A Utility Player’s Advantage: The Work of Marketing in Tech with Erin O’Quinn (1/3)

Being a utility player in the sports world is one thing, but what does a utility player look like in the tech industry? Erin O’Quinn, our guest this week in episode 330, says it takes a willingness to learn, approaching what you learn as something that can help you later, and a willingness to advocate for yourself.

Erin is currently a senior manager of customer advocacy at a sizable tech company. After studying communications in college, Erin’s first roles were in marketing communications, where she became well versed in the logistics of events like trade shows and developed a distinctive advantage by saying yes to new tasks / projects (even a little IT support for her employer). Throughout this first part of the story, Erin learned what she wanted most from a company’s culture, what it takes to develop a corporate brand, and how to communicate effectively with executives. As you listen to this episode, think about this – what is something you could say yes to today that could help you grow in the future?

Original Recording Date: 05-14-2025

Topics – Communications and the Work of Marketing, Experience with the Cultural Elements of Tech Companies, A Return to the Tech Industry, The Strategic Side of Marketing, Communication with Executives

2:15 – Communications and the Work of Marketing

• Erin O’Quinn is a senior manager of customer advocacy at a sizable tech company. She has conversations with account teams and end customers to truly understand how customers use specific products, the benefits they have received from those products over time, and how success has impacted careers, teams, and the overall business. Erin tells us it’s a fun job.
• From where Erin began, it’s been a long, winding road to get to where she is now.
• Upon starting college, Erin planned to be a psychologist and counsel people in a 1-1 staetting. The school she attended (University of California San Diego) had a psychology program more focused on behavioral psychology and less on how people interact. As a result, Erin decided to pivot to studying communications. This ended up being a natural shift.
  • The communications program focused on mass communications and communications as a social and cultural force. Human information processing concepts brought in some psychology as well.
  • Erin refers to herself as a media junkie who wanted to understand how it influences people
• Some of Erin’s first roles were in MarCom positions, but not all were with technology companies.
  • MarCom is marketing communications, but with marketing in general, the same terms can mean different things at different companies.
  • “If you ever look at job descriptions and you see a title, you can’t just go by the name of a job. You actually have to look at what the job description is to figure out if what you think it says is what it is. But marketing communications at that point meant more of the mass communications…creating publications….” – Erin O’Quinn, on MarCom positions
  • In college Erin became the editor of a newsletter. She learned how to do layouts and graphic design in addition to doing some writing.
  • Her first job was with the San Jose Real Estate Board, made up of local chapters to help members become realtors. Erin would send out the newsletter, but the company also realized Erin knew how to fix computers. When people had questions and IT was not around, people would ask Erin. She became the IT department and the marketing department.
  • The company was switching from Novell to Microsoft. They wanted Erin to help with this transition, and when she asked for formal training to fill knowledge and experience gaps, it was denied. She was worried a poor outcome could be career limiting and began looking for other jobs. The transition to