What’s the best part of your day?
- Early morning when no one else is around and thinking can take place in relative quiet
- When I have a chance to talk to my colleagues and staff members and we come up with good ideas that are doable, manageable, reasonable and will have a rewarding outcome.
- Early AM hours - anything seems possible at that point!
- The part immediately after I get home from work, change into casual clothes, and sit down with my family
- Early in the day before I’m being pulled in 17 different directions. At this time of day I can usually concentrate and think clearly.
- Going home; Getting to work early so that you can respond and send email without getting anything back; It’s also that moment when you have someone who works for you “get it” and flourish. You feel as if you’ve finally made a difference and helped someone become something that they didn’t think possible.
- In the morning
- Going home
- Realized that something we’ve done was a success
- Finding new ways to drive leads
- The morning – I can be most productive.
- The morning when I have a clean slate.
- When I actually get something done.
- Putting my kids to sleep.
Describe the worst marketing meeting you ever sat through.
- A planning meeting where two entities were seeing who could bring the other one “down a notch” or “put in their place” while everyone else was looking for answers. Some were also unprepared/had incomplete with their information.
- When other managers suggest that we get celebrities to appear at an event. We have at least two of these meetings per year where we go around the table and in Cleveland the same celebrities are suggested EVERY time. It’s, Paul Newman (he’s from Shaker so of course he cares about Cleveland), Drew Carey (who isn’t even popular anymore), Halle Berry, (she also is from Cleveland) and of course George Clooney (just because he’s cute I guess). My second nightmare meeting is when non-marketing/creative people try to name events, publications and/or projects.
- A meeting with a strategic objective that deteriorates into a heated argument about tactics. A tremendous waste of everyone’s time with no positive results.
- No single meeting stands out as a “worst” meeting. The issue about marketing meetings that I like the least is having to deal with salespeople trying to tell marketing people HOW to achieve goals rather than presenting the goals that need to be reached and trusting the marketing people to devise the best tactics to support these goals.
- Emotion and subject creative opinion with no understanding of the strategic thinking and poor listening
- One person who just kept repeating himself to get the point across
- My client is requesting something that they have no idea what the strategy is or what they are to accomplish
- Business manager who just wanted updates, no agenda, no real purpose
- The one where it was all about socializing and was never ending.
- The annual marketing meeting with people who think they know about marketing, but don’t.
- The one where people just didn’t get it despite repetition and clear communication. People had their own agendas.
- Bad agency presentation that focused on all the wrong aspects.
If you were to compare yourself to an animal at work what would it be?
- A bat – sometimes flying blindly but great ears/sonar to find where I’m going and get there
- Herding Dog
- Beaver
- On the days when I’m rushing and doing 1,000 things, it would be a hummingbird (flitting from one place to another). On the days of drudgery, it would be a work horse. On the days when I feel good about my accomplishments --- I struggled hard to think of a playful, fun animal for this --- perhaps an otter because they always look like they’re having fun.
- I would compare myself to a dog: Ready for fun, Loyal, Good in a group but content to work alone, There for others – sensitive to their needs, Able to smell trouble
- Squirrel
- Bunny
- Beaver
- Busy chimp
- Mother Lion
- Bulldog
- Hummingbird – flapping my wings a million miles an hour
- Cheetah
If you were to give yourself a title that describes what you really do, what would your title be?
- Queen of the ever-changing, do what we don’t want to do, it’s late can you finish it up right now and sometimes fun stuff
- Communications Advisor and Special Events Coordinator
- Jack of all trades, master of none
- Solutions Specialist
- Jill of all trades. During my years in marketing, I’ve done everything from “face-time” with big shots to setting up staging and cleaning toilets before a mall grand opening.
- Plate Spinner Extraordinaire
- Trade Communications Intermediary and Facilitator
- Babysitter
- Relationship counselor, Ultimate persuader
- Strategic……
- Anything that anybody thinks of that falls under their definition of marketing
- Cattle prodder
- Manager of Everything
- Meeting Queen Extraordinaire and Juggler
If you could have one super power to help you with your job, what would it be?
- Reading minds
- To move faster than a speeding bullet
- I need two, mind and be able to tell the future
- Freeze time
- There are 2 that are equally important to me. The first - I would wave my magic wand and the busy people from whom I must get input and decisions would convene and give me 100% of their attention whenever I need it. The second – unlimited budgets.
- I would like the ability to see the future
- Predict people’s reactions
- Seeing into the future – what’s coming at me
- The stretching man – incredible stretching power
- Cloning
- Genie in a bottle – then I’d get rid of all mundane tasks
- To go in reverse/back in time
- Communication
- Cloning
How many people do you have to answer to?
- Everyone who asks a question
- 40
- On paper one, in reality it’s more like 15 to 20
- Dozens, but only 3 that have a direct and immediate affect on my employment
- 3 in my current marketing position
- From an organizational chart perspective – 1; From my perspective – 12 who report to me; 1 that I report to; 2 that he reports to and most important the 5 at my house.
- 7
- 100 – direct report and everyone else
- 6
- 9 (seems to be more)
- Six
- Scads
- Depends on the day or project, but up to 10 at a time.
- Hundreds
Describe a dream that you’ve had about work.
- Only dream related to work is that I have slept through an entire day and no one called to find out where I was or if something was wrong (or has that really happened?)
- In a previous job, I was responsible for distributing tickets to clients. And I was supposed to keep two tickets for my boss who loved sports. I dreamed that I lost the tickets that I had set aside for my boss. I had hid them in my office for safekeeping and in my dream I couldn’t remember where I put them. The dream was so vivid that when I awoke, I actually drove to my office in the middle of the night to make sure the tickets were where I thought they were. And they were.
- Actually, it’s one I had after I graduated college, arriving in class and not being prepared for a test, I think it is representative for work too
- Honestly, I can’t recall any. I have vague recollections of dreams involving people from work, but never in a work environment.
- I don’t dream about work. I just wake up in the middle of the night and worry when faced with large amounts of loose ends prior to a major event.
- I try not to dream about work. If I do, I usually end up calling them a nightmare. Most of mine have been about forgetting to do something, going over a bad conversation over and over and replaying how I could have done it differently or the typical one that you go in and tell your boss how you REALLY feel and that you quit!
- Don’t remember dreams
- I dream about doing my job, so I always wake up tired and never get a break
- Was asked to come to a meeting to present and had no idea what the subject was
- I dreamt that I won the “the big achievement” award
- I don’t dream about work
- We moved to a tropical paradise
- To live on a lake with a beautiful view, and have a wireless laptop so I can work from my deck
- Dreams are about work and reliving/replaying the day
Rank in order of trust (1-5 highest to lowest)
| Ad executive |
- 3, 3, 5, 1, 3, 3, 3, 5, 3, 1, 4, 3, 3, 3 |
| CEO | - 2, 2, 5, 3, 4, 4, 1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 2, 2, 1 |
| Lawyer | - 4, 4, 5, 4, 1, 2, 4, 3, 4, 4, 1, 4, 4, 4 |
| Mkt Director | - 1, 1, 5, 2, 2, 1, 2, 2, 1, 2, 2, 1, 1, 2 |
| Used car salesman | - 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 4, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5 |
What do you complain about when you go home at night?
- Getting projects passed for completion late in the game without enough information (not being involved in the whole process); other people’s projects being more important than what I’m working on; micro-management; poor time management of others
- Not being able to fit my day into a day. I really want to work from 8:30 am to 5:30 pm.
- It depends on what happened that day
- Nothing related to work. I make a conscious effort not to bring any negativity home with me.
- Too busy/stressed a lot of the time, Not enough time to spend on the projects I enjoy, The inability to complete tasks due to the inefficiencies of others
- Stupid people thinking they made smart decisions and smart people making stupid decisions
- A little bit about work frustration, of people not getting it or difference in styles
- Work and people
- Personnel issues
- Sales team, unresponsive people, people not getting their work done, whiners about resources
- Micromanaging
- One or two people
- Exhaustion
- People who do things that mess things up or don’t get it.