Marketing Communications Today Blog

As the holiday season draws near, Pinterest may be the first thought of many moms and millennials looking to "pin" recipes for family parties and catch up on the latest fall fashions. But what about your brand? How are you using Pinterest? Are you using it at all?

Does Your Audience Use Pinterest?

In a small organization, communications and marketing might be the same person or team. As a company grows, marketing and advertising might reside under one leader, while communications reside under another leader. Communications might prioritize public policy, issue management, earned media and brand reputation. Marketing and advertising might be focused on brand awareness, sales revenue, customer relationship management, and conquest sales. How do you stay integrated when you’re matrixed differently and reside in different locations? Whitney Drake, Senior Manager of GM Brand & Story Bureau at General Motors, joins us to answer these questions.

Nathan Pieratt: How do you stay integrated when you’re matrixed differently and reside in those different locations?

Whitney Drake: Communications is a huge part of it. Such as asking questions, making sure you have the right people at the table, and understanding what everyone does, versus assuming you know what other people do.

By Mike Fulton
Asher Agency

I had the good fortune to be part of a client-agency team that announced last week the design of a new “Salute Our Veterans” potato chip bag that, once on the store shelves and available online, will help boost the global efforts of the United Service Organizations (USO).

M.S. Integrated Marketing Communications student Holly Legleiter shares her thoughts on how her graduate studies benefit and compliment her full-time job as a Senior Administrator at WVU Health Sciences Campus.

So, I had been thinking about going back to graduate school for a while and couldn't really find the perfect fit and then, after speaking with some co-workers that had already completed the program and also doing a little bit of research on my own, I found the integrated marketing communications program. I looked into the coursework and found that it looked like it was going to be the perfect fit for me and where I was with my career so I was really excited about that.

I think all of it, the curriculum especially. I really enjoy the fact that the faculty are all over the United States, so they have a lot of hands-on information to give you and a lot of practical approaches. They're very much on top of their game and the coursework is very up-to-date and very relevant. It has a heavy focus in creativity, which is the side of marketing that I'm very interested in and that I that I use in my job every day.

The Creative Brief is the blueprint of a marketing communications effort. It provides guidance and vision for all the disciplines required to construct a successful integrated campaign—Research, Strategy, Account Management, Creative, Media, Production, PR, Social, Search, and Experiential. Unfortunately, most briefs are poorly crafted, overly long and often ignored. An effective brief, by contrast, inspires collaborative excellence among all involved in the process. In an era when brands bring together multiple agencies to execute an integrated campaign, clear and effective Creative Briefs are more important than ever. Jim Copacino, the co-founder and chief creative officer of Copacino+Fujikado, joined us on our Marketing Communications Today podcast to share how to write creative briefs effectively and why it is important.

Michael Lynch: What is a creative brief?

Jim Copacino: I think every marketing communications team, in agencies or on the client-side, has some form of creative brief. It’s a document that serves as a blueprint for a communications effort. In essence, it outlines the communications objective, the target audience, and it gives us a point of view about the content and tone of the message. So it's really a starting point for a campaign or for a marketing program.

It was a dark and stormy night. IMC discussion posts had been written, replies completed early, and thoughts of assignments due on Monday were being put on hold for the evening. Students gathered dressed in their best costumes to celebrate the only day of the year scarier than the capstone project deadline – Halloween.

At this party, you can tell just by the costume what each student is studying. Because just like Halloween garb, a student’s Area of Emphasis is a reflection of their interests and personalities.

Here’s a look around the party:

Empowering brands and inspiring people to think differently – this is how Mary Prevost has approached her 16 years of work in the public relations industry. Nurturing meaningful relationships is key to Prevost’s success – from internal executives and colleagues to external target audiences and media. Prevost’s vast experience spans both agency and client-side work and she’s helped clients of all sizes, from Fortune 500 companies to startups and non-profits.

Her specialties include both B2B and B2C strategic communication, content marketing, media relations, writing, social media planning and execution, crisis communication, brand development, event planning, and internal communications/team building. 

With a career in the field of marketing communications, your options are endless. You can pursue careers that focus on public relations, digital and social media, content creation, even healthcare. 

Right now, we want to explore a niche area of marketing — higher education marketing. In doing so, we’ll address the following questions: 

When people ask about me about myself, one thing I always mention is that I love to travel.

I love to see new places, meet new people, and take a ridiculous number of pictures. In the past week, I traveled to South Beach, Miami, Florida and stayed in a hostel with eight of my best friends  — picture eight girls in a room packed with bunk beds.

Here at West Virginia University's Reed College of Media, our online graduate students have always proven to be high-achieving, however, some of our students truly do go above and beyond: MeetKaitlin Ingram.

Kaitlin is a Marketing Manager at SC Johnson in Charlotte, North Carolina. As a 2013 graduate of the Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) master’s program, Kaitlin had already obtained a strong skill set in creating IMC campaigns. But she wanted to take a deeper dive into the data behind marketing campaigns and decided to enroll in the Data Marketing Communications (DMC) graduate program this year.