Mine was the only gray head in a sea of young people chatting, munching on cookies, opening laptops, and checking their cell phones. I was not where anyone, including myself, would expect to find anti-consumerist me. I was attending a lecture by, gasp, an advertising creative director.
Creativity, Media and the Future of You, the lecture’s title, had struck some chord in my being. Creativity has been my theme song for eons and I’ve been struggling for the last few years to grasp and participate in social media. But it was “the future of you” that cinched my decision to give up my favorite yoga class to hear Simon Mainwaring speak. I sensed that “the future of you” was profoundly different than “your future” and I needed to know what that was.
“The future does not fit the past,“ Mainwaring told these 19-20 year olds. Speaking with an Australian accent, he challenged them to reframe their thinking about the advertizing profession – to think in terms of cyberspace rather than Madison Avenue. With 560 magazines ceasing operation in the last year (prime advertising space) and people finding numerous ways to avoid TV ads, the industry is in major transition. There will no longer be large advertising firms to join, no career ladder to climb.
That being the case, “You are your industry. You must put your brain under new management." He suggested that they spend ten years becoming an expert in something while at the same time keeping the attitude of a generalist and the mindset of an amateur. "Be an agent of your own imagination by asking, 'What if?'”
"You are your own brand." Your brand is what you care about, who you work with, how you behave, how hard you work. You are what you value. You are the curator of your own content. As walking ads for your values:
- Define your purpose
- Identify your values
- Prioritize your values
- Seek work in sync with your values
- Serve with integrity – be consistent with your values
- Leverage technology
- Resist definition
- Be curious – do lots of things
- Be newer – something you weren’t before
Mainwaring described himself as being about the business of social transformation. He told these aspiring advertising professionals that their role is to listen to what’s going on, advocate for what they care about, amplify their values and add meaning to people’s lives. They were to be storytellers who understand emotions, use media, and give meaning to events of the day.
I came away with the understanding that “your future” is similar to a threatening rain cloud you can’t avoid; it’s going to get you one way or the other. But “the future of you” is something you create, something for which you are responsible, and something for which you are the primary agent.
