How To Make It In Marketing #11: Electronic Arts / Rob Bullough / Director, Global Brand Marketing
How To Make It In Marketing #11: Electronic Arts / Rob Bullough / Director, Global Brand Marketing
Rob Bullough’s career has been built on passion and continuously looking to develop and move on when things seemed to plateau. Arriving at EA to originally create music for their video games, he now looks after upstream and downstream marketing activities for the whole brand.
Rob’s developed his marketing acumen by combining what he has learnt in all other walks of his life, from computer programming to writing music. Chasing his passions has taught him to continuously look to make work exciting, as that’s when he’s been at his most efficient and successful.
What is your advice about how to make it in marketing?
Voraciously learn new skills.
How have you put this tip to good use?
Throughout my career, I just wanted to do stuff and learn things myself, rather than being taught by someone else. This is why I started working right after school and developed this love of failing and learning on my own.
Early on, I was organising parties in London and I learnt to create a website to promote these parties. This led to getting a job designing a website, and I capitalised on these skills as the Internet was growing. But my passion was music and I started writing it, eventually ending up meeting EA and writing for them. However, I love music too much to write to brief, so eventually I started looking for something else. I taught myself programming, and kept learning more and more. I love learning new skills and this allows me to move on when things plateau and are no longer enjoyable and satisfying.
What marketing tips does the industry need most right now?
We need to understand and embrace the value of pressure – of holding the audience in a spell. The best brands create a universe you want to become part of, a coherent story that draws you in and keeps you enthralled, without ever dropping the ball.
A great example of this is the cycling brand Rapha, who’ve developed a consistent and exciting brand story. Nike is another one that’s done it brilliantly. It’s all about not ruining that connection when the consumers are completely hooked. Think of it like being at a great concert where the DJ controls the room. If they drop a record, the pressure goes out of that room and it takes a very long time to build back the original atmosphere… if they can even achieve it again.
Listen to more top marketing tips, hear about Rob’s favourite book and his views on the future of marketing, on the latest episode of our Shiny New Object podcast: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1Yo7iznMB7zSimRlxEF45C
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