Dodging darts and dealing in beer. The unconventional start to my marketing career...

When people always ask about your first day and what it was like, I always like to recall my first day as a marketing manager at what was then a well-known brand aimed at young men – think LadBible.

To begin with, I joined at 0900 and no one was there. Looking around my office, I observed large piles of toys, magazines, gadgets, and as my mother later recounted when she visited my office, "It looks like a teenager's bedroom gone wrong."

I noted that someone who had used to occupy my desk had blown paper spit balls out of a pen tube, creating a Pollock-like pattern on the ceiling, and to the far left there was a box with uneaten pizza from what I was guessing was a few days ago. And ahead of me was a dartboard, and we'll come back to that later…

And whilst I calmly waited, I watched a rat run past the outside ledge, which was the building's garden.

As it crept towards 10, people started to wander in, the music went on, and it soon became very clear no one knew who I was, and later it was revealed that no one knew I was even joining. So I sat in a predominantly male office, not knowing what to do and being largely ignored or quizzically glanced at.

Eventually, the Head of Marketing arrived and then started to introduce me. And I was keen to make the right impression on those who were not impressionable.

As the day went on, I was taken for lunch by my head and then returned to the office to witness a game of darts being played. So I sat at my desk, and within minutes a dart had bounced off the dartboard and missed my head by around 3 inches. Did the match stop? No. The dart was picked up and the match continued.

By the end of the day, I had concluded that as well as working hard, I was going to have to win hearts and minds in a way only they would appreciate, so I wondered what that meant.

Fast forward a few weeks, and there was talk of a party… and even back then I was a really good commercially minded marketeer, so I talked to the editor about a deal I could do to get beer, lots of it. He agreed, and hey presto, crates of beer were delivered and my buy-in secured.

Fast forward a year, and the team loved me. They bought me flowers when they thought I had done a good job and when they'd managed to annoy me… and in return, I'd learned how to hunt them down when I needed sign-off. It wasn't the usual job by any standards, but I was good at it. Also, I had genuine affection for the team. In many ways, I found them the funniest, boldest, and brightest people I had ever known.

I guess what I am trying to convey here are a few things:

1. Making work work for you takes time, and do not bolt

2. Fitting in is a two-way street

3. Sometimes, what you are not used to and not looking for is exactly what you need.