By Rex Hammock
Over the holidays, I did a lot of reading about the 16th century and its most famous denizens. As I became enthralled by the Renaissance, I was inspired once again to encourage those of us who use different types of media to market products or services to stop labeling ourselves as content marketers, search marketers, email marketers or digital marketers. Instead, we should view ourselves as people who use content, email, print, video, etc., to create new opportunities and solve long-standing challenges.
In his current and compelling bestselling biography of Leonardo da Vinci, Walter Isaacson explores one of history’s most gifted polymaths—a person whose genius was not limited to one subject, but who was knowledgeable in the disciplines of art, civil engineering, chemistry, geology, geometry, hydrodynamics, mathematics, mechanical engineering, optics, physics, pyrotechnics and zoology.
Ironic as it may seem, da Vinci—the creator of two of history’s greatest works of art—was passionate in his refusal to label himself as an artist. In fact, in his successful attempt to gain a position in Milan, he focused on his engineering skills and ideas for using canals and locks to move construction material around the city.
The more I learned about da Vinci, the more I realized that his quest for knowledge did not come from mere curiosity or creativity, but rather from his desire to understand new topics, expand his expertise, and create new tools and technology to solve problems related to the challenges of his time.
A New Renaissance in Marketing
Reading about da Vinci—and his Renaissance contemporaries like Michelangelo who mastered skills across multiple disciplines—have convinced me that we’re still merely scratching the surface of opportunities created by today’s newest technologies to express the boundless beauty of human expression. We just need to start looking outside our current, comfortable beliefs to discover where the answers might be.
Image: iStock.com
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