Global marketing intrigues me. I was lucky enough to spend 15 years living overseas before I beginning my freshman year of college at Emerson in Boston. Living in Rome, Berlin, and Cairo before I was 18 has made me a third culture kid. I hope to raise third culture kids one day, too. Which is where marketing comes into play. I was recently given an opportunity maybe even more awesome than traveling the world: to do marketing for a ground-breaking marketing software. That's right, I market marketing. Right out of college and I couldn't be in a better atmosphere. Still, life in 10 or 15 years is like a preview for next week's episode cliff hanging in the back of my mind from time to time. As of today, the 21-year-old me wants to live and work overseas. But how do I get there? This blog will hopefully help me to continuously frame my thinking as an international marketer, checking out developments in global marketing and eventually writing a post or two in German- a language covered in cobwebs in my head. Or should I say, in 'mein kopf.'
Where do I start? One of my goals with this site is to write a blog post in German within the next few months. I have old excersise books from grade school and pocket dictionaries to get me back on the horse. I plan to enroll in a German course once I get the into a good rhythm at work. But marketing overseas isn't all about understanding the language. I want to get a better idea of what marketing managers in foreign countries need to consider that we here in the U.S. may not have to. Writing my honors thesis in my last year at Emerson, I explored how brands were using the Egyptian revolution to connect with consumers. Even huge, successful, global brands were criticized for being culturally insensitive or greedy in their marketing efforts during a sensitive time- the Arab Uprisings. I realized there is still a lot to be learned and mastered by global marketers (check out more of my thesis here.)
One disclaimer: I love the United States. I love living here. The world is just a big place and I've had the opportunity to travel a lot of it and it only left me wanting more.
