Alex Hunter

Alex Hunter is an Independent Digital and Branding Ninja. He’s worked for the likes of AT&T, Virgin America and Virgin Group and he speaks regularly at conference such as FOWA London and Miami. In this weeks episode Alex takes us through his career and gives his advice on how you could get into the field of marketing and branding.

Alex Hunter – The Highlights

So what’s your job title?

*laughs* I refer to myself as an Independent Digital and Branding Ninja, that title was actually bestowed upon me by one of my clients and I liked it so much that I’ve just run with it.

So you work for yourself now, tell me a bit about what you do day to day?

Well I help companies big and small, startups to half a billion dollar companies kind of define how they are going to migrate their brand online if they’re not already there, if they’re an older company. Older companies tend to struggle a little bit with that, they’re very good at older style marketing be it TV or just traditional outreach, but when they really want to engage their customers they see people on the web and they’re just not sure what to do so they come to me. The web startups and companies that I work with, both from an advisory and client perspective and I also do a little bit of investment as well is mainly around developing a brand that people can relate too, that they can invest in emotionally and get involved in so that’s kind of where I spend a lot of my day. I’ve got clients here in the UK and in the US which is nice because I want to split my time between my two home countries.

I recently saw you speaking at FOWA, are conferences and speaking gigs something you do quite a bit?

Yeah, I do a ton of it, actually I kind of fell into it about 2 years ago. Ryan Carson who’s a good friend to Americans here in the UK took a chance on me about 2 years ago at a conference called Fuel and I spoke about what I was interested in and it seemed to go down well with people and I’ve been doing it ever since…

What’s your defining moment, what have you enjoyed the most?

Great question, I think it’s got to be working for Virgin America I really do. Since there were so few of us in the early days we all got so emotionally invested in it we did everything we could for it to succeed and there was no kind of this is your work life and this is your personal life it was like completely integrated. We all became really, really close friends through good times and bad times. Doing the web campaign that was to let people know before the airline was even airborne was a lot of fun and that’s how I first got involved with Digg Nation and hanging out with those guys. We did a Digg Nation on the airplane once before anyone had seen the inside of the plane and that was so effective and so much fun and I got to meet a whole host of awesome people, so I think that that is one of the highlights really.

For anyone who may want to pursue a career similar to yours, what advice would you give them?

In terms of branding and marketing the thing that’s interesting to me is I now look at commercials and billboards and anything were someone is trying to sell me something, I look at it with a much more critical eye not criticising the commercial itself but it’s like what are they actually trying to say to me here? You peal away all the layers and actually there’s a really interesting positioning, I know that it says buy me for 5.95 but they’re actually going for this demographic, at time slot, on this specific channel during this TV show, now why is that? It’s actually pretty fascinating. The science behind marketing and branding especially is absolutely fascinating and there are so many good books and so many awful, awful books on marketing and branding, yeah read them but also go out there and see what you dig, see which company strike passion into you and approach them, talk to them, read behind the scenes. If your into Apple like pretty much everybody is, the history of Apple branding and the actually Apple marketing campaigns is fascinating…

… so find a company you really dig and email them, marketers love to talk and you’ll more than likely hear back from them and if you’re young, intern at the company or the agency. In addition to that I think it’s import to get agency side work and client side work so that you can understand how the conversation goes from both sides of the table because agency bitch about clients and clients bitch about agencies and it’s good to have both perspectives. I think that’s unique for a lot of really strong marketers.

Really good advice, so to wrap up where do you see yourself in the future?

One of the things I’ve started to get into recently, and this is totally cliche for people from California, but it’s investing in small business and I don’t do it to make a shit ton of money I do it because I love being around passionate, enthusiastic, energetic people who are completely bought into their idea, so I’ve started to do a little bit of that where I sit on the bored of small companies and kind of steer the marketing and branding and public face a little bit. I’d love to do that completely full time eventually and the other thing I’ve just started doing and your the first person I’ve told this on a public forum is I’m trying to start a travel foundation to help people who can’t afford to experience the rest of the world and kind of get out there and explore new cultures and new parts of the world so if I can be given a little bit more time to do that I would be very happy.

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