When I was a freshman at Northeastern University, I didn't have a clue as to what I wanted to do career wise. I thought about going into business and being an entrepreneur. Then I came face to face with accounting and decided that business wasn't for me. The only aspect that stuck with me was being creative, marketing and writing.
After a convo with my counselor, he convinced me to give journalism a shot. At that point, I was headed to co-op (cooperative education where you get real-world experience). My first "class" in journalism was in the middle of the Boston Globe newsroom. Four years later, I stuck with the Globe and was on staff for a period of time after school as a contributing writer. The experience was incredible and really set the tone for the rest of my career (you can read the gory details here).
Back in 2007, I was lucky enough to get hired by a former colleague of mine who was leading the Boston office of Manning Selvage and Lee (now known as the MSLGROUP). I was hired as a vice president and with the explosion of social media, became the director of Digital Communications for the office.
It's been a wild ride since then. I've worked with a slew of talented, creative and brilliant people; worked on a number of award winning client programs; and, have built relationships with heavy hitters in the communications business across a variety of industries due to my client work.
Today, however, that wonderful ride at the MSLGROUP comes to an end as I've accepted a position as director of Social Media Strategy at One to One Interactive (OTOI), one of the first next generation digital marketing agencies. Since I'm a newbie, I'll rip the boilerplate from the website...."OTOI builds informed and creative customer strategies on the belief that digital media and its ability to provide targeted, permission based, one-to-one dialogues represent the cornerstone of marketing in the future. Basically, they help brands connect with people in a variety of cool, innovative and creative ways."
Now, if I were to talk to the Don Martelli from 1993 and tell him that he'd be the director of something called social media strategy, I'm sure that Don would say, huh? What the heck is that? In fact, back in the early 90s, the Internet was just starting to go mainstream (hello AOL). The point is, we never end up where we expect to. Sometimes you just have to ride the wave and take the opportunities as they come at you, regardless of what your original plans were.
So while I'm leaving a great firm with great people, I'm very excited to start this new chapter in my career. The opportunities are limitless for me as this is a new position for the agency. It's a challenge I will take head on and kill it, as they say.
To my friends at the MSLGROUP, thank you for your personal and professional friendships (I'll only be a Facebook message away). And to my new friends at OTOI, I'm looking forward to meeting you and doing great things.
Onward...