Blogger Stories: Lois Kelly

What does a marketer who is disillusioned about the profession of marketing do? For Lois Kelly it was to begin a blog focused on her frustrations. Along the way something very interesting happened. She discovered the new people talking-to-people side of marketing that awakened her enthusiasm about business communications. Then she went one step further and wrote a book, Beyond Buzz, to share her passion with her fellow marketers

Blogger Story Teller: Lois Kelly, The Foghound Bloghound

“But I have nothing to talk about,” I told my friend and mentor Kevin Clancy a few years ago when he invited me to be a keynote speaker at the American Marketing Association’s annual strategic marketing shindig. 

“You have nothing to talk about? Why not?”

“I’m so tired of the marketing hype and hoopla. If people would just listen more, get a point of view and talk like they mean it, a lot of marketing problems would go away. No big magic here,” I said.

Not willing to be turned down, Kevin convinced me to speak. Around the same time I started blogging about my frustrations in marketing and applied to graduate school at Brown University to be a teacher. A much worthier profession, I thought, than all this marketing nonsense.

But then with my blogging something kind of magical happened. Every time I blogged, I got more re-interested in marketing – particularly around communications.  In turn, with the blog posts and comments I started to meet interesting new people via the Blogosphere. People who were really smart, generous and had fresh ideas about marketing. Not the usual “hypesters.“

I passed on Brown, spoke at the AMA conference and was shocked at the overwhelming reception I got. “You’ve got to write a book about this,” people told me that day.  You’ve hit on something that we need to know more about.”

I just kept blogging and with every blog post I learned more about myself, my passion for marketing, and new patterns in communications. I gradually realized through writing and sharing in the online blogging community that I could teach without having to be an accredited middle school teacher.  More importantly, I realized how inspiring it is to learn from new people, people that I would never, ever have met if it hadn’t been for blogging. There were many things these new blog friends had taught me, and I knew there were many things they would go on to teach me.

I did get around to writing the book, “Beyond Buzz.”

And I got my groove back.

What a gift.