I’m Edward Boches, Chief Innovation Officer (formerly Chief Creative Officer and Chief Social Media Officer) at Mullen and also the Chief Marketing Officer at Springpad, makers of the popular social notebooks. I’m fortunate that after 29 years as one of the original four partners at Mullen, I now have the opportunity to bridge the advertising world and the start-up world. On the side, at least for the time-being, I teach at Boston University, where I’ve developed a course called Strategic Creative Development, hoping to inspire students to apply both strategy and creativity to something other than ads.
I’m young enough to have kids in grade school. And old enough to have fallen in love with all things media from admiring the print ads in Life magazine back in the 1960s. Somewhere in between then and now I’ve been a newspaper reporter, speech writer, account executive, public relations counsel, copywriter, creative director, social media advocate, speaker, teacher and marketer. I’ve been lucky enough to have helped build a full-service ad agency; worked with dozens of noteworthy brands; launched high-tech and internet start-ups; collaborated with world famous directors, photographers and editors; co-written television commercials with Ellen DeGeneres; presented ideas to Oprah Winfrey (she actually liked them); created award winning websites; launched an emerging social media practice; incubated thenextgreatgeneration.com, and advised start-up companies.
Best of all, I’ve had the chance to constantly embrace change and try new things. If there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that we can’t accomplish anything alone. We need to be as good at collaboration as we are at our specific craft. I’ve also come to believe that taking chances and staying scared are a good way to grow. I don’t pretend to know all the answers. In fact, I’m more interested in asking new questions.
Closing thought: How does one become irrelevant? Slowly at first then all of a sudden.
