For the love of Marketing | Mary Huntley
What Drives Me
“Wow, umm, no thank you.” That was my response when my then fiance, now husband, asked me to pace him in a 100k race. A few things about me: I’m pretty laid back, I like reading good books, and I do not run long distances. I knew he was passionate about running and this race was important as it would be the longest race he had run (at that point) and a training run for an even bigger race. As a former athlete, I knew the dedication and passion it took to set long term goals. Seeing how driven he was made me want to help him reach that goal. So I did it. I ended up pacing him for 50k of his race and, while I wasn’t much of a distance runner, I pushed myself to do new things- hard things- to learn an appreciation for something new. I can also tell people that I ran my first marathon AND ultramarathon at the same time, so that was a win for me as I hadn’t competed in sports for years at that point.
Since that time, I’ve learned a lot about myself and what drives me. I like passionate people, I like learning new things outside of my wheelhouse, and I like making big things happen.
Marketing is a great fit for me because there’s so much opportunity to think big, strategize, make a plan, test that plan, then tweak that plan along the way to reach goals. There’s so much room for creativity while using processes and procedures to do cool things.
Bringing Drive to Digital Marketing
Now almost a decade out from that “fateful” race, I have spent my time not running, starting a family, and working as the Head of Marketing for a natural sciences museum. I love museums. They are full of fabulously smart people, fantastic collections, and provide endless opportunities to learn. Museums also have a reputation for being highly academic and because of that, they sometimes feel unrelatable or out of touch with what’s currently happening in the rest of the world. For me, that was an exciting challenge. I had the opportunity to reimagine our marketing strategy away from just promoting visits to the museum into thinking about how we could interact with the public on a regular basis through blog posts, social media engagements, and emails full of exciting experiences. Taking our focus away from a one-time visit every few years to an institution worth engaging with meant constantly reviewing what we were doing and tweaking our work to meet goals. We grew our digital platforms and we were able to form an online community to reach our current and potential visitors while also learning who we weren’t reaching. It was truly a labor of love!
In all of my professional experience, I have been so fortunate to work with passionate people while doing what I love. And that’s what drove me to 1909 DIGITAL. In a year unlike any year I’ve ever experienced, I am fortunate enough to work with some wickedly smart people who are not only talented in what they do, but they dream big, they solve problems, and they are passionate about their work. I am so honored to be part of this team and I look forward to meeting YOU (our current or potential clients) and helping YOU reach your business goals with us, a team of industry professionals, dedicated to doing big things with a good strategy and a solid plan.
And if you’ve read this blog post and wondered if I only think of processes, procedures, and strategies, the answer is yes and no. I also LOVE the natural sciences and I keep up to date with new research coming out of colleges, museums, and universities and add that knowledge to conversations regularly. I’m also an amateur gardener and I’m learning to cook new and interesting things from the cookbooks I regularly read on the weekends. That’s normal, right?
