Creating marketing materials and sales strategies gave me a good opportunity to exercise my creativity. This type of work provided me with something totally different than my core work as a Sales Analyst but I loved it all the same. I realized pretty quickly after that I wanted to focus my career on an area that would allow me to utilize both my analytical skills and my creativity. Which is how I ended up where I am today: studying Digital Marketing at Red Academy.
What Digital Marketing is to me
As the field of Marketing has matured over the years, it has become increasingly data-driven and backed by cold hard facts. Nowhere is that more apparent than in Digital Marketing, where the smallest of online user interactions are tracked. Suddenly, it wasn’t just about who has the most creative idea, but it is about who has done the most research AND has the most creative idea. The notion of the Mad Men style pitches where ideas can just be pulled out of nowhere seems a bit ridiculous in today’s world. Data is king and unless you can take advantage of that, you can’t compete.
It is important to note, however, that creativity in Marketing isn’t dead. I would argue that today it is as important as ever. Because when every company is using every piece of data they can get their hands on as a competitive advantage, creativity can be the easiest way to differentiate yourself. For example, you and your competitor could be looking at the exact same industry trends and patterns. At which point, the difference in who wins the battle could come down to who can best convey the right message to the customer and stand out the most. Creativity still has a very important role to play in modern marketing, it just requires leg work beforehand to make it useful.
So what does this all have to do with Twin Sheep? I believe that success in Digital Marketing lies in finding the balance between the analytical and creative side of the brain. The white sheep within people, which is the side that connects them to the rest of society, will be used to ask the right questions, crunch the data and figure out what the customers actually need. Meanwhile the black sheep, which is the side that makes them unique, will allow them to properly differentiate their ideas from the crowd to create something truly impactful. I look at it this way, the analytical side of the brain helps to set the bounds of the game but the creative side is what is going to make the actual impact. In Digital Marketing, one can’t really exist without the other.
