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A Career in Review
December book review: Bronze Seeks Silver
Bronze Seeks Silver: Lessons from a creative career in marketing, Mat Zucker, 2020: Cidiot
A book that combines memoir with an analysis of one’s resume? Let me double-click into that. The latter phrase is something I learnt when reading Mat Zucker’s book, Bronze Seeks Silver: Lessons from a creative career in marketing. This was a humorous read, detailing Zucker’s three-decades-long career in advertising and marketing.
So, let me double-click into it, which is management consultant speak for ‘let me talk in more depth about it’. Zucker started out with a portfolio presentation to a recruiter at the famous Saatchi and Saatchi Advertising in New York. Unfortunately, there was a misled metaphor regarding cleanliness and Dial soap that scuppered the presentation. However, Zucker was able to use it as a learning experience and, undeterred, pursued his goal of working in advertising, always focussing on success. He has worked at OgilvyOne New York, Razorfish, R/GA, and Agency.com, all of which is detailed in his memoir.
The book is structured in short chapters with intriguing titles (You Only Have to Walk This Pet Once, and How to Buy Girl Scout Cookies as two examples). Each chapter is generously sprinkled with humorous anecdotes, but also contains a message or a lesson learnt from that part of Zucker’s career. There are stories featuring outrageous personalities, sometimes with the identities concealed (“Nem”, short for Nemesis) and outrageous marketing campaigns, all told with Zucker’s self-deprecating wit. After finishing the book, I was sad that the Alicia Keys video never came to life, but it did allow for a few funny anecdotes about brushes with celebrity, and as Zucker says, don’t dwell on regrets.
I liked the overarching theme of looking at your achievements and finding pride in them. This is a point in history when many people are undergoing career changes, some forced, some not, so it’s a good reminder to look objectively at your work history, strengths and achievements. At times, Bronze Seeks Silver feels like a blow-by-blow account of Zucker’s work history, but it is all tied together neatly in the epilogue. The final message about valuing your career, your efforts and your time as precious are pertinent for all of us trying to make our mark in the modern world of work.
What is marketing but a form of storytelling? Zucker writes an entertaining and thoughtful story of his career that will make you laugh out loud while musing about the directions your professional life can take. It’s also a reminder to be grateful to the colleagues and mentors that we come across in our working lives. And that is worth not bronze, nor silver, but gold.
