I learned something about myself watching the Super Bowl last weekend. It wasn’t a brand new revelation, but it was a deeper understanding of something that resides in my DNA. Simply put it is this: I want people to do well. I want teams to play well. I want competition to look like it really is competition. When games happen like the recent destruction of the Denver Broncos by the Seattle Seahawks I am just kind of depressed afterwards.
Super Bowl Sadness
You have to understand, I really didn’t have a dog in the hunt last weekend. Yes I was rooting for Denver, primarily because the Seahawks beat my 49ers and I am a bit worn out on Pete Carroll’s seeming arrogance, not to mention being a bit put off by Richard Sherman after the Sherman/Crabtree interchange. Even so, the Seahawks winning wasn’t anything compared to the sort of sadness I felt because while they showed up with their A game, Denver seemed to have substituted their entire team with lookalikes who didn’t actually know how to play the game.
From the first botched hike to the continued turnovers and Denver’s inability to do anything at all, the game just got progressively sadder for me. We found ourselves enduring the game rather than enjoying what should have been the peak of performance from two teams with incredible records. It was a pretty big letdown. As I’ve thought a bit more about how I felt about it all, I realize that even when my teams are playing and I am rooting like crazy for them to win, I still don’t want the other guys to embarrass themselves. I want them to bring their best and do well, while still wanting my team to come away on top.
Marketing as a Helping Field
So why am I writing this today? Partly for my own process to see if what comes out of my fingers on the keyboard maps to my thoughts well, but also because it tells me something about why I enjoy what I do here at the office. If I boil down what we do here at Half a Bubble Out, it is our role to help other people do well, to help other companies learn how to present their “A game” to their prospective customers. We thrive on helping companies best tell their story and stand out from their competition.
So, for whatever it is worth, my thought for this day is that being in the advertising and marketing world is not often seen as a “helping industry” but for me, and I would say for us here at Half a Bubble Out, it is one of our chief goals to be seen as helpful. Always at the end of meetings with clients, Michael asks the question “was this helpful?” If we don’t get good answers then we know we have more work to do to educate, encourage and move our clients forward.
So today I am reinvigorated by the reality that deep in me it is important to help others succeed. Meanwhile I will probably just spend the day feeling a little sad still for my Denver friends as they recover from what must be a great sense of embarrassment and not a small amount of confusion.
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