Mass Comm Week 2010

Mass Communications Week (Mass Comm Week) at Texas State University is the perfect way for students to really see how the Mass Communication field actually works from real professionals from all over. This year, Mass Comm Week was during the week from Monday, October 25 through Friday, October 29, 2010. There were topics on everything from why one should go to grad school to social media and agency professionals to broadcast media professionals describing their personal experiences.

This year I was able to attend a few events. I can't really label a favorite, but wanting to go into an agency setting, I was very please with Brent Ladd from GSD&M. He is a Creative Director and Senior VP for GSD&M, one of the most popular agencies in this area, located in downtown Austin. He's been working with GSD&M for about 21 years, so he really knows the inns and outs of the agency. For a class project, I actually had to interview an account planner from GSD&M, and it was fun seeing the similarities in his presentation with the accounts from the man I interviewed. Some of the main points I took away from his presentation were: to go to a store and play with the product you're trying to sell, it's our job to play; be engaged and super competitive; if you don't have an idea, your work doesn't mean anything; have a well-rounded knowledge; and thank-yous are always nice. Which reminds me of a few thank you cards I need to send out.

I also went to see Jake Frick from Lopez Negrete in Houston. Interestingly enough, he graduated from Texas State the same semester as I. Now he is working in Houston as an Account Coordinator, working mainly on Wal-Mart right now. Lopez Negrete takes care of the Spanish-language advertising for their clients. He showed some commercial examples, and they were really good. His presentation was a little less informative to me because his presentation was focus primarily on those who aren't too sure what area in advertising or even if advertising is where they want to do. Obviously, being in grad school for mass communications, this is what I want to do, so I learned nothing new about an advertising agency. He did show us a cool video about social media, though, called Socialnomics. This video outlines a bunch of facts about social media that are totally awesome and make you think.

Finally, and actually the first presentation I went to was called Social Graces: Understanding and communicating with clients, co-workers, audiences and the media, with Nick Weynand from Trademark Media, and David Wyatt and Lauren Tuttle from Wyatt Brand. Lauren is also a Texas State Alum. They started off by showing a video also about social media. It's a news spoof in Dallas. Both videos are great. One of the things about this presentation that I found most interesting is that they encouraged us to tweet them our questions rather than ask them out loud at the end of the presentation. They were really informative on the topics they talked about and a couple of things I took away from their presentation were: don't text a potential employer about how an interview went (this really happened to one of them after an interview); sometimes, old-fashioned phone calls work best; communication format really depends on who you're communicating with, so be flexible; your clients will treat them how you let them treat you, for example, if you answer e-mails or phone calls during the weekend, they will assume it is OK all the time; texting is actually becoming a lot more popular in agency-client relationships; and as Mr. Weynand pointed out - "Don't be stupid."

I am very glad I was able to attend these presentations, and maybe sometime in the future if I work for a nearby agency, I will be leading one of these panels.