I tend to shy away from blogging about my personal adventures, but seeing as my posts here have been few and far between lately I guess I probably should offer an excuse.

I’ve been busy. Busy settling in at a new job. Just over a month ago I left my Creative Producer position at Airborne Entertainment, where for the past three years I brand-managed mobile projects for Family Guy, Maxim, and others, to join robotic toy and consumer electronics creator WowWee as their new online-focused Director of Marketing. The WowWee team is sharp and pioneering, and I’m excited to be a part of it. And playing with toys at the office is a bonus too, of course.

I never would have predicted I’d one day land at a toy company. But my personal “creative generalist” philosophy has guided me well and helped me be open to new and different opportunities. It’s given me the courage to make tangential job leaps and still call it a coherent career. This is what my path looks like:
-traditional ad agency (internship)
-start-up ideation agency (internship)
-marketing communications agency
-start-up arts/culture magazine
-mobile content production
-marketing consumer electronics / toys

Each shift requires a lot of learning, unlearning, and relearning – which is exactly why this blog is a little quiet at the moment – but I believe it is all really quite healthy. In fact, relearning is probably even more important to one’s career now than it ever has been before. Things change so quickly and assumptions constantly need to be revisited; a zig in the ol’ career forces one to recalibrate. This is an edge, I believe, that generalists possess versus their comfortable specialist counterparts. Plus, I’m convinced that the “other-worldly” insights that an industry outsider brings is not only more transferable and applicable than we’re often led to believe but it’s also an unusually valuable import for any employer. Well, that’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it!

Airborne Entertainment career Steve Hardy unlearning WowWee