For most of my adult life, I have worked in marketing. I didn’t see that coming. I thought I would have a catalog of movies produced, written, or directed under my belt by this age.
Most people would say something like “life got in the way” to make themselves feel better about their failure as they ditch their dreams.
I try to be as honest and authentic as possible in my writing here, in social content, and in my podcast. The truth is I got in my way. It wasn’t “life.” Just me.
Storytelling is the basis for my creative output, and working in marketing IS all about storytelling. Whether I’m working in public relations, community management, content production or social marketing, it still boils down to being a good storyteller.
I hope I’m constantly improving my storytelling. It’s hard to measure since friends and family tend to go easy on the work.
Biography
I grew up in Southeastern New England between New London, CT., and Warwick, RI. My hometown is two towns with a state border running between them. Westerly, Rhode Island, and Pawcatuck, Connecticut, are medium-sized towns by New England standards.
Right on the coast, the ocean was a constant factor in my life. To this day, the best place that can center me is out on Napatree Point in Watch Hill, RI.
My blue-collar union family were Kennedy Democrats and die-hard fans of all Boston sports teams. There was no choice in the matter.
In addition to Dairy Queen in the summer, B&M baked beans & franks, Maine “lobstah” with Rocky Point style clam cakes, Autocrat coffee milk, Dunkin iced coffee, Southern Italian food, and just about anything that swims or crawls in the Atlantic — the requirements to be considered an authentic New Englander can get complicated.*
*For example, if you’re wearing a Boston Red Sox jersey, say, west of the Connecticut River, you might run headfirst into Yankee territory. You’ve been forewarned.
I traded in the glitz and glamour as a paperboy at the Westerly Sun, and at the age of 15, I became an unpaid intern at a local radio station after winning their daily birthday cake raffle. I got hooked on the entertainment industry when I went to pick up the gift certificate and was given a tour of the studios.
That internship led to a few promotions, including that of board operator, news announcer, and disc jockey. I moved over to the visual arts when I began working at a local cable TV company managing their local TV production division.
After hundreds of hours of local programming, I decided to leave the “small pond” and jump headfirst into the Pacific Ocean. I moved to Southern California in the early ’90s and have been here ever since.
My first month was spent living in a tent on a concrete pad at the Anaheim RV campground. From the tent, I moved into a twenty-year-old camper where I experienced the 1994 Northridge earthquake. Fifty-five miles south in Anaheim! I remember calling my mother as the trailer shook like a dinghy in a storm.
I think she said something like, “I told you so.”
I moved to Los Angeles in the late ’90s and began production managing or producing indie shorts and features through Filmmakers Alliance, a non-profit filmmaking collective.
In the new millennium, I hopped on the dot com bubble and hung on long after it burst, working for the first legal online horse betting site, Youbet.com, in marketing and content production.
When the site was purchased by Churchill Downs and absorbed into its platform, I went out on my own as a marketing consultant. I was eventually hired by a marketing agency in Boston called Media Shower, where I still work remotely, managing their public relations and online community strategy.
I don’t know if anyone will ever get this far, but if you have, you might have too much time on your hands.
Thank you for visiting. I hope you like my little stories. If you don’t, I’m always open to constructive criticism. If, instead, you want to bust my cojones — take a long walk off a short pier— #BostonStrong.
The Boy Statue at Watch Hill, RI is used under a Creative Commons License. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0. Photographer: Jay McAnally.