Repurposing creative skills to launch a career in marketing

When Mick Smyth’s band broke up eight years ago, he knew it was time to reinvent himself. He went back to school to study business with a specialization in creative industries, and started his career in marketing in his 30s.

It didn’t take long for his employers to recognize his leadership potential, and today he’s senior marketing and communications manager for the EMEA region at global brand strategy, design and experience firm Siegel+Gale.

Shaheen Samavati interviews Mick in today’s podcast episode, touching on his unconventional journey and how his experience as a songwriter has influenced his approach to storytelling and helped him throughout his marketing career.

You can watch the full conversation in the video above or on YouTube, and listen to the podcast on Apple or Spotify.

Rapid-fire recs

An inspirational book: Creative Confidence by Tom Kelley and David Kelley from IDEO. “I’m a huge design thinking fan; I love the idea of creating something or designing something with the end user in mind, whether it’s a piece of content, a physical product or a service. You can create the best product in the world, but if people don’t need it or want it, it’s useless. If Henry Ford had asked his customers what they wanted when he was putting together the Model T, they probably would have said faster horses. Not every customer really knows what they want.”

A useful hashtag: The Siegel+Gale events hashtag, #FutureofBranding. “I’m going to shamelessly plug our events hashtag. It covers all of our physical and online events, which are our conversations with CMOs and senior marketing executives across major brands around the world: everyone from Microsoft to Pão de Açúcar or NTT.”

Favorite app: Wallapop or Depop. “It’s apps like these that are forcing the C2C sales process. They’re disrupting the industry and making brands join the conversation and take a stand.”

“Be consistent. Sometimes when you’re constantly focusing on the same topics and messaging, you might think that you’re starting to talk about them too much. But the truth is that your audience isn’t hearing it nearly as much as you are. So trust in the fact that you’ve based your strategy on something robust and stick with it.”

Connect with Mick and Shaheen on LinkedIn.

This post was edited by Jessica Farmer.