After emailing Ken Schafer to take “partial credit”:http://www.horsepigcow.com/2005/06/rick-mercer-has-blog.html for “Rick Mercer’s”:http://rickmercer.blogspot.com, we discussed the possibility of me being a regular contributor to One Degree. I, of course, was delighted and accepted right away.
So, until Ken finds my opinions too controversial, I endeavour to contribute at least one entry per week. I hope to engage One Degree’s loyal readers in lively debate and discussion in regards to the world of online marketing.
Here is a little background on myself. I have my own blog, “HorsePigCow”:http://www.horsepigcow.com, where I muse wildly about all things digital marketing and, ocassionally, discuss personal matters. I first got online in 1993, when I bought my first 9.6 baud modem (I enthusiastically upgraded to 14.4 six months later) and started learning everything I could about the internet. I was excited about this new medium and told anyone who would listen that the ‘world wide web’ was going to change the world. Nobody believed me.
In 1995, I went to university to take computer science, but discovered at the end of my first year that I hated programming and much preferred my communications and marketing courses. I did continue to work online with my little bit of programming experience, and designed web pages for campus clubs for pitchers of beer and invites to the cool parties (I was once paid $20, which I promptly spent on pitchers of beer). I graduated in 1999 with a BA in Communications and a huge hangover.
Since then, I’ve built my career in marketing with a strong online underpinning. Each job I’ve held was awarded because of my passion and experience with the web. I started my own marketing consultancy (“Rogue Strategies”:http://www.roguestrategies.com) in 2002, specializing in guerilla and online strategy. Today, I work as Online Marketing Manager at the Human Resources Professionals Association of Ontario (“HRPAO”:http://www.hrpao.org).
My entire marketing philosophy derives from the main thesis of “The Cluetrain Manifesto”:http://www.cluetrain.com : “Markets are conversations”. Online does not only behave differently than offline, but I also believe that it is changing our offline world. Consumers have more of a voice than ever, so ‘Positioning’ (Trout & Reis, 1981) isn’t controlled by corporations any longer. The market has the voice. Consumers aren’t targets like they once were, they are active participants in their own buying decisions and they are listening to other consumers.
This is the power of online and this is why the ‘world wide web’ changed the world. And…this is why marketers that say that blogging is a trend won’t know what hit them in the years to come.
This is why I am delighted to speak to the broader audience that Ken has built in the online marketing community. I look forward to exchanging stories and ideas and using this medium to explore new, exciting possibilities for those of us in marketing who want to engage in the conversation rather than merely applying tired marketing principals to the dynamic net world.
Thanks Ken!
Tara “Miss Rogue” Hunt