Someone Told Me Recently That I Am Not a Marketer.

The marketing underdog project
Written By Jessica Gabrielzyk

I have so many questions, but let’s start with my CV.

I studied administration in high school, through a special professional program at Colégio Radial in Brazil. I was fourteen and working in fashion. Did that make me a marketer? Nope, but I looked fantastic.

Then I moved to Australia and studied English for three months, which mostly qualified me to ask where the bathroom was with increasing confidence. Did that make me a marketer? No, but a friend did once tell me my pronunciation of “sheet” had improved, so I will take the win.

After that I did a diploma in marketing at APM College in Brisbane. An actual diploma. With a graduation and all. Did that make me a marketer?

Then university. In Brazil there are full bachelor’s degrees specifically in marketing, the real deal. In Australia I studied business with a major in marketing, which is the same thing wearing a different hat. Did that make me a marketer?

Jessica Gabrielzyk's retail marketing assignment

Me, clearly proud of my Retail Marketing assignment.

Then I worked in the marketing department for a company called Independent Living Solutions. I have seen things. Did that make me a marketer?

Then I did a postgraduate program in digital marketing at Porto Business School in Portugal, because apparently at this point I thought, what this CV really needs is more marketing.

So let’s recap. High school admin program. Marketing diploma. A business and marketing degree. Seven years in a marketing department. Postgraduate marketing qualification. And currently, I do all of my own marketing, which is actually a demarketing strategy of not doing marketing, for three books, with… thirteen. Instagram. followers…

Oh, now I see! That might be the problem. 🥴

Logging out, your favourite author who is not a marketer at all, or possibly the worst one out there,

Jessica Gabrielzyk

Jessica Gabrielzyk

Jessica Gabrielzyk is a Brazilian writer living in Switzerland. She moved there with her husband and daughter, who was three months old at the time and had strong opinions about the whole thing even then.

She writes about change.

The visible kind and the kind that happens inside a person, while everything on the outside looks fine.

Her first book, Maternity Abroad, explored what it means to become a mother far from the system you trusted. It has reached readers in more than fifteen countries across five continents. Parenting Unpacked, her second book, follows the experience of parenting through major life disruption, whether that's an international move, a career loss, a new baby, or a life that simply stops responding the way it used to. My First American Coloring Book was created to help toddlers engage with daily life in the United States through play and familiar imagery.

She is a member of SIETAR, the Society for Intercultural Education, Training and Research, and the International Academy of Brazilian Literature.

She writes for the parent who is still inside it, getting through the day, and wondering somewhere underneath all of it who they are becoming.

When she is not writing, she is walking forty minutes uphill with a stroller, telling herself the exercise is the point.

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He Told Me to Stay and Keep Making Coffee. I Am Glad I Did Not Listen.