How to spot a Marketer

a non-exhaustive list

1. They regard spam in their emails as a personal insult.
2. Capturing a like or a follow for their client’s page is their hard-fought mission. You’ll often see them staring at a Facebook profile, refreshing the screen over and over again to see if the like count goes up (or god forbid, down…).
3. Constructive criticism is the air they breath.
4. They are suit-wearing, cigar-smoking, martini-drinking dramatics who belong in a soap opera. Oh no, wait… That’s Mad Men. I always get those confused.
5. Be wary when returning their ‘hello’. They might be on the phone. Again.
6. The coffee on their desk has probably been microwaved seven times this morning, but they still haven’t remembered to drink it.
7. They keep a notepad beside their bed in case that elusive campaign tagline strikes in the middle of the night.
8. They are chameleons who will change the clothes they wear, the words they speak, and the tone they write in if they think it will help them understand the faceless mass of ‘the audience’.
9. Cringe-worthy cliché or well-crafted classic? The marketer walks this line every day, and it is slowly driving them insane.
10. They use big words like ‘business stats’ and ‘financial management’ and ‘distribution strategy’ and my head hurts.
11. They own a briefcase or some equally impressive-looking and mysterious satchel. What’s in there? Important documents? Client contracts? A portal to another world? We may never know.
12. A creative 404 error page will make them squee with delight. (‘You can play a game with the offline dinosaur! Guys! IT’S A GAME!’)
13. They will Google their clients several times a day with increasingly obscure search phrases to see if they’re the top result yet.

(I’m joking — you know it. I know it. The marketers know it. But they’re too busy envisioning a glamorous, alcohol-fuelled, Mad Men lifestyle to read this anyway.)