Chapter 7 — Truth Bombs

Some brief suggestions on how not to delude yourself as you start your marketing career

“You can’t build a reputation on what you’re going to do.”

Confucius came up with that.

If you’re hoping to thrive in whichever marketing path you’ve chosen, there are a few traits, skills or clues that will ultimately make the most significant difference between a painful struggle and fluid progression.

The good news is none of these require heightened intellect — all can be learned or developed.

1. Attention to Detail

The art of formal proofreading has seemingly gone the way of long lunches and dispatch departments (used to manage the sending of artwork to agency clients by courier in days of yore). It remains, however, essential for any marketer, and it is a learnable skill. Having your boss see a typo in a campaign you’ve produced is bad, but having a client see it when it’s live is infinitely worse (trust me on this…). There are some simple steps you can take to mitigate any risk, including:

a. Try to make a break between writing and proofreading — let your brain refresh and look again with new eyes

b. Proofread backwards — this removes the normalcy of reading copy you’ve read…