I'm a Marketing Tosser Now

Big changes afoot, well, big for me, to an outsider looking in I would wager it doesn’t look like a single thing has changed. I have had a big career shift away from the murky world of poker journalism and into the murky world of poker….marketing.

Huge difference right?

Not really, well, kind of. Poker media is so heavily reliant on advertising from online poker sites I would say that the journalism and the marketing sides of things are very closely intertwined. If you don't believe me, you try and write something critical of an online poker room/sponsored pro for a publication with an advertising deal with the same room. Anyway that’s a discussion for another day really.

I have been wanting to get into marketing for a while now, I always thought I could do a good job of it and in fairness I have been doing it for a while and just not getting paid for it. The last two years I have helped so many people promote their brands as ‘favours for mates’ and I often get people asking me for advice on things like advertising/sponsorship/getting editorial in magazines etc. When I say ‘mates’ I don’t just mean people down the pub I actually mean sponsored players, online poker rooms, live card rooms, TV companies and publishers (Who are also mates who happen to have those jobs).

My main role will be for the entire PokerNews network and will be primarily coming up with new ways of pushing their exclusive promos. This is not difficult, in that we have bigger and better promos than anyone else (See, I’m doing it already). Ironically the first thing I do after casting off a career as a writer is a shit load of writing. I would never stop writing altogether, I love it, but from now on anything non marketing-y I write will be out of pure enjoyment. Hopefully It will mean I update this blog more often now I won’t feel as knackered from writing 4000 words a day. 

The great thing about this opportunity is I will learn so much from such a big company like PokerNews, which is great for the book I am writing with Jared Tendler (Yep, that’s still happening, nearly done, I promise). Always very nice to have more than one thing going on at a time.

As for my baby, the UK Pokernews site, not sure what the plan is. I love it very much and it certainly won’t disappear, I am still updating it at the moment but that won’t be forever, your guess is as good as mine but it will continue without me.

Some other stuff I will be getting up to will be playing freerolls. No I’m not busto, it’s just that as part of my job will be to push our freerolls I want to understand them from a player perspective. I have already qualified for a 10k and a 5k freeroll on Winner Poker and it will be interesting to see how quickly I get bored. It’s sad, but I cant envisage enjoying playing that low.

Normally by now I would get excited about the footy season started tomorrow but unfortunately Wednesday have been relegated and the World Cup was so bad in every way, not just for England, that I kind of detest football players. No doubt the Owls will have a solid win tomorrow lulling me into a false sense of hope for the season.