What are your most impactful childhood memories?

This is my first post! And I’m really excited, but I’m also curious… Yes, I have always been curious about how other people feel, what types of life events define people? What make us who we are? According to an article from the www.psychologytoday.com “learning to recognize your own self-defining memories can help you gain important insights about your identity.”

I would like to start asking you about those 3 moments in your childhood that caused the most impact on you. I have them very clear:

When I actually understood how to play piano was something really amazing. I was 7 years old, and I had been taking piano lessons for at least 2 months. Suddenly, I was walking down the stairs at my school, and then, a spark! My brain simply understood how to do it. That afternoon my piano teacher didn’t have to explain me anything. It goes without saying that I participated in the piano closing recital at my school of that year.

My second most impactful moment was when I showed my mom that I could swim. Of course she didn’t believe me, (even when she was paying for swimming lessons). She was really surprised, and I felt really good to show what I was able to do. It meant a sense of independence to me: I don’t need kick boards anymore!

My third memory, I have to admit, it is not a childhood memory. Perhaps, this is not a memory either. This is actually an experience. Anyways, it is important because it helped me decide to study marketing… By that moment, I wanted to be a lawyer.

This is what happened: a group of friends and I decided to run for high school student election. I must say that we were not popular at all. In addition, I thought it would be "cool" to use a “hippie guy” image as our party’s logo.

- I asked my brother to search the logo. I know I have it somewhere, but he couldn’t find it. Please, use your imagination. Our logo was a hippie guy drawing, colorful, doing the peace sign. -

At my school, each student party was identified by a specific number. We were party number 2.

The peace sign transformed into our personal brand. All kids loved it! They were all around doing the peace sign. And we won the election. Of course, no senior student voted for us, I’m sure of that. But we achieved something incredible. We went from being a complete unknown group of people to winning the election with more 80% of support.

In that moment, I realized that I wanted to study something that gives me space to be creative. Being a lawyer would not have provided this flexibility.

I would like to use this quote to explain my final point:

"Art is the ability to change people with your work, to see things as they are and then create stories, images and interactions that change the marketplace." 
 Seth Godin

Marketing is a different way of art. And Interactive Marketing is exactly about creating stories, images and interactions based on memories, experiences and affiliations of your customers. My point is that when you are doing interactive marketing, the most important thing is to understand your customers. Sometimes, you can find this answer in your memories without much effort.

I would love to know more about my readers! Please feel free to comment and share with me your opinion.

Thanks for reading,

Marthacab