RYAN HOLIDAY
Nearly a year and a half ago, on what seemed like a normal day, I got in my car to leave my house,
assuming it would be no different from any other workday. I had read the morning news, dealt with a
few important employee issues over the phone, and confirmed lunch and drinks meetings for later in
the day. I headed to the athletic club—a swanky, century-old private gym favored by downtown
executives —and swam and ran and then sat in the steam room to think.
As I entered the office around ten, I nodded to my assistant and sat down at my big desk and
reviewed some papers that required my signature. There were ad designs to approve, invoices to
process, proposals to review. A new product was launching and I had a press release to write. A
stack of magazines had arrived—I handed them to an employee to catalog and organize for the press
library.
My job: director of marketing at American Apparel. I had a half dozen employees working under
me in my office. Right across the hall from us thousands of sewing machines were humming away,
manned by the world’s most efficient garment workers. A few doors down was a photo studio where
the very ads I would be placing were made.
Excepting the help of a few pieces of technology, like my computer and smartphone, my day had
begun and would proceed exactly as it had for every other marketing executive for the last seventyfive
years. Buy advertisements, plan events, pitch reporters, design “creatives,” approve promotions,
and throw around terms like “brand,” “CPM,” “awareness,” “earned media,” “top of mind,” “added
value,” and “share of voice.” That was the job; that’s always been the job.
I’m not saying I’m Don Draper or Edward Bernays or anything, but the three of us could probably
have swapped offices and routines with only a few adjustments. And I, along with everyone else in
the business, found that to be pretty damn cool.
But that seemingly ordinary day was disrupted by an article. The headline stood out clearly amid
the online noise, as though it had been lobbed directly at me: “Growth Hacker Is the New VP [of]
Marketing.”
What?
I was a VP of marketing. I quite liked my job. I was good at it, too. Self-taught, self-made, I was, at
twenty-five, helping to lead the efforts of a publicly traded company with 250 stores in twenty
countries and over $600 million in revenue.
assuming it would be no different from any other workday. I had read the morning news, dealt with a
few important employee issues over the phone, and confirmed lunch and drinks meetings for later in
the day. I headed to the athletic club—a swanky, century-old private gym favored by downtown
executives —and swam and ran and then sat in the steam room to think.
As I entered the office around ten, I nodded to my assistant and sat down at my big desk and
reviewed some papers that required my signature. There were ad designs to approve, invoices to
process, proposals to review. A new product was launching and I had a press release to write. A
stack of magazines had arrived—I handed them to an employee to catalog and organize for the press
library.
My job: director of marketing at American Apparel. I had a half dozen employees working under
me in my office. Right across the hall from us thousands of sewing machines were humming away,
manned by the world’s most efficient garment workers. A few doors down was a photo studio where
the very ads I would be placing were made.
Excepting the help of a few pieces of technology, like my computer and smartphone, my day had
begun and would proceed exactly as it had for every other marketing executive for the last seventyfive
years. Buy advertisements, plan events, pitch reporters, design “creatives,” approve promotions,
and throw around terms like “brand,” “CPM,” “awareness,” “earned media,” “top of mind,” “added
value,” and “share of voice.” That was the job; that’s always been the job.
I’m not saying I’m Don Draper or Edward Bernays or anything, but the three of us could probably
have swapped offices and routines with only a few adjustments. And I, along with everyone else in
the business, found that to be pretty damn cool.
But that seemingly ordinary day was disrupted by an article. The headline stood out clearly amid
the online noise, as though it had been lobbed directly at me: “Growth Hacker Is the New VP [of]
Marketing.”
What?
I was a VP of marketing. I quite liked my job. I was good at it, too. Self-taught, self-made, I was, at
twenty-five, helping to lead the efforts of a publicly traded company with 250 stores in twenty
countries and over $600 million in revenue.
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