Get to Know the Wunders: Meet Mark John, Our Content Wiz.

Content is king. Everything else comes secondary.

Mark John Hiemstra, writer extraordinaire, is the first to vouch for that. As Director of Marketing here at Third Wunder, he sure does know a thing or two about quality marketing content.

Having started during the peak of the Internet, Mark John has great insight on this new era in digital marketing; one that requires more effort than abundance.

Tune in for chats on sustainability, the evolution of the Web, how to adapt to the times, and embracing the unexpected choices of your career’s journey.

1. What’s your Wunder role?

I’m the Director of Marketing, so I’m involved in the day-to-day operation with the Marketing team, overseeing strategy for Third Wunder and our clients.

2. How has your career path led to the digital marketing sphere?

That’s interesting and it’s a long answer, but I’ll try to be short.

It’s part organic, and by luck, and then it gets a little more directed. I started in tech in 2000, as a programmer. I worked on one of the first online reservation systems. Then I had a company where I worked in robotics workstations for people with mobility issues and speech recognition tools for kids with learning disabilities.

After burning out, I knew that I loved the writing part of my job, grant proposals, all of that–and I just started writing. I had a friend who is a playwright, and he asked me to write a short play for the Loud & Queer Cabaret in Edmonton. I sent him something, and he just tore it apart. It was a bit of a blow, but then as we really got into it, I went “Ooh, I get it, I see what’s happening here,” and together we slowly built it up into something that worked really well. I think it kinda hooked me in, and people liked it. That’s how I started writing more seriously, submitting things, and was published in newspapers, magazines, and a collection of short stories about Edmonton.

Then I moved to Montreal and started working for a super affiliate, as a writer. It was my first introduction to the concept of SEO. I worked for a couple of other companies where I learned about social media, content strategy, to try things, fail at things—but optimize from there. Analyzing and optimizing is the biggest part of what I learned to do. That’s how I got here.

3. You’ve got experience and then some. Considering marketing’s digital metamorphosis with Web 3.0, has it changed for better or worse?

I always go back to Web 1.0, the period of 1998-2006: the golden age of the Internet. Things weren’t all in one spot, you had to go look for things and discover them. It was a really wonderful time of community building, linking, and commenting on each other’s blogs. Of course, that’s all done in a centralized location now.

Can we ever get that feeling back? No, I don’t think so. However, I think there’s an opportunity for people who wish to have that experience, more than what Web 2.0 has given them. They’ll be able to build communities in the way that we did back then. What moves the needle the most for everyone is great content. The means by which we ensure that people get that content is changing, and we need to be aware of that. But, it’s still all about the basics.

4. Aside from advertisements, what sells you on a product?

Longevity is number one, then there’s usability, and form/design. Communicate to me that those three things exist in this product. If you do that, I’m a pretty easy sell.

I do see movements to those last two things particularly. People want longevity and reliability out of their products. I believe there are groups of people who will pay more for those things, who will buy the forever thing, instead of immediately buying something they’ll have to buy 12 times again over the course of their lives.

5. What’s the most valuable lesson you’ve carried with you throughout your career?

I once pitched something to The Edmonton Journal, they said “Yes, we’d love to do this for our weekend edition–you have two spots, Saturday and Sunday. at 1,500 words each.” So I’m like, holy shit, this is due in a week. I started writing and had about 3,000 words for each one of them. I was starting to get frustrated, like, how do I do this? Went on the phone with my friend Darrin, and we went through each piece, paragraph by paragraph, sentence by sentence, and word by word. We cut that thing down to 1445 words, really really close. I think that, in terms of just pure writing, that was an amazing lesson.

There’s that Blaise Pascal quote, “I’m sorry my letter is so long, I didn’t have time to make it shorter.” It applies not just to good writing, clear and concise copy, but it also applies to everything we do with marketing and attempting to translate what is unique and special about a business, to people. Cut out everything that’s unimportant to that story and focus on the most simple, important aspects of these businesses and brands. That’s what really resonates with people, anyway.

6. What would you have done differently to get where you are today? Or rather, what do you think is vital for you to have experienced?

I have a unique path to this position. I’ve had a lot of different jobs over the years.

I’ve worked on oil rigs and seismic drills, diamond drills, and all kinds of other machines that make holes. I learned that hard work is important, but in those environments, things go wrong a lot, and you have to be able to adapt to whatever the situation is, assess the situation, and find a solution quickly. If not, the results could be disastrous.

I worked in all kinds of different kitchens, from the cafeteria at the Stephen J Cannel lot in North Vancouver to Globe on St Laurent. That’s where I learned about the importance of preparation, segmentation, and presentation.

I even pounded spikes on the railway track one summer. That’s where I learned that even though your aim gets better the more you do something, you’re still going to miss every now and then.

All of these experiences have given me a unique perspective on marketing and have informed my approach to how I create and manage processes. It’s definitely not a traditional path to this position, but I’m really grateful to have been able to walk it.

7. Say your life had a soundtrack. What would the theme song be?

Lay Me Low by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.

8. You’d most likely get caught doing ____ outside office hours.

Getting bit by my puppies, Earl and Lady Grey. Either looking for or listening to records, and taking pictures.

9. Tell us the best perk from working at Third Wunder. Go!

There’s a wide range of backgrounds and experiences of the people we work with, which leads us to a broad range of ideas. There’s a system that’s been developed here that works really well for all of the things that we do, being able to fill in the blanks, and seeing this magical thing at the end of it where it’s all assembled. It’s a lot of fun.